Adapting space capsule life support concepts for amateur subs

The miniaturized environmental control system developed 50 years for the Mercury capsule weighed about 85 pounds and could keep an astronaut alive for 24 hours.

 

Talk to TugBoat . . .

 

LOL+

-Tom

 

Astronauts don't use subs??

 

Multiple sets of Scuba tanks would do the same thing, if you didn't go too deep. I don't get the thread - is this about drug running?

The Mercury enviornmental control might not work so well when it got wet instead of in a dry vacuum. Why am I acting like there is something to discuss????? never mind.

 

Because <insult removed>. Your scuba tank idea, for one thing, would be much heavier and occupy a lot more volume.

 

I've got some colleagues at Hamilton-Sunstrand. They make the space suits for the Space Shuttle. As I recall they're about a million dollars a-piece, but I'm sure they would be happy to design/sell one that might work. Give their sales department a call.

http://www.hamiltonsundstrand.com/Space Systems

 

Extensive documentation is available on the Mercury capsule environmental control system. I'm sure a bright engineer could figure out how to recreate this 50 year old technology for a lot less than a million dollars.

 

FranklinRatliff,

You made my day, lets both ignore the PC Crap.

<insult removed>.
"Your scuba tank idea, for one thing, would be much heavier and occupy a lot more volume" - PROVE IT!

Rest assured that I am a clever Engineer and I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. Basically putting an old space capsule system on an AMATEUR Sub combines two different ideas that just make me laugh. While not a submarine designer, I did ride on one for a short time.

Can you tell us something about the old environment system since there is so much information available? Please understand that I don't object to anything just because it is an old idea - the wheel still works. The 5th grade level idea that it could be used is no real value without some facts.

Do you have any?

Any idea how much a scuba total loss system would weight? I am assuming the amateur sub would be a shirt sleeves environment - basically atmospheric pressure, so a scuba tank would last a lot longer than it does at ambient pressure underwater. Did you know that the sub I was on ran the pressure down until it was about 6PSI instead of 14PSI? Not continuously but it reached that during a tour.

As I remember the early space systems were pure oxygen systems and so would require less tankage. Since oxygen is only 20% of the atmosphere I suppose we could use Scuba tanks with 1/5 the volume compared to using air. I bet we are getting in the range of 85#, especially if you used modern filament wound tanks - available everywhere. All at off the shelf prices. No real development required.

Alternatively you might as well suggest adapting the Roswell crashed spaceship environmental system.

Perhaps Han Solo could fix the Roswell system for you.

Do you have any idea how much the Mercury Capsule system cost? Perhaps a million dollars? - with inflation it might be pretty expensive now? We don't really have any data do we?

Useless. Your turn to turn this into actual data for a reasonable discussion.

Marc

 

<removed> You're an <removed> who didn't even bother getting familiar with the Mercury capsule system before shooting his mouth off.

 

It seems like this thread has become more hostile than productive, so therefore it's being closed. Please, let's keep forum threads civil to fellow forum members. Thank you.