Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / Jules Verne Becomes Reality
Transcript
- 0:00History is strange, it's alien and it won't give us what we
- 0:04would like to have. The McPherson Financial Group
- 0:10bringing you hour three of our Tuesday morning.
- 0:12It is the 21st of January 2025 and Dave Bowman with us
- 0:17throughout the day this morning and he brings us Dave does
- 0:21history in this hour. Headline at billmic.com is Trump
- 0:242 point O. Also in that post you'll have
- 0:27links to the Dave Bowman Show and the Dave Does History link
- 0:30up. So all of that there for you.
- 0:32Dave, where are we going on this Tuesday morning?
- 0:34The year was 1954, which was a long time ago when Disney, back
- 0:43before it became crazy, brought out a film called 20,000 Leagues
- 0:50Under the Sea. Yes Sir.
- 0:52Now, for my money, Jules Verne is great.
- 0:55I love Jules Verne's writings. I love the fact that this
- 0:58particular novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, even ends up in
- 1:01Star Trek. But this particular film, this
- 1:061954 film, was and remains just a fantastic film.
- 1:12It was a visual. And Nemo character was amazing
- 1:15and Kirk Douglas is one of the deckhands was just great.
- 1:19Yeah, the whole thing. Peter Laurie, the whole film, I
- 1:23mean, it's just a visual and technical masterpiece.
- 1:27It was filmed in Sinoscope, which wasn't normal then, but it
- 1:31was it it, it's an incredible thing.
- 1:33I remember seeing it in the theater in the early 70s and
- 1:37just being enthralled by the underwater scenes and and stuff
- 1:40like that. It was a very faithful
- 1:43adaptation of the book. They followed the book, which,
- 1:47you know, I mean, nowadays people don't do that.
- 1:51Of course you had James Mason as Captain Nemo, Kirk Douglas, Ned
- 1:54Land and his his fantastic Whale of a Tale song, Peter Lorre of
- 2:00Casablanca fame and other things, and Paul Lucas.
- 2:03There was a lot of thematic depth to the film.
- 2:08It really got into the issues that Jules Verne was looking at
- 2:11with the the consideration. You know, we've talked about AI
- 2:15today, but even back then they were talking about the
- 2:17technology versus the morality of the technology and its uses,
- 2:22environmental awareness, those kinds of things.
- 2:23Of course there's the whole giant squid scene, which is
- 2:27amazing. And of course they turned it
- 2:29into the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at Disneyland.
- 2:35But even today you can watch that film and it's still it,
- 2:39it's still an amazing film today.
- 2:43It's it's a long lot of years later.
- 2:45I'm not even sure how many years later is that 80 years, 70
- 2:47years. My mouth, my mouth isn't that
- 2:51good. And I was told there wouldn't be
- 2:52any. But it's really the only reason
- 2:55I have the Disney Channel is so that I can watch 20,000 Leagues
- 2:58Under the Sea whenever I want to.
- 3:01There's a a particular scene in that film, though, where they
- 3:06talk about the powering of the submarine.
- 3:09How is it? How, how have you done this?
- 3:12And he shows them what he's doing.
- 3:14And he's, he calls it the, if I remember right, the power of the
- 3:18universe. And there's a strong
- 3:20implication, although they don't actually use the words that
- 3:25this, this Nautilus that Captain Nemo is running around the the
- 3:29globe in is in fact atomic powered.
- 3:33Now this is an archaic phrase, atomic power.
- 3:36It's a phrase we don't use now. Now we say nuclear powered
- 3:40because nuclear powered is actually more scientifically
- 3:42correct. You know, technology has
- 3:46changed, but in the Fifties, 40s and 50s especially, the term
- 3:50atomic powered was was everywhere.
- 3:54Even even in your candy bill, you get the atomic fireballs.
- 3:57You know those. Yeah, those were good too.
- 3:59It's, it's a great phrase. I wish, kind of wish we'd bring
- 4:01it back. I I kind of prefer the phrase
- 4:03atomic, especially since I can actually say atomic, and nuclear
- 4:08is one of those phrases that people can't say.
- 4:11You and George, WI. Say it that way on purpose
- 4:14because I used to have a listener to my show that it
- 4:16would annoy him and he was a City Councilman and I like to
- 4:19annoy him. So I would go out of my way to
- 4:22say it nuclear just because it would bother him, but not.
- 4:25That you would ever. Do that not me.
