Droid sub goes under Antarctic ice on 5000 D-cells An autonomous British robot submarine has just set out on a mission which will see it plunge deep beneath Antarctic ice shelves. Interestingly, the "Autosub" has no truck whatsoever with li-ion, fuel cells, stirling engines, hydrogen peroxide or any other trendy undersea power system: it runs on ordinary torch batteries, 5,000 …
So they're looking at the effects of the current climate change, climate crisis / climate catastrophe / climageddon (take your pick). Let's hope they do the sensible thing and send all those batteries for recycling once they're dead.
Or maybe they'll do the old trick of just sitting them on a radiator for half an hour then sending the sub out again...
I wonder what's wrong with just replacing the Alkaline "D" cells with off-the-shelf NiMh ones and adding a charging circuit and plug? Ok, nowhere near as interesting as designing a new Li-ion battery pack, but it'd work and cost sod all to do.
I suppose the main drawback with the existing version has to be when it refuses to work. You just *know* the reason's going to be that someone's put one in the wrong way round......
(Note to self. Robotic subs make bad Christmas presents.)
by a quarter of a millimetre to the oceans every year.
What if we had a "No Peeing in the sea" day for just one day a year.. Would that balance it out?
I aint no boffin but....
Dont Water expand when it freezes? So when the Ice caps melt water levels should remain the same or get lower?
ok ok ill get my coat
These things are designed to be positively buoyant, so that in the event of a power failure they can pop up to the surface and activate an emergency transponder letting the mothership know where they are.
This doesn't really work if you happen to be under several kilometers of ice at the moment the power fails!
Anonymous Coward wrote:
"Dont Water expand when it freezes? So when the Ice caps melt water levels should remain the same or get lower?"
Eureka! If the ice were floating on the water the level would remain the same when it melts. Just ask Archimedes.
But since the glaciers are moving from the land into the sea, it's a different story.
Autosub was around when I was a student of Oceanography at Southampton in the mid-nineties and it has always run on D cell batteries because when it was first built there wasn't a sensible alternative. Granted, they are probably right that the exotics are not as economical so there is no point changing, but this hardly makes it a unique story. Add to that the fact that Autosub has been under the Artic ice before and has been doing so since about 2002 (albeit not always successfully - http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/releases/2005/autosub.asp), and it all ads up to...a slow news day!!
If you scan through the latest Columbia disaster report you get to see interesting snippets including photos of the remains of the crew space suits.
Peeking out of the shattered cases of the AN/PRC radios installed in each suit are clearly recognizable Duracell D-cells - the classic bought in supermarket types.
I guess if you want an absolutely reliable battery that works in hard vacuum and extremes of temperature then alkaline chemistry is the perfect match.
"...I wonder what's wrong with just replacing the Alkaline "D" cells with off-the-shelf NiMh ones and adding a charging circuit and plug? Ok, nowhere near as interesting as designing a new Li-ion battery pack, but it'd work and cost sod all to do.."
Actually, Southampton Argos were doing a sale price on pallet-loads of batteries in the run-up to Christmas...
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