These are the first images of the experimental Sun Ray military
undersea surveillance glider, a $3.17 million defence project which
looks as though it has come straight out of a James Bond movie.
Shaped
like a stingray, the prototype was built in a western Sydney suburb and
has just undergone trials in Woronora Dam.
It could be the forerunner
of technology to be used one day in anti-submarine warfare or to monitor
vessels illegally entering Australian waters.
The link to the
movie industry is actually quite real.
The designer of the Sun Ray is
Ron Allum who also built the Deepsea Challenger underwater vehicle for
US film director James Cameron.
The director then piloted it to the
bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest place in the ocean, in 2012.
Allum was also a member of Cameron’s historic Titanic expedition team in
2001.
Underwater inventor Ron Allum with the Sun Ray glider.
The glider contains an internal buoyancy vessel that can be flooded
or pumped out to change the vehicle's displacement, making it sink or
rise.
The resulting movement of water over the wing's surface generates
forward thrust, removing the need for propeller or water-jet propulsion.
It
is built partly of the same lightweight composite foam as the Deepsea
Challenger and holds its shape even at extreme pressures, giving the
glider greater depth capability than manned submarines.
It may allow
missions of up to three months, gliding more than 2000 nautical miles.
The
Defence Science and Technology group says to meet future requirements
for "military undersea surveillance", a new breed of autonomous
equipment is required.
"High performance 'cross country' underwater
gliders show great promise as mobile acoustic surveillance platforms,"
it states.
Mr Allum said the oil and gas industry had also shown interest in the
high tech structural foam but it was defence that had shown most
enthusiasm.
"Defence came to us and said could we build something
that could go deeper and faster and we said yes. The Sun Ray can also
carry a payload that is of interest to scientists and we are now looking
at getting other contracts," he said.
"Gliders are very quiet and
that is certainly the advantage of this vehicle. It does use the motors
for a few minutes when it could be detected but then the noise stops
and it can be deadly quiet."
Likely uses for the glider which is
funded by the Defence Innovation Hub, could include the monitoring of
marine life, mapping the sea bed and taking temperature measurements for
climate change research.
But it could also come into its own in the
event of the loss of an aircraft, Mr Allum said.
"The glider may
not be the ideal vehicle to find MH370 but if you had a fleet of these
gliders in the ocean, then if something like that happened you would be
able to pinpoint that plane straight away. It would be like having
satellites in the sky," Mr Allum said.
David Liebing, Research Leader at the Defence and Science Technology
group was slightly more circumspect about the way gliders could be
utilised in the future.
"It's about putting sensors on it that will give us information about what's happening under the ocean," he said.
"What
we are trying to do is, basically, take measurements under the ocean of
everything from the temperature, the oceanography to measuring the
ambient noise in the ocean and to knowing, for example, what marine life
is around.
"We are exploring concepts, we are trying to make them fly underwater correctly. What we are concentrating on is the technology.
"It's
a sensor that is out there, that can have long endurance, that we can
measure the physical properties of what's happening under the water.
It's no different to any other manned platform we have out there with
sonar on it."
Asked if the glider could be used to detect submarines, he said:
"This project is not specifically about that and that is a long bow to
draw at this time.
It can listen under the water.
At this stage we are
looking at sensing the undersea environment and seeing what defence can
make of that.
"People dream about unmanned combat aircraft, we are
nowhere near that sort of stage in the undersea environment. A manned
submarine comes with intelligence, this doesn't come with intelligence
yet. That's a huge step."
Oceanalpha wants to build the world’s first autonomous cargo ship.
In the vast, freezing Ross Sea, China’s “Snow Dragon” icebreaker needed to find a safe anchorage before it could begin its mission to set up China’s fifth Antarctic research station.
The solution was to deploy one of Zhang Yunfei’s freezer-tested boat drones to map the ocean floor.
For Zhang, it was the latest in a string of government contracts — from surveying Tibetan lakes to testing river pollution — that have helped him turn a university project into China’s largest unmanned surface vessel company, one that has fired the interest of some of China’s biggest venture capitalists.
In a pending round of funding, Oceanalpha Co. Ltd. may be valued at $780 million — about 40 times revenue — despite never having turned a profit.
Drones on a rack at Oceanalpha’s facility in Zhuhai. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
“If you look at Chinese traditional culture, we’re not as close to the ocean as Western countries.
But now we’re getting closer,” Zhang, 34, said at his offices in Zhuhai, a seaside city next to Macau.
“We want to change the relationship that human beings have with the sea."