- 4:27But it was also 1954, the same year that the film came out,
- 4:31that on this day, January 21st, 1954, the United States Navy
- 4:35launched one of its iconic ships, the USS Nautilus.
- 4:41She was one of the transit transformative achievements in
- 4:44naval history. And you got to understand a lot
- 4:49of things about submarines in order to to understand why this
- 4:52particular submarine Nautilus was so revolutionary.
- 4:57For starters, she was atomic powered.
- 5:00Should not been done before on a submarine.
- 5:03It seemed counterintuitive. Nuclear reactors have to be huge
- 5:07and and submarines aren't necessarily huge.
- 5:12It'd never been married like that before.
- 5:14And it was going to change the way things worked.
- 5:16It was going to change, revolutionize naval warfare.
- 5:22And in fact, as the Nautilus slid down to the ways into the
- 5:25river, there she was. There were a lot of people even
- 5:29on that day that thought this is never going to work, but by the
- 5:34end of the year it would work and the world would change, much
- 5:39as Jules Verne had foreseen, forever more.
- 5:43And we pick it up in just a minute on Dave does history on
- 5:46Bill Mclaugh. So Dave bringing fantasy to
- 5:50life. I mean this is kind of a pre
- 5:52Star Trek Star Trek. Wait wait, I'm I'm I'm wondering
- 5:58if I should make a trip to Otto buy they have submarines for
- 6:01sale. No, they will buy one if you
- 6:03have one. But they got to sell them to
- 6:06someone, right? Yeah, they do, But they sell
- 6:08them all out of state, They resell elsewhere, so that's what
- 6:11they do. I'd love to have one.
- 6:14I know you would, unless it's one of the, you know, automatic
- 6:19crumpling versions that you almost got on.
- 6:21Don't want to deal with that so. No, absolutely.
- 6:24I I. I object to the term fantasy.
- 6:28The the Jules Verne is science fiction.
- 6:30And I think there's a difference between science fiction and
- 6:32fantasy. You're dealing with visionary
- 6:36people here who looked forward and saw things that could be.
- 6:41And of course, atomic power comes into being.
- 6:44It it isn't long after the atomic bomb that people start
- 6:47realizing, hey, wait a minute, we could use this to make
- 6:52engines. We could use this to drive
- 6:54things when you consider the state of submarine technology up
- 6:58to that point. Submarines by by the by the late
- 7:0240s and 50s were hybrids. They were the original Priuses
- 7:07in a lot of ways. They were diesel electric
- 7:09vehicles, much like trains. The they had diesel engines that
- 7:14charge batteries that drove the submarine.
- 7:16Yes, they could direct couple the the diesels to the engines,
- 7:19but for the most part they were submersibles, not quite
- 7:25submarines. They couldn't live underwater.
- 7:28Now they were getting better at it, snorkels, longer life
- 7:32batteries, things like that. But in general they would have
- 7:36to recharge their batteries. And this is a very general
- 7:39figure about every 24 to 48 hours they would have to come up
- 7:43to the surface on the on the top recharge the batteries before
- 7:46they could go back down again. That's pretty good.
- 7:50But what nuclear power, atomic power promised was the the
- 7:54elimination of that, not having to recharge your batteries by
- 7:58surfacing the the submarine, meaning you could stay
- 8:02underwater. Well, of course, staying
- 8:04underwater is where they can't find you.
- 8:07So yeah, it's really where you want to be.
- 8:13The the idea here was revolutionary to put this on a
- 8:17submarine, but it required vision.
- 8:20It required vision right up there with with with Jules
- 8:24Verne's vision. And that was of course found in
- 8:28Hyman Rickover, Admiral Captain as he was then Hyman Rickover
- 8:31who who really championed this idea.
- 8:34We don't have time to go through all the Rick over stories.
- 8:37You can sit down with pretty much any submarine or anywhere
- 8:40today and they've got a Rick over story.
- 8:42Hell, even I have a Rick over story and he retired while I was
- 8:46in so it there's this this push, this idea, this this this
- 8:52controlling attitude to get this done.
- 8:56They managed to shrink the reactor as it is the the S2 W
- 9:01reactor and install two of them on the Nautilus because at that
- 9:06point they weren't sure 2 is better than one.
- 9:08You know, redundancy is, is the way you think.
