1970 



In spite of such omens, U.S. submersibles 

 continued to appear, but, responding to the 

 inordinate cost of the deep-diving large vehi- 

 cles, shallower and less expensive vehicles 

 entered the scene. 



NEKTON BETA and GAMMA joined Gen- 

 eral Oceanographies' NEKTON ALPHA and 

 leased out at the low cost of $l,000/day, a 

 rate far more accessible to money-short sci- 

 entists than the $6,000 to $14,000/day cost of 

 the larger, deep-diving vehicles. Later in the 

 year, on 21 September, NEKTON BETA expe- 

 rienced a bizarre accident that took the life 

 of passenger Larry A. Headlee and marked 

 the first death in the field of deep submer- 

 gence (see Chapter 15). 



Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. of 

 Chester, Pennsylvania launched its candi- 



Fig 3 28 The US Navy's NEMO Now retired from Navy services. NEMO served to 

 investigate the feasibility of acrylic plastic for deep submergence (US Navy) 



date for low-cost, long-endurance missions, 

 the tethered GUPPY. The 1,000-ft, 2-man 

 GUPPY relied on a cable from the surface for 

 power. The $95,000 vehicle resembled the 

 earlier BATHYSPHERE only in appearance 

 and surface reliance on electrical power; oth- 

 erwise it had the operating capabilities of an 

 untethered vehicle. 



Furthering the concept of acrylic plastic 

 pressure hulls, the U.S. Naval Civil Engi- 

 neering Laboratory (NCEL) at Port Hue- 

 neme, California, constructed NEMO (Fig. 

 3.28), a 600-ft, 2-man vehicle with a pressure 

 hull of twelve, 2.5-inch-thick, spherical plas- 

 tic pentagons bonded together with adhe- 

 sive. Capable of limited lateral maneuvering, 

 NEMO was basically an underwater yo-yo. 

 Attached to a wire cable beneath the vehicle 

 was a 380-pound anchor on a pilot-controlled 

 hydraulic winch. Anchoring itself to the bot- 

 tom and attaining positive buoyancy, NEMO 

 could ascend to a selected depth and hover 

 "at anchor." While the panoramic and hover- 

 ing stability offered advantages to the un- 

 derwater worker, NEMO was another Navy- 

 built vehicle to assess the feasibility of var- 

 ious components and materials — in this case 

 acrylic plastic as a candidate for fleet subma- 

 rines and other military devices. 



Perry Submarine Builders delivered the 

 first submersible to a petroleum-oriented 

 customer. The 1,350-ft, 4-man SURVEY 

 SUB 1 (PC-9) was built for Brown and Root 

 Corp., in Houston, Texas, for use in the oil 

 fields as a surveying platform and for inspec- 

 tion of pipelines and other production/trans- 

 portation hardware. 



With the originally-intended DEEPSTAR 

 12000 hull, CEMA completed the SP-3000 

 for Centre National pour I'Exploitation des 

 Oceans (CNEXO) at Marseilles. The French 

 SP-3000 (recently designated CYANA) was 

 to fill in the 0-io,000-ft depth range not 

 amenable to the bathyscaph. 



CEMA was also active at this period in 

 construction of the Cousteau-proposed AR- 

 GYRONETE for France's CNEXO and IFP 

 (Institut Francais du Petrole). ARGYRO- 

 NETE would be a 1,970-ft, submersible com- 

 posed of a large cylindrical pressure hull 

 where passengers would live at atmospheric 

 pressure and a smaller pressure hull where 

 divers would live or lock-out at ambient pres- 



61 



