Can we sneak by him, Ramius? We don't know how to play "Chicken"...
“What are these doors? Those are too big to be torpedo tubes…
“I’ll be… This…This could be a caterpillar.”
Skip Tyler never got that confirmed by Capt. Vasili Borodin (who was too busy wishing he did get to see Montana) in McTiernan’s film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October…
…and especially since Vasili and Skip never talk.
But Tyler was right.
Jeffery Jones as sub expert & Naval Academy instructor Skip Tyler...He's got more than a caterpillar growing there.
To be clear, what he means is the Red October might have a “caterpillar drive”, not an immature butterfly..
But what’s a caterpillar drive?
“It’s like a, a jet engine for the water. Goes in the front, gets squirted out the back. Only it’s got no moving parts, so it’s very, very quiet.”
The film doesn’t explain further but Skip refers to naval slang for a magnetohydrodyamic (MHD) drive.
A whaaat?
Yeah, “magneto-hydro-dynamic” drive which, you guessed it, involves magnets and (surprise!) water.
So, how does it work? Probably the best way to describe it is to start with something you might already know: Electricity.
Electricity is charged particles (electrons) pushed through a conductor by an electromotive force. Good examples are the wire conductors that power/charge your monitor and computing device. Some of you sparky types might even know that the moving electrons in that wire create a magnetic field wrapping around that wire.
Need a visual of that magnetic field? Recall the Right Hand Rule? Give your monitor the Thumbs Up. Your thumb is the wire conducting electricity in the ‘up’ direction and your fingers ‘curled’ around it are the magnetic field lines.
MHD flips the elements of an electric conductor around: A magnetic field creates a motive force on an electric conductor.
In a caterpillar/MHD drive, the electric conductor is the salt water. Pass a current through it (say left to right), and if a magnetic field passes perpendicular to it (say bottom to top), a force on the salt water results via that aforementioned Right Hand Rule, in this case propelled right at you.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t proved to be very practical outside of the movie, the latest public effort being Mitsubishi’s Yamato 1, but it has enormous possibilities….especially for the military.
So much so that it caused a Soviet submarine icon like Marko Ramius to reconsider his allegiance.
Certainly if Magneteva Hydronova shows a little leg, old boy...
(Quoted movie lines from Drew’s (great) Script-O-Rama site!)
Still one of my all time favorite movies.
"Some things in here don't react too well to bullets."
The idea of a caterpillar drive has been around for many decades. Sadly, it has not been proven useful or reliable on a grand scale. I did hear that the Soviets were experimenting with one in the '70s, which is how Tom Clancy got the idea for his book.
Should one be developed, I wonder how useful it would be. Technology for detection of submarines has advanced enough that the sound of the water rushing through the caterpillar drive could provide enough of a signature that the sub would be easily detectable.
Oh yes, it's one of my favorites also. As for MHD propulsion, it sounds like they're not making strong enough magnetic fields. They have a nuke on board so there should be plenty of juice, so why not try pinch coils? Of course, you'd have to make them so they wouldn't self destruct, but that's what engineers are for. Oh, they'd whine and say that you couldn't do that and start quoting the laws of physics and other nonsense, but that's just the way they are.
Uhura: [over the intercom] Entering planet's outer atmosphere, sir.
Scotty: Captain!
Capt. Kirk: What is it?
Scotty: He's turned the engines off. They're completely cold. It'll take 30 minutes to regenerate them.
Uhura: [over the intercom] Entering planet's outer atmosphere, sir. Ship's outer skin is beginning to heat, Captain. Orbit plot shows we have about 8 minutes left.
Capt. Kirk: Scotty!
Scotty: I can't change the law of physics! I've got to have 30 minutes!
Whiner!
No- WINNER. Not only did he get 'em restarted, he
popped the time-clutch and knocked everybody
back, what, 8 days before they even arrived?
You ever get that death ray finished there, bub?
That's what I was talking about earlier – engineers piss and moan, but they'll get the job done. Or die horribly along with everyone else.