- 9:12And they put this thing in there, launched the ship, tested
- 9:16it, make sure it worked. And it was just just a couple of
- 9:19days ago, January 17th, I believe, a year later that the
- 9:24Nautilus would actually get underway on atomic power for the
- 9:28very first time. And they sent that famous
- 9:30message underway on atomic power and everybody went woo Hoo.
- 9:35And everybody was excited. In fact, there's a, there's a
- 9:37really great story about that particular famous message
- 9:41because originally the message was just Nautilus is underway.
- 9:45And the captain took the message and scratched out, said, of
- 9:48course we're underway. They told us to get underway.
- 9:50We need to make this punchy. We need to, we need to explain
- 9:52why this is unique. Well, we're underway on atomic
- 9:55power. And that message is still in the
- 9:57National Archives today. So this, this whole redesign of
- 10:04the engine of the Nautilus and the driving factors of the
- 10:07Nautilus is fantastic. What they didn't know is what
- 10:11they really had. Imagine having a a car that
- 10:15looks really good, but it's just like your average car, but it
- 10:19has a Corvette engine in it. The things that you're going to
- 10:22have to learn about how to control that car and how to
- 10:24drive that car are. And that's of course what's
- 10:29going to end up happening with the Nautilus.
- 10:31They're going to discover that, hey, this is great, but man,
- 10:35there's a lot of changes we're going to have to make in the
- 10:38world of submarining really soon.
- 10:42It's like my dad in the 74 Nova. I wanted just that car's too
- 10:45small for the engine That's in it, son.
- 10:47You're not getting one. Yeah.
- 10:49That's what happened nonetheless.
- 10:52More on the Nautilus as Dave does history the rest of this
- 10:55hour on Bill Mick live. Stay with us our.
- 10:57Weekly dive into history. Dave Bowman joins us on Bill
- 11:01Mick. Live.
- 11:02So, Dave, we've got the Nautilus being launched and lessons being
- 11:07learned here. There are a lot of lessons that
- 11:09are going to be learned with this ship up to this point in
- 11:14history. Submarines are basically
- 11:17designed as surface ships that have the capability of diving.
- 11:22If you look at the hull shapes, they look like surface ships.
- 11:26They have that pointy end at the front and the the sweeping back
- 11:29and they have a keel just like regular ships and they're faster
- 11:34on the surface than they are submerged because of the
- 11:38limitations of the batteries and that sort of thing.
- 11:41So an average World War Two US submarine can do about 20 knots
- 11:44on the surface and on a good day, maybe 11 knots underwater
- 11:50maybe. And, and even that is only for a
- 11:53few minutes. It can't do it for very long.
- 11:55The drains the batteries real quick.
- 11:58At the end of World War 2, the Germans had developed what would
- 12:02they call the Type 21 U boat. The Type 21 U boat is a is an
- 12:06electric boat and it's it's designed and streamlined.
- 12:12It's designed to operate underwater, not on the surface,
- 12:17and it's very fast. It can do about 21 knots
- 12:20underwater. Wow.
- 12:22Now fortunately they only commissioned two of these before
- 12:26the end of the Second World War and neither of them saw any
- 12:29action. But have they seen action?
- 12:32It would have changed a lot of things.
- 12:34I mean, anti submarine warfare wasn't used to this.
- 12:38The Allies capture these things. They start building, they start
- 12:43realizing how intelligent these things are, They start copying
- 12:46these and we do as well in the 1940s, late 40s, early 50s,
- 12:50we're building diesel electric submarines that very much
- 12:52resemble that. The Soviets are copying this
- 12:55thing over and over again. They have at least three classes
- 12:59of submarines that are basically rivet for rivet copies of the
- 13:03Type 21 U book. But it's this addition to this
- 13:06nuclear reactor, this atomic power that really changes
- 13:10things. Now all of a sudden, this
- 13:13submarine doesn't have the surface to recharge its
- 13:16batteries. It can go underwater.
- 13:17The problem is, Bill, it still has the same hull design in
- 13:22general, which is again, essentially a surface ship that
- 13:27can dive now underwater. That's going to create some
- 13:33problems. And as they begin to use
- 13:36Nautilus, they begin to discover some of these problems that
- 13:40they're going to have. As she develops, she does some
- 13:44things that have never been done before.