Outside, workers are building the company’s new $40 million waterfront headquarters on land leased at a steep discount from the government, fashioned like a giant 10-story catamaran, including topographical pools for testing.
Alongside a private dock are prototypes of various sizes, from boats that can fit several people to motorized life savers for rescue missions.
Oceanalpha's drone with the "Snow Dragon" icebreaker in Antarctica. Source: Oceanalpha
While Shenzhen-based DJI led the charge in the competitive consumer market for aerial drones and China has used unmanned submersibles to probe the depths of the South China Sea, Oceanalpha is one of a handful of companies around the globe specializing in ocean-going drones that operate on the surface.
“Zhang found a unique niche,” said Derrick Xiong, a co-founder of EHang Inc., which is developing aerial drones for swarms, deliveries and air taxis in nearby Guangzhou.
Oceanalpha’s advantage is being in China, where capital is readily available and leader Xi Jinping is promoting both technology to move up the manufacturing value chain and maritime industries to enhance the nation’s overseas interests.
As its trading empire has grown, so has China’s interest in the oceans, with the construction of a modern navy, trading ports and an armada of merchant vessels.
It’s a turnaround from what China’s textbooks call the “century of humiliation,” when the nation’s weakness at sea allowed a period of foreign interventions beginning with the Opium Wars.
Top: A technician builds a vessel at the company’s facility.
Bottom: Workers assemble main control modules. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Zhang says venture capitalists began hounding him ever since his start-up won the China Innovation & Entrepreneurship competition in 2013.
Zhen Fund and GGV Capital are both investors.
Now, after nearly a decade focusing on research and development, Oceanalpha is expanding from water sampling and hydrological surveys into search and rescue, surveillance and other segments.
The company may seek a public listing after 2020.
The big prize is cargo.
Zhang has a new partnership with Wuhan University of Technology, China’s Classification Society and Zhuhai municipal government that will use artificial intelligence to direct autonomous container vessels.
“There will be a huge revolution in the maritime industry within three years,” Zhang said.
“Cargo ships will be autonomous before cars.”
The project, called Cloudrift — a reference to the Chinese legend of the monkey king, who could summon a cloud on which he traveled — is racing against rivals to build an unmanned cargo ship this year.
Norway has created a test area for pilotless vessels in the Trondheim Fjord in a joint effort by the Norwegian University of Science Technology and companies including Rolls Royce.
Cloudrift’s ship would be battery powered and use China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system.
The 50-meter vessel would have a loading capacity of 500 metric tons and a range of 500 nautical miles per charge.
The company is building a test site of its own among islands about 50 kilometers from Zhuhai and the group is investing $10 million in cargo technology and $50 million in USV field-test development.
Zhang is in the right place.
Zhuhai was one of the fastest-growing commercial ports in China last year and the Pearl River Delta, now calling itself the Greater Bay Area as it turns high-tech, is one of China’s two giant logistics regions for container ships, along with the area around Shanghai.
A poster featuring the new Oceanalpha headquarters in Zhuhai. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Raised largely in Shenzhen by parents who worked at state-owned Chinese IT companies, Zhang’s path into boat drones began across the bay at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, whose alumni include Frank Wang, founder of DJI and the first drone billionaire.
Zhang and two PhD schoolmates, Cheng Liang and Wang Mingyu, convinced a chemistry professor to sell them sensors, which they mounted on a prototype to test the local seawater.
The three went on to found Oceanalpha, which now employs 260 people.
Wang later left to join DJI.
Cheng is general manager at Oceanalpha.
Technicians test Oceanalpha drones on a pond at the company's office in Zhuhai. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
With the results of the university project, Zhang went on the road in 2009 for 10 months, showing local environmental agencies in nearly a dozen provinces how the vessels could help them collect water samples.
He scored deals and started making boats that could suck water samples up through the hull and detect illegal pipelines spewing effluent into rivers.
“That trip gave us the confidence that the market needs this kind of technology,” he said over sugary coffee with milk and platefuls of toffee candies.
Water sampling and hydrological surveying for government agencies and local authorities gave Oceanalpha cashflow to support research and explore other opportunities, including surveillance.
In the factory paint shop, where workers put the finishing touches to different colored drones, a camouflaged version will help China’s Coast Guard monitor port security.
A recent tie-up with industry giant Teledyne Technologies Inc. will also explore strategic opportunities, Zhang said.
The Thousand Oaks, California-based company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A camouflaged boat drone at Oceanalpha’s facility. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
But its Zhang’s ties with Chinese government agencies that remain the impetus behind the company, in which the Zhuhai government holds a small stake.
A wall of awards in his office shows photographs of Zhang with high-level Party officials.
