RIP Jacques Piccard

The forum for general posting. Come join the madness. :)
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
themanintheseersuckersuit
Posts: 7635
Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:37 pm
Location: South Carolina

RIP Jacques Piccard

#1 Post by themanintheseersuckersuit » Mon Nov 10, 2008 9:17 am

Jacques Piccard, who died on Saturday [11/1/08] aged 86, was a deep-sea explorer, inventor and marine designer, and went deeper into the ocean than any other man.

The feat for which Piccard became best known was performed on January 23 1960, when Piccard and Lt Don Walsh, of the US Navy, travelled nearly seven miles to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, in the Pacific's Marianas Trench. The craft they used was a "bathyscaphe", which Piccard had built with his father, the physicist Auguste Piccard. It remains the deepest dive ever carried out.

The bathyscaphe was a deep-sea ship with a cigar-shaped hull above a small, spherical cabin, and travelled using the principles of buoyancy and ballast.

Piccard observed: "By far the most interesting find was the fish that came floating by our porthole. We were astounded to find higher marine life forms down there at all."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... ccard.html
Suitguy is not bitter.

feels he represents the many educated and rational onlookers who believe that the hysterical denouncement of lay scepticism is both unwarranted and counter-productive

The problem, then, is that such calls do not address an opposition audience so much as they signal virtue. They talk past those who need convincing. They ignore actual facts and counterargument. And they are irreparably smug.

User avatar
Duh Mass
Merry Man
Posts: 82
Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:41 am
Location: The lower 1 percentile

Re: RIP Jacques Piccard

#2 Post by Duh Mass » Mon Nov 10, 2008 9:19 am

Well shoot! Now who's gonna take over the Enterprise?

Post Reply