- 13:46She goes all the way from New York to Puerto Rico, underwater,
- 13:50never been done before. Everybody's like, yay, this is
- 13:54fantastic. And in 1958, they will take the
- 13:58Nautilus. They will do what they call
- 14:00Operation Sunshine, which at the time, you know, we were talking
- 14:03earlier about classified stuff. The time this was a highly
- 14:06classified operation, they actually sailed to the North
- 14:10Pole under the ice pack, which hitherto no one could do because
- 14:15again, you had to surface to charge your batteries.
- 14:17You can't do that in the ice pack.
- 14:19You can't come up on the surface, so you got to stay
- 14:21underwater. Well, they make it all the way
- 14:24to the North Pole and everybody's excited about this.
- 14:26Of course, the Soviets aren't, because they realize what that
- 14:28means from a from a danger standpoint.
- 14:32But yeah, we accomplished this and they get a Presidential Unit
- 14:35Citation and all those kinds of things.
- 14:38But in the meantime, as they're exercising and as they're
- 14:42practicing, they're starting to realize that, man, this reactor
- 14:47thing, this atomic power is great, but we got some problems
- 14:51we got to deal with here because, well, we're not quite
- 14:56ready for this. So what are the challenges we're
- 15:00starting to look at David one of.
- 15:01One of the things that Rick over insists on as he's developing
- 15:05this, the submarine, is he doesn't want the Nautilus to be
- 15:09an experimental submarine. He wants it to be a combat
- 15:13submarine. So it's fully armed it it it's
- 15:17ready to go to war. And the reason he wants it that
- 15:20way is because really, an experimental submarine, you
- 15:22can't. You can't do some of the things
- 15:24that you know a submarine is going to be asked to do.
- 15:26And he wants to be able to show all of this at once.
- 15:28He's really put all of his eggs in one basket with this thing,
- 15:31and it kind of pays off. Nautilus participates in NATO
- 15:36drills. She participates in war games.
- 15:39And one of the things they quickly discover is that because
- 15:42she's now so fast underwater, it's causing major problems with
- 15:49vibration, which makes noise. And that's this thing a
- 15:53submarine doesn't want is noise. And worse, it's ripping pieces
- 15:58off off of the hull of the submarine.
- 16:01The water flow is just it's pulling pieces and parts off.
- 16:05And this is a problem that they have repeatedly, you know, they
- 16:09go up and they nail things down. In fact, on our sea trials, this
- 16:12happened. They almost, they almost had to
- 16:14cancel their sea trials originally because it was
- 16:16ripping pieces off of the hull and you know, we kind of need
- 16:21those so. Sounds like we need an inertial
- 16:24dampener and and and A and a buffering field.
- 16:27Right. Yeah, yeah.
- 16:29Structural integrity field, that'll do it.
- 16:30That'll. That'll help.
- 16:32These are all lessons that they had to learn.
- 16:34And of course they've got this non experimental combat
- 16:39submarine that's really an experimental submarine and
- 16:41they're learning all of these things.
- 16:43As they gulp, they discover that the faster you go, the the worse
- 16:48your sonar works. So that doesn't help.
- 16:53It might help you get away from an enemy, but you can't really
- 16:56track an enemy while you're doing that.
- 16:58And that's a problem we have even today.
- 17:02They the record they they're going to have to replace items
- 17:08in the reactor. They're going to have to refuel
- 17:09it. They got to figure out how to do
- 17:11all of these things that that they hadn't really thought
- 17:13through all that well when they were building her.
- 17:17But as they begin to learn with it, they, they begin to
- 17:22understand there might be better ways to do this.
- 17:25Now, in the meantime, we've built other nuclear submarines,
- 17:27atomic powered submarines that we're experimenting as well.
- 17:31One they built with a instead of a water powered reactor.
- 17:36So you've got the reactor heating water to become steam.
- 17:40They used liquid metal, liquid sodium in the in the reactor to
- 17:45heat the water and, and make steam That doesn't work at all.
- 17:49That turns out to be quite the problem for us and the Soviets
- 17:53as well. So all this experimentation is
- 17:56going into all these things. In meantime, Nautilus continues
- 18:00to to push on and she she works for 25 years Bill in our Navy.
- 18:05So even in that time frame, we continue to learn things that
- 18:10lead to the modern United States Navy submarine fleet.
- 18:14But it's Nautilus that starts all of those things, Nautilus
- 18:17that teaches us those things, and Nautilus that carries
- 18:20forward the vision of Jules Verne.
