Triton's spherical shaped submarine could go 36,000 ft under the sea

Yes, it may not be Captain Nemo's exalted Nautilus, but Triton's CEO Bruce Jones has announced that his company has built a fully capable submersible designed around a sphere of glass that could descend to a depth of 36,000 ft (around 10,975 m) under the ocean. In comparison, the world record was set by the bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, when it carried Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard to a depth of 10,911 meters (35,797 ft) in the deepest point of ocean known to mankind i.e. the Challenger Deep in Mariana Trench near Guam.

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Christened as the Triton 36000 (alluding to its depth range), this underwater craft will have a capacity for three people, including a pilot and two passengers. A special kind of strengthened borosilicate glass was specifically developed for this venture by a San Diego based company called Rayotek Scientific. The glass is composed in such a way in conjunction with the pressurized chamber, so that it can withstand at least one and a quarter times the depth that it's required to achieve.

As Rayotek's CEO, Bill Raggio puts it:

Glass under compression gets stronger. You can hire some giant squid to come over with a sledgehammer and just start bashing away on that glass sphere. And it won't hurt it.

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We did already mention about the main component of the ocean-craft in the form of a spherical glass chamber. This sphere actually also helps in the 360 degree view of the ocean floor. Now coming to the cost factor, the craft (which is still in its design stage) will have a price of around $15 million (£9m).

But, as Triton's CEO Bruce Jones, said:

This is a real commercial, scientific work vehicle that we expect to get a lot of use. It's not, 'Let's go to the bottom of the ocean one time and then give it to a museum to put on a shelf'.

And in the middle of all of this, there is actually a possibility of a nascent 'ocean race' to reach the deepest parts of our seas. Other competitors include the ever maverick Richard Branson, and also the movie director James Cameroon, who it seems has never gotten over his 'Abyss' fancy.

Source: Physorg/Wired