Bah, don't talk to me about death rays! That project was damned from the start, it fought me tooth and nail to the death. It's death, fortunately. What did it in was dew. I had been working on it all day and into the night, and as the temperature fell, a heavy dew coated the equipment in the outside bunker, and I wasn't paying attention to it, since I was inside in my nice warm lab. I started the preheating for the emitter, and – Kablooey!. It's hard to tell from the wreckage embedded in the walls and ceiling, but there must have been a short in the relay circuits that trigger the SCRs, that in turn dumped the capacitor banks all at once. The cold emitter coils couldn't gag down ~2,000,000 joules, and… bang.
So to hell with it, at least for now.
}facepalm{
You left sensitive, very expensive electrical
components exposed to the elements while
under mains power???
I'm beginning to wonder about you, Old Son. ;-p
<img src="http://www.techeye.net/assets/upload/science/boffins-change-the-laws-of-physics/scotty.jpg" width="400">
Creating a large magnetic field really isn't the problem with an MHD drive sub…or boat.
Neither is the variable conductivity of sea water with temperature (drops by almost half going from 20degC to 0DegC).
It's that it's trying to move a huge mass of water. 64lbs/cubic foot, a ton each cubic meter. While MHD has a very high specific impulse, moving that mass is the problem.
Then, even for a boat, moreso for a sub, pushing that water out of the way to move forward…
And there are more practical applications of MHD drive… {{:)
Oh my, yes, water is a pain to displace, and it doesn't compress worth a damn. It can be a very disagreeable substance with which to work.
Doc, what if we super-cavitated the hull from the bow back
and ran the MHD in pods outside the bubble?
Would that loosen ya up enough?
Ho ho ho! I like the way you think, young man. Yes, yes, that would reduce the mass to displace tremendously. But it would only work if you were going fast enough, else you'd drop out of the cavitation bubble and be back at square one.
Hmm, I'll have to think about that some more. Nice idea!
Aaand, the nuke is also used to split seawater for air and fresh
water. H is a byproduct, yes? Use that for the bubble-maker-
even less resistance!
Whole thing would be like a bad warp-drive; really fast,
but can't see or change direction easily. But 60+ knots!!
All true but if you get it cold enough it does wonderful things to a whiskey sour.
Bah! That's a drink for recumbent urinators. Good whiskey, like Bushmills or Jameson, should be drunk neat. And no quaffing! Getting good whiskey in your ears is a horrible waste. It also stings a bit.
I for one welcome our new recumbent urinating whiskey sour drinking overlords.
<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H2Bx15U9ntA/TPv3CCcProI/AAAAAAAAAdU/m-0UnlwJyGU/s1600/DSC03427.JPG" width="400">
She's a cutie.
Now see, there ya go again, Doc.
I own a recumbent (trike). Are you
saying I'm incontinent as well?
And I've enjoyed many a WS as
well.
I may have to sic PrazyoJadzy (?)
on you….
Ah ha. Well then, whoops! I guess? It looks like I've stepped on it again…
Give me one ping, one ping only please.
<img src="http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l830akimYO1qzvyj2o1_400.jpg" width="400">
Ping
<img src="http://www.mygolfspy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/G20-Driver-Sole.jpg" width="300">
<img src="http://www.ovalasia.com.sg/uploadfiles/AD2000/AD2000_CD_Installation_Oval/Help/Images/Ethernet%20PING%20example.gif" width=500>
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/EYUBc.png">
He said just one ping.
<img src="http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6529/pingt.gif">
Here's an article from 1966 with plans for building your own working desktop model:
http://books.google.com/books?id=mikDAAAAMBAJ&…
That issue of PS is packed with cool articles like an extended test drive of a Toronado and an article about rocket booster re-entry by Werner Van Brauwn!
So that's what that was… If you're looking at the Yamato 1 from across the water, a bit west is this statue of Elvis If I'm remembering correctly. Fans put flowers there to this day.
<img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-N3I8spYbWME/TOboNp4iH1I/AAAAAAAAB30/xbkzO6BBvSY/w500/009.jpg">
<img src="http://www.filmsite.org/fotos/redoctober11.jpg" width="400">
"Listen son, Russians don't take a dump without a plan."
Wait a minute- that ain't the Yamato!
It ain't got no turrets, nor big fins, or
rocket motors on the back …what are
they trying to pull here!?!?
Does look like it would make a nice
bass boat- sneak up and inhale the
fish thru the MHD tubes, flash-frying
them in the process.