This year is the 50th anniversary of the Alvin. It's been in service for science since 1964. It's the only... deep diving submersible in the US. The scientific community decided that they needed some increased capability.
It was really a rebuild of the entire submarine. It was an opportunity to see how scientists and engineers could work together to solve problems that would enable them to do science that couldn't be done before. About a stern, the sub was disassembled and reassembled and the majority of the components on the sub, especially the major components like the sphere. Brand new. The highest risk part of the project was actually the forging of the titanium sphere.
Because we built the sphere with the ultimate objective the vehicle will go to 6,500 meters, it had to be able to withstand pressures at 6,500 meters. One of the requirements was that it be as close to perfectly spherical as possible. It was forged in Wisconsin into two hemispheres. And then those two hemispheres were electron beam welded together in California. And an electron beam weld had never been done on three inch thick titanium before.
One of the really big improvements that was needed was more viewports with at least the scientists and the pilot each having a window with an overlapping field of view. So they could actually see the same thing. talk about what they were seeing.
And the viewports are also larger. And the view is spectacular. So when Elven goes down, it's very quiet, and it's pitch dark, except for all this stuff around you.
And that's a really humbling experience, to think about sort of this vast ocean filled with things we don't know what any of them are. We rarely get to see them. The manipulator arms have been put on hinged brackets. Which allows them to fold out of the way of the viewports, but at the same time it allows them to fold out forward. And in the past you could describe it kind of like a T-Rex at the refrigerator.
It had these kind of short arms, it couldn't get to the stuff in the back. These new shoulder joints allow it to really have an improved reach. I think the one discovery that really attracted the attention of the public was Alvin's investigation of the Titanic.
Alvin went back in 86 and actually took a lot of the imagery that we all now know and Alvin is very famous for. It really remains to be seen where humankind goes with these deep diving subs. There really is nothing like seeing the environment firsthand. Other nations are building their own subs such as Japan, Russia, China and India and France I should add. So there's been a lot of talk about the sort of deep sea arms race and if anything all that's doing is pushing the technology envelope on these human occupied vehicles and making it so that they're more sophisticated and capable of doing the kinds of science that we'd like to do.