- 18:26That is so cool as we look at it in that perspective and can't
- 18:32wait to see where it goes and we'll find out and we'll take
- 18:35your calls when we come back as well. 3217681240 Dave does
- 18:39history continues in moments on Bill Mick Live.
- 18:43Call Bill at 3/2. 1/7. 681240 or use the Talkback feature on the
- 18:49iHeartRadio. App Dave Bowman with us and Dave
- 18:53does history with the Nautilus in front of us today on Bill
- 18:56Mick Live. We'll get to your calls as we
- 18:58wrap up. Things going on with the
- 19:00Nautilus here, Dave, where we left that here.
- 19:02Well, by the time the Nautilus retires 1980 after 25 years of
- 19:07service, she has taught the Navy a lot of how to do things and
- 19:14learning and processing. And I I guess what I appreciate
- 19:17about it, looking back as a submarine or myself, is the
- 19:21willingness of the Navy to go out on a limb with this thing.
- 19:25Not just build an experimental atomic powered submarine, but
- 19:29make making her fully combat capable.
- 19:31In other words, this isn't, this isn't some test bed.
- 19:35This is a submarine that we're going to use if we go to war,
- 19:39and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't.
- 19:41I mean, we found that out with the Sea Wolf with the the liquid
- 19:44metal reactors, and that didn't work really well.
- 19:47But here's Nautilus going through all these things now.
- 19:49The problem, the big problem that we had was the
- 19:52hydrodynamics underwater. Again, she was still designed
- 19:58like a surface ship that could dive.
- 20:02And the problem is that doesn't work underwater well.
- 20:05In the mid 50's the Navy hit on this idea of, you know, whales
- 20:09have this particular shape, whales and dolphins and fish I
- 20:13guess in general have this different shape than we're using
- 20:17and they swim really well underwater.
- 20:20So the Navy built an experimental submarine, a purely
- 20:23experimental submarine, diesel powered called the Albacore,
- 20:26which had what we can now call the teardrop, teardrop shaped
- 20:30hull, really bulbous nose. And it kind of streamlines back.
- 20:35And they discovered that whole, this thing really maneuvers well
- 20:40underwater. So if we take that whole shape
- 20:44and we put a nuclear reactor in it, what do we got?
- 20:48And we ended up with what they call the skipjack class, which
- 20:52for my money is is fantastic. The very first submarine I ever
- 20:57stepped foot on was a skipjack class, the USS Scamp.
- 21:01And I am told, I've never went to see on one, but I'm told that
- 21:03they were basically sports cars underwater.
- 21:06They basically flew underwater and they would turn and stuff
- 21:11like that. So it's this Nautilus reactor,
- 21:13it's this albacore shape. Submarining has changed forever.
- 21:17They've become what Jules Verne visualized, truly submarines.
- 21:22They can go underwater and stay underwater.
- 21:24Literally the only limitation you have is how much food you
- 21:28can carry. You could argue, of course,
- 21:32that, well, what about air, Dave?
- 21:33You got to breathe. But the ocean is made out of
- 21:37what? Hydrogen and oxygen.
- 21:41And a long time ago we learned how to split the oxygen off so
- 21:44we can pull in the oxygen, purify the air and dump the
- 21:48oxygen in and breathe. That course.
- 21:50You got to get rid of the hydrogen.
- 21:51That sometimes is an issue. But as a general rule of thumb,
- 21:56it has changed how we do things. And of course, it's led to the
- 22:00modern submarine fleet of today, which I was not a part of.
- 22:05I it's hard for me to say this bill when I was in, it was 40
- 22:08years ago, it was 2 generations ago.
- 22:10And things have moved beyond even where we were now in this
- 22:15connection to what the submarine has become because of these,
- 22:21because of what the Nautilus was able to show.
- 22:24Before Nautilus, submarines were constrained by the limitations
- 22:27of the propulsion systems they had to frequently service.
- 22:30Now they don't. They can, they can do that
- 22:32without. It forced a complete re
- 22:35evaluation of naval tactics, anti submarine warfare.
- 22:39It had shown the effectiveness of surface fleets and aircraft
- 22:42in detecting. World War Two had shown the
- 22:45effectiveness of surface fleets and aircraft in detecting and
- 22:49aircraft in detecting neutralizing submarines.
- 22:50But Nautilus blew all that out of the water.
- 22:53Now the Navy had to change how they do that, because of course
- 22:56the Soviets were building them too.
