Since Google today revealed their until-now secret driverless cars, I figured I'd talk about their secret ocean-going vehicle.
I heard about it from the relative of someone working on this project. The relative is not technical, so perhaps he got some details wrong. In any case, this is what he told me:
Apparently Google has a warehouse in California where they are designing and building a submersible made of carbon fiber, designed to tavel down to depths of 30,000 feet. It surprised me that it was not designed for the deepest part of the ocean floor, which is 36,200ft (6.9 miles or 11km). Maybe they figured that 30 thousand was good enough for now.
The submersible is small; it is not designed to hold humans. It is remotely controlled to photograph the ocean floor. I seem to recall the relative telling me that the units are filled with fluid to counteract the tremendous external water pressure at such a depth -- 16,000psi.
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