| ▲ | andrewrn a day ago |
| I work on autonomous submarines that image the seafloor, and let me tell you it is very hard to engineer deep ocean systems. Just operationally, testing things in rolling waves is a brutal job. Arguably at parity with space as an engineering design environment. |
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| ▲ | structural a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| I (briefly) worked as a test engineer on a similar kind of contract. To meet the UX requirements for the system we were building, it had to be reliably operable in sea state 7+. The customer wanted touch screen interfaces. I exited that project when they were looking for volunteers to go spend time offshore in the Gulf of Alaska in bad weather, because that was the test environment they could find that met the requirements. Insanity. |
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| ▲ | RugnirViking 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | damn, I would definitely have volunteered. But quite a crazy environment, seems to me mechanical switches with protective caps to prevent accidental activation on would be better suited to such things. Though it also depends on the possible consequences of the wrong input I suppose, if it were like a microwave or a clothes washer I guess its fine | |
| ▲ | blobdole a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Shoulda told them to test it on roller coaster with a splash zone. Way easier to get engineers to come to work at Six Flags than brave the briny deep. | |
| ▲ | veunes 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] |
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| ▲ | EuanReid a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I forget who said it, but there's a quote about how _of course_ we know more about space than the bottom of the ocean - in space we only have to deal with one atmosphere. |
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| ▲ | hermitcrab a day ago | parent [-] | | >only have to deal with one atmosphere. A difference of one atmosphere? | | |
| ▲ | notimetorelax a day ago | parent | next [-] | | There’s only one atmosphere of pressure from inside to outside. Under the sea the direction is reversed and pressure is much higher. | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Spacecraft are pressurized to much less than one atmosphere, because it reduces the stress on the craft, and the weight of the air supply. | | |
| ▲ | dleary 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I was curious and went to look up how low it was, and the references I can find online say that the ISS, the Space Shuttle, and the Crew Dragon are all at 1 atm. It does say that the pressure in the Space Shuttle was decreased to about 70% atm for 24h before EVA. Apollo was 1/3 atm 100% oxygen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5690/why-is-the-br... https://www.google.com/search?q=pressure+inside+the+space+sh... https://www.google.com/search?q=pressure+inside+the+apollo+c... | |
| ▲ | Tuna-Fish 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is actually a terrible idea, because to keep the air breathable you'd have to raise the oxygen fraction, making fire risk much worse. (Inert gases in air suppress fires by carrying away heat, making it harder to sustain a flame.) | | |
| ▲ | WalterBright 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | People live on mountains just fine. | | |
| ▲ | AlotOfReading 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | This exact same problem exists on mountains, which is why there are no permanent settlements above 5,100m. The Apollo pressure mentioned above (1/3rd atm) is roughly equivalent to an elevation of 8,500m, well into the "death zone" for a normal atmospheric mix. |
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| ▲ | dreamcompiler 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Likewise commercial aircraft. |
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| ▲ | sandworm101 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Fry: "How many atmospheres can the ship withstand?"
Professor: "Well, it's a spaceship, so I'd say anywhere between zero and one." s02e12 | |
| ▲ | vrighter 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | futurama comes to mind. the spacecraft can withsthand any level of atmosphere between 0 and 1 | |
| ▲ | Tangurena2 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The one atmosphere that telescopes are looking through. It is nowhere near as problematic as looking through seawater. | | |
| ▲ | charcircuit a day ago | parent [-] | | But space telescopes exist where you don't have to deal with one atmosphere. | | |
| ▲ | bahmboo 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | This is about sub sea pressure where it reaches a thousand atmospheres. So a space telescope in zero atmosphere doesn't help. |
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| ▲ | GarnetFloride a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I found that sea, space and automotive are the three most hostile environments, each with very different requirements that made it hard in different ways. |
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| ▲ | veunes 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [flagged] |