- 22:58Navies had to rethink. Were the Soviets with us or
- 23:01anybody else as far as that goes with developing this atomic
- 23:05technology? I'm sorry they missed the first
- 23:07part of the question. How much on pace were the were
- 23:10the Soviets or any? Far behind, because atomic power
- 23:13was the concept was well known. The early Soviet nuclear
- 23:18submarines ran into the same kinds of problems with, you
- 23:22know, being too fast and ripping things off and making too much
- 23:25noise. And they also had problems with
- 23:27their reactors shielding. They had several submarines, if
- 23:31you've seen the film K 19, the Widowmaker, they had a lot of
- 23:36those kinds of problems where the reactors failed and killed
- 23:39people. We have not had that problem
- 23:42specifically. We certainly haven't anybody
- 23:43killed by it, but but there you go.
- 23:47Nautilus's revolutionary designed influenced every
- 23:50submarine that followed, and today nuclear powered submarines
- 23:54owe their existence to the pioneering achievements of USS
- 23:57Nautilus. She did more than just change
- 23:59submarine warfare. She redefined the concept of
- 24:03what a submarine could be, broke free of the constraints of
- 24:06traditional propulsion, opened a new chapter in naval history,
- 24:11and created one defined by stealth, endurance and
- 24:14flexibility. And today the Nautilus rests in
- 24:18New London, CT. You can actually go visit her.
- 24:21You can step foot on the deck of the first atomic powered
- 24:24submarine in the United States Navy.
- 24:26You can actually go on board. You can't go to the reactor
- 24:29room. They don't let you in there.
- 24:30But you can go see her today at the at the museum there in New
- 24:36London, CT, which I highly recommend you do because you'll
- 24:40see something that you can't see anywhere else in the world.
- 24:44She's the only atomic powered submarine that's now a museum
- 24:47chip. There are no others.
- 24:50Fantastic. That's going to be fun.
- 24:52And we get to your calls when we continue in one minute on WMMB
- 24:57321-768-1240. Let your thoughts get in and
- 25:00play with Dave. Doug's history.
- 25:02Wolf is in Coco. Hey, Walt, good morning.
- 25:05Morning, bro, Good morning Dave. I just wanted to take Dave
- 25:10because while it is the Jewel Burn with the the catalyst, it
- 25:16was the drive and vision of Admiral Rickover to push it
- 25:21through. I mean, he was an engineer and
- 25:25he wanted to make it so that his men would be safe and we could
- 25:29finally do what you just said, stay underwater and be a combat
- 25:34vessel. And that whole idea came apart
- 25:38from Jules Verne. But it was the vision and he
- 25:42never wanted to be a politician. He never wanted to fight with
- 25:46anybody. He just wanted his submarine to
- 25:48work. And Rick over had to learn to be
- 25:52political so that he could get the funds necessary to put this
- 25:56thing together. And I wanted to thank you for
- 26:00mentioning him because he really is the father of the submarine
- 26:04as we as you know it today. I have the pleasure and honor of
- 26:09being able to go on the, the SSBN Kamehameha fast attack stub
- 26:16in the Trident Basin, Cape Canaveral.
- 26:20And I was going to fix their microwave ovens, which microwave
- 26:25ovens and it was quite, a, quite a trip.
- 26:29And the, I guess the, the chief Petty Officer, the what do they
- 26:34say? The officer of the deck gave me
- 26:37the Kamehameha hat, which I treasure to this day.
- 26:40And that was hell. That was back in 79 when they
- 26:44were doing that. Very good, Walt.
- 26:46I'm needing to leave it there, but appreciate where you're
- 26:48coming from. I guess there are ways to get on
- 26:51a submarine and if it takes fixing a microwave to do it
- 26:54well. Done Walt.
- 26:56Well in 79 it was a little bit different too.
- 26:58So things were things were a little bit looser in those days.
- 27:02Rick Over wasn't just the father than the the submarine he was he
- 27:05was the father of the nuclear Navy.
- 27:08So he actually had control of naval reactors, what we call
- 27:11naval reactors until he retired. So you're talking about the USS
- 27:15Enterprise that we've talked about the surface carrier as
- 27:19well as the NR one, which was a technically experimental
- 27:25submarine, but not really. She was actually kind of a
- 27:29special project spy boat, tiny submarine that was nuclear
- 27:33powered. That could you should be
- 27:36familiar with that down there because she's the one that
- 27:38actually went out and recovered the pieces of Challenger.
