Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe. In 1960, it became the first crewed vessel to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest point in Earth's seabed. The mission was the final goal for Project Nekton, a series of dives conducted by the United States Navy in the Pacific Ocean near Guam. The vessel was piloted by Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard and US Navy lieutenant Don Walsh. They reached a depth of about 10,916 metres (35,814 ft). The bathyscaphe was designed by Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard, the father of pilot Jacques Piccard. It was built at the Navalmeccanica in Castellammare di Stabia, Italy, and launched on 1 August 1953. The vessel was first owned and operated by Auguste Piccard until it was purchased by the Office of Naval Research in 1958 for US$267,000. This would be equivalent to $3 million in 2024. Subsequently the vehicle was turned over to the Bureau of Ships' Naval Electronics Laboratory at San Diego. It was taken out of service in 1966. Since the 1980s, it has been on exhibit in the National Museum of the United States Navy in Washington, D.C.
Design
Trieste was designed by the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard, based on his previous experience with the bathyscaphe FNRS-2. The term bathyscaphe refers to its capacity to dive and manoeuvre untethered to a ship in contrast to a bathysphere, bathys being ancient Greek meaning "deep" and scaphe being a light, bowl-shaped boat. Trieste consisted of a heavy crew sphere suspended from a hull containing tanks filled with gasoline (petrol) for buoyancy, ballast hoppers filled with iron shot and floodable water tanks to sink. This general configuration remained the same but after modifications to the hull for Project Nekton, which included the dive to Challenger Deep, Trieste was more than 15 metres (49 ft) long. The hull was built by Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico, in the Free Territory of Trieste on the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, now in Italy, hence the name. Recent historical research has highlighted the pivotal role of the Triestine collector and pacifist Diego de Henriquez in the inception of the project. According to historian Enrico Halupca (2019), de Henriquez was instrumental in convincing Auguste and Jacques Piccard to base the construction and initial operations of the bathyscaphe in Trieste between 1948 and 1955. Halupca describes the 'Trieste' as the convergence of the Piccards' scientific ambition and de Henriquez's vision of technology serving peace during the Cold War era. The pressure sphere was built separately and installed on the hull in the Cantiere navale di Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples.
The pressure sphere was attached to the underside of the hull and accommodated two crew who accessed it via a vertical shaft through the hull; this access shaft was not pressurized and flooded with seawater on descent. The sphere was completely self-contained, having a closed-circuit rebreather system with oxygen provided from cylinders while carbon dioxide was scrubbed from the air by being passed through canisters of soda-lime. Batteries provided electrical power. Piccard's original pressure sphere was built by Terni società per l'industria e l'elettricità spa of Terni/Italy, of steel forged in two hemispheres and joined to form a sphere 2.4 metres (7.9 ft) in diameter and 89 millimetres (3.5 in) thick. It was replaced in December 1958 with a sturdier sphere by the Krupp Steel Works of Essen, Germany, forged in three sections; an equatorial ring and two caps, which were finely machined and joined. The instrument rack for the sphere made by Krupp was separately manufactured by the Ateliers de Constructions Mécaniques de Vevey and subsequently brought to Germany to be integrated into the sphere. The new sphere was also steel, but smaller at 2.16 metres (7.1 ft) diameter and with thicker walls, at 127 millimetres (5.0 in), calculated to withstand the 1,250 kilograms per square centimetre (123 MPa) pressure at the bottom of Challenger Deep plus a substantial factor of safety. The new sphere weighed 14.25 metric tons (31,400 pounds) in air and eight metric tons (18,000 pounds) in water giving it an average specific gravity 2.6 times (or 1.6 times greater than) that of seawater (13÷(13−8)). Outside observations by the crew were made through a porthole made from a single, tapered block of acrylic glass; the only transparent material available that could withstand the pressure. Outside illumination was by quartz arc-light bulbs, which could withstand the pressure without modification.
The buoyancy tanks were filled with gasoline, which floats in water and is similarly incompressible. Changes in the volume of the gasoline caused by any slight compression or temperature changes were accommodated by the free flow of seawater into and out of the bottom of the tanks during a dive via valves, equalising the pressure and allowing them to be lightly built. Ballast was held in two conical hoppers fore and aft of the crew sphere each containing 9 metric tons (20,000 pounds) of iron shot. This shot ballast allowed the craft to sink, and its release caused it to ascend. The iron shot was locked in place at the throats of the hoppers by electromagnets thus was released either by switching the electromagnets off or automatically in the event of an electrical failure. Progressive release allowed buoyancy trim. Compressed-air–driven variable-buoyancy pressure vessels typically used in submarines are not feasible at extreme pressure. Water tanks at each end of the hull were pumped out for flotation, lifting, and towing on the surface and fully flooded to allow sinking. Following its acquisition by the United States Navy, Trieste was modified extensively by the Naval Electronics Laboratory, San Diego, California, tested in the Pacific Ocean over the next few years, and culminated in a dive to the bottom of Challenger Deep 23 January 1960.
The Mariana Trench dives
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