In one, he hands a model drone to Premier Li Keqiang in front of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Li heads China’s Made in 2025 initiative, which targets 10 areas for innovation, including maritime engineering.
The program’s subsidies have become a point of tension in U.S.-China trade talks.
One day Zhang hopes to have a picture with Xi, who may lead the country beyond 2023 after China recently scrapped presidential term limits.
“Perhaps you’ll see it next time you visit,” he said. Links :
Images of icebergs melting or the disappearing sea ice in the Arctic are generally associated with rising sea level – a widely-held belief that is simply not true.
Though many of my regular blog readers know this, over the last several years I have presented to hundreds of audiences.
A freshwater ice cube floats in a beaker of concentrated saltwater.
Note
that the ice cube floats much higher in the saltwater than it would in a
glass of freshwater because saltwater has a greater density.
When the freshwater ice melts, it raises the water level.
Freshwater is
not as dense as saltwater; so the floating ice cube displaced less
volume than it contributed once it melted.
Nearly everyone is surprised to learn that floating ice has no effect on sea level as it melts.
I usually explain it with a reference to Archimedes Principle, or a simple demonstration of ice cubes floating in a glass.
But the other day, talking to a small group in San Francisco, it occurred to me that I often do not explain the science behind why melting ice does not raise water level, so that is my topic for this week.
As most substances cool, the molecules become more tightly packed, making the material “denser.”
In a liquid, dense objects sink to the bottom.
Through most of its temperature range, water gets more dense as it cools.
As the Arctic and Antarctic melt, there are more icebergs.
Surprisingly,
they do not add to sea level as they melt.
(Photo credit: Clemens
Vanderwerf)
So for example, colder water in oceans and lakes will normally be found near the bottom.
However as water cools towards freezing, at about 39 degree Fahrenheit, or 4 degrees Celsius, water does something strange and extraordinary: it gets less dense.
Technically it’s because the totally fluid water molecules which are tightly packed, transform into the very rigid crystal structure of ice, which occupies more space.
In fact ice is almost 9% less dense than the water that forms it.
As a result ice floats.
Saltwater is a few percent more dense than freshwater due to the dissolved minerals, the “salts.” Icebergs that calve off from glaciers are almost pure freshwater, since the glaciers largely result from snowfall.
Thus freshwater icebergs rise even a little more than nine percent above the ocean surface.
This is the typical rule-of-thumb that icebergs are roughly ten percent above the surface and ninety percent below.
As icebergs melt and the water warms back into the “normal” ocean temperature range above 39 degrees F (4 degrees C) the density increases, reducing the volume.
As a result, the actual melting of ice does not add to the level of the water – regardless whether the liquid is your glass of iced tea, or the ocean – though it does defy intuition and seems perplexing.
It is truly one of nature’s phenomena.
Understanding that melting icebergs and even the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and the marine ice shelves in Antarctica do not add to sea level rise is important in the growing debate and understanding about rising sea level.
At the global level, rising sea level is primarily caused by ice on land melting, mostly from Greenland and Antarctica, either in the form of:
meltwater flowing to the ocean, in some cases essentially as rivers, adding to sea level, (just as adding water to a glass adds to the level), or
large pieces of ice break off from a glacier and enter the sea, becoming a new iceberg.
Any new icebergs entering the ocean, they do add to sea level adding more than 90% of their volume, (just as adding an ice cube adds to the level of water in a glass).
Another factor in sea level rise, not as obvious as the above two forms, is something called thermal expansion of seawater.
Again referring back to the previous description that warmer substances normally expand, including water above 39 degrees F (4 degrees C) the warming ocean is slightly expanding because global average temperature is now measurably higher.
Average global temperature today is approximately 16 degrees Celsius (60.5 degrees Fahrenheit) an increase of roughly one degree Celsius from the pre-industrial era.
In addition to those global factors of rising sea level, there are regional and local reasons for sea level to change.
Most commonly, land subsidence or uplift – land actually moving downward or upwards, due to movements of the earth’s crust or compaction of silts, can add to or subtract from global sea level rise.
(Examples: Jakarta and New Orleans have had extreme subsidence and higher sea level; Alaska and Scandinavia have generally had land uplifting causing sea level to fall slightly.)
There are many factors that contribute to sea level rise, but melting icebergs and sea ice are not among them.
It is important that we avoid the confusion and keep the world’s focus on what will increase sea level – fundamentally it is the warming global temperature, with the greatest effect being the melting of the glaciers and ice sheets on land, entering the sea as new icebergs or meltwater.
Plymouth, MA (1857, scale 1:20,000)
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