2: The Mesoscaphcy the Submarine Helicopter 



IT is very natural that oceanographers should want to extend their 

 investigations to yet greater marine depths. There is no question here 

 of a * records psychosis ' : they simply want to know all about the sea. 

 The bathyscaphes FNRS j and Trieste, when they gave access to 

 depths of two or three miles, gave the oceanographers means of 

 exploration unknown up to this day. With relatively simple changes, 

 it would be possible even to build bathyscaphes which would be able 

 to go down to six miles or more, thus to reach the bottom of the 

 deepest trenches known. 



But as an old proverb says, why shoot sparrows with cannon.'^ 

 There is still much to be discovered in the first two miles of the ocean 

 depths. If we do not want to go any deeper, is it really necessary to 

 build a bathyscaphe endowed with a heavy cabin and with a float 

 which must be filled with petrol, or even a bathysphere sustained by a 

 cable } 



We are obliged to have the cabin if we wish to go down deeper than 

 the several tens of yards accessible to the free diver : that's clear. But if 

 the object of our researches is limited to the first looo fathoms of sea 

 depth, the pressures ruling in this zone can be borne by a less strong, 

 and therefore a lighter, cabin than those of the FNRS 2, the FNRS j or 

 the Trieste. And if the cabin with all its contents is made lighter than 

 water, our apparatus can sustain itself without using the float of the 

 bathyscaphe or the cable of the bathysphere : it will even be necessary 

 to provide it with an arrangement so that it can sink in the water. 



To a machine of this sort, suitable for medium depths, I should like 

 to give the name of mesoscaphe.^ 



In its own kingdom the mesoscaphe should be as mobile as possible. 

 It must above all be capable of going up and down a great number of 

 times under its own power. One could, obviously, give it a small 

 tank of petrol and of releasable ballast, in this imitating the old 

 free balloon and the bathyscaphe. But we can do better : let us give up 

 the petrol entirely. Let us poise or equilibrate the mesoscaphe in such 

 a way as to make it a little lighter than the water displaced and provide 

 it with a large propeller with a vertical axis of rotation corresponding 



1 From the Greek mesos : middle ; scaphos : ship. 



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