![]() To withstand the enormous pressure of 1.25 metric tons per cm 2 (110 MPa) at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the sphere's walls were 12.7 centimetres (5.0 in) thick (it was overdesigned to withstand considerably more than the rated pressure). Trieste was fitted with a new pressure sphere in winter of 1958, manufactured by the Krupp Steel Works of Essen, Germany, in three finely-machined sections (an equatorial ring and two caps), and by the Ateliers de Constructions Mécaniques de Vevey. Batteries provided power.ĭon Walsh and Jacques Piccard aboard Trieste It provided completely independent life support, with a closed-circuit rebreather system similar to that used in modern spacecraft and spacesuits: oxygen was provided from pressure cylinders, and carbon dioxide was scrubbed from breathing air by being passed through canisters of soda-lime. The pressure sphere provided just enough room for two people. The crew occupied the 2.16 m (7.09 ft) pressure sphere, attached to the underside of the float and accessed from the vessel's deck by a vertical shaft that penetrated the float and continued down to the sphere hatch. The majority of this was a series of floats filled with 85,000 litres (22,000 US gal) of gasoline, and water ballast tanks were included at either end of the vessel, as well as releasable iron ballast in two conical hoppers along the bottom, fore, and aft of the crew sphere. Īt the time of Project Nekton, Trieste was more than 15 m (50 ft) long. After several years of operation in the Mediterranean Sea, the Trieste was purchased by the United States Navy in 1958 for $250,000 (equivalent to $2.5 million today). The design was based on previous experience with the bathyscaphe FNRS-2. Trieste was launched on 26 August 1953 into the Mediterranean Sea near the Isle of Capri. The installation of the pressure sphere was done in the Cantiere navale di Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples. The upper part was manufactured by the company Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico, in the Free Territory of Trieste (on the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, now in Italy) hence the name chosen for the bathyscaphe. His pressure sphere, composed of two sections, was built by Acciaierie Terni. Trieste was designed by the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard and originally built in Italy. ![]() This configuration (dubbed a " bathyscaphe" by the Piccards) allowed for a free dive, rather than the previous bathysphere designs in which a sphere was lowered to depth and raised again to the surface by a cable attached to a ship. Trieste consisted of a float chamber filled with gasoline (petrol) for buoyancy, with a separate pressure sphere to hold the crew. General arrangement drawing, showing the main features ![]()
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