Inside an American Submarine

choi

Thomas L Friedman, Parallel Parking in the Atlantic Circle; On a nuclear sub deep under the ice, the view was quite stunning. New York Times, Mar 30, 2014 (column).

Excerpt in the window of print: Te Navy is preparing for the day the Arctic becomes a commercial shipping lane.

Quote:

"ABOARD THE USS NEW MEXICO IN THE ARCTIC [an attack submarine]

"I had spent the night [last weekend] as part of agroup accompanying Adm Jonathan Greenert, the chief of naval operations who was observing the Navy's submarine arctic warfare exercise. We had flown into the Arctic by a small plane and landed on a snow airstrip at the Navy's ice research station Nautilus, 150 miles north of the North Slope of Alaska. When we got there, the New Mexico * * * had found an opening of thin ice and slushy water. The sub used its conning tower, or sail, to smash through to the surface, then 'parallel park' as one officer put it, between floating islands of thick ice, and pick us up.

"the ship's upward-looking camera (specially installed for underice travel where you can't raise periscope)

the US Navy keeps honing its Arctic submarine skills, including, on our trip, test-firing a virtual torpedo at a virtual enemy sub

"three stacked beds

"you learn how crucial acoustics are when operating deep under ice with no vision and no GPS satellite to guide you. * * * You can't see the adversary. * * * But you can hear enemy subs, surface ships, whales, calving icebergs, school of fish and bounce sound waves off them with sonar to measure distance. The New Mexico not only carries supersensitive sonar but also tows a giant electronic ear 1,000 feet behind it that can listen to the ocean without interference from the sub's engine noise. 'We can hear shrimp crackling 200 feet under water,' explained Lt Cmdr Craig Litty. They can also hear someone drop a wrench in the engine room of a Russian sub several miles away.

"The New Mexico * * * desalinates its own drinking water * * * makes its own air by paking purified water, zapping it with electricity, separating the H2O into hydrogen and oxygen, then discharging hydrogen and circulating the oxygen. The only thing that limits them is food-storage capacity and the sanity of the crew

"receiving only a two-sentence 'family-gram' once a week

Note:
(a) virtual (torpedo/sub) = digital
(b)
(i) Scientists Solve Noisy Shrimp Puzzle. New York Times, Sept 22, 2000
www.nytimes.com/2000/09/22/science/AP-Snapping-Shrimp.html
("shrimp closes its claw very rapidly, it creates a high speed water jet, moving at almost 70 miles per hour. The jet causes a sharp and brief drop in water pressure and instantly a bubble is formed [4mm in diameter] and collapsed [a bubble lasting 700 microseconds]. * * * Collapse of the bubble also sends out a shock wave that, on a very small scale, is very powerful * * * creat[ing] a shock wave that may equal 14,000 pounds per square inch [to stun worms and other prey].
(ii) Versluis M et al, How Snapping Shrimp Snap: Through Cavitating Bubbles. Science 289: 2114-2117 (2000)
www.sciencemag.org/content/289/5487/2114
("The snapping shrimp (Alpheus heterochaelis) produces a loud snapping sound by an extremely rapid closure of its snapper claw. One of the effects of the snapping is to stun or kill prey animals")
(iii) Alpheus heterochaelis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpheus_heterochaelis
(found in tropical and semitropical waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the West Indies, Bermuda, and the western Atlantic Ocean from Cape Hatteras [in N Carolina] south to Florida and Brazil)

is not one of the commercial shrimps we eat.

(c) The "family-gram" is a wordplay on telegram.