At 8:12 on November 10, 2020, the Chinese Manned Submersible Struggle successfully sat on the bottom of the Mariana Trench with a depth of 10,909 meters.
To achieve 10,000-meter manned deep diving, it is necessary to withstand the tremendous pressure of 10,000 meters in the deep sea. The pressure at the deepest part of the Mariana Trench is about 110Mpa. What is the concept? The area equivalent to the size of a fingernail bears the weight of a one-ton elephant.
"Struggle" uses a new type of high-strength titanium alloy as the outer shell of the manned cabin, which allows it not only to perfectly carry the pressure of 10,000 meters, but also greatly reduces its own weight and expands the cabin space. Submariners can work in it more comfortably.
After the submersible actually descends to the bottom of the trench, it has to complete a six-hour scientific expedition. In the dark and complicated deep-sea environment, how to complete sampling is a difficult problem. This pair of flexible manipulators on the submersible can rotate 360°, and the operation accuracy of this manipulator reaches 1 cm. It can easily complete precise operations such as underwater deployment and picking.
If you want to operate continuously for six hours on the seabed as deep as 10,000 meters, the submersible itself needs sufficient energy. After the scientific research team's unremitting efforts to break through the technical blind zone, the "deep-sea lithium battery" was developed, which can provide stable power supply under the pressure of 15,000 meters of sea water.
The submersible needs its own ballast iron to complete its dive and float. The Struggle is equipped with four pieces of ballast iron with a total weight of nearly 2 tons. When the Struggle finishes its work and is ready to float, it will throw two pieces of ballast iron and begin to float.
There is no doubt that the Struggle has given us more expectations about the deep sea, and will also help us harvest more scientific research results and enrich our imagination of the deep sea. I believe that in the near future, our country’s deep-sea manned deep dive project can help human curiosity go deeper and farther.