- 27:41But she's he was responsible for all of that.
- 27:45And of course, every sailor in the Navy from my generation
- 27:50especially, had a had a Rick Over story about, you know,
- 27:54whether you were an officer who went to the nuclear power
- 27:56program and you had to sit in that chair that he had specially
- 27:59built that leaned forward and he was up on a platform.
- 28:02So he was always looking down on you and asking you strange
- 28:04questions to the cooks who had to, you know, these these rock
- 28:10bands have these riders when they do shows, you know, we need
- 28:13this, this and this. Rick Over had the same thing.
- 28:16He had the same kind of expectations about what he was
- 28:20supposed to get when he was aboard your ship.
- 28:24When? Strawberries was it?
- 28:26I don't remember. No, it was not strawberries.
- 28:28Strawberries and ball bearings. Yeah, exactly.
- 28:31No, it wasn't that. And, and off the top of my head,
- 28:34I don't remember, but some of it was just, and it was so
- 28:36specific. And if you didn't do it exactly
- 28:38that way, there was this mindset that he was going to rip your
- 28:42head off. And I, I don't know if any of
- 28:45that was ever true. I never actually met him in
- 28:46person. I was on base when he was there
- 28:50one day and it was, you would have thought it was the you.
- 28:54You would have thought it was Jesus walk in the base.
- 28:56I mean, everybody was so on edge about Rick Overs here.
- 29:00And you know what happens if and.
- 29:03But at the same time, he was a visionary, much like Jules
- 29:08Verne, but at the same time he might have also been a control
- 29:12freak, so. Well, kind of kind of wise to be
- 29:17there. Let's get another call in while
- 29:18we can line one. You're on Bill make live.
- 29:20Good morning. Hey, this is that guy, Keith the
- 29:24Tombag. Yeah, Keith.
- 29:26Just real quick, has there been any studies done or anything
- 29:31with NASA or like growing food and stuff toward the space
- 29:36project with submarines and stuff?
- 29:38It seems like it would be a great capability to put
- 29:41together. Repeat the question.
- 29:44I'm not sure I understand. I got the I got the question.
- 29:46Did you OK, Dave, go ahead. The answer is studies.
- 29:50Sure. The the problem with the
- 29:51submarine is where do you do it? Where, where, Where could you
- 29:55set us? Reiterate the question since you
- 29:57got it the. The the question is, have there
- 29:59been studies about growing food while you're underwater so that
- 30:02you wouldn't have to come up for water?
- 30:04Where do you do it? For one thing, Where do you get
- 30:07enough variety to make it useful?
- 30:10And more? And.
- 30:12Enough to feed everybody. I mean, you're astronaut, you
- 30:14got six people up there. Submarine, you got somewhere
- 30:17between 100 and 160. So you need a lot of room to
- 30:20grow, a lot of food to do that. It's just not really practical.
- 30:23Now, that said, I I happen to be no I happen to have direct
- 30:29knowledge of a story of keeping a lobster in the bilges for a
- 30:32while. Could be like The Martian and
- 30:38the potatoes, right? With Matt Damon, right?
- 30:41Yeah, yeah, we kept. Other innovation driven because
- 30:45of the changes brought on by the speed.
- 30:47I mean, you said the sonar didn't work, so that had to
- 30:50drive innovation with other systems on the ship as well.
- 30:53Well, it did and it drove the idea of the tow to Ray, which is
- 30:57a big sonar that you tow behind the ship, couple of miles behind
- 31:00the ship so that technically you don't get all the noise.
- 31:04But the problem is the faster you go, the more likely that
- 31:07becomes to get damaged. So there's this constant trade
- 31:11off between speed and tactical ability.
- 31:15And that's that's something that's never changed in
- 31:17submarining. It's the tension of of, you
- 31:20know, you got to be slow to be quiet.
- 31:22You have to be deep to be quiet. But neither of those two things
- 31:27is necessarily a tactical advantage, especially if you're
- 31:31trying to get away from something.
- 31:32It does take time to speed up. So those are the things that
- 31:36that are there. It was a great job.
- 31:38I enjoyed it and I appreciate the fact that the Nautilus and
- 31:41Admiral Rickover set the standards for the submarine
- 31:45fleet of today and of mine 2 generations ago.
- 31:49Science fiction turn into reality.
- 31:52Hurry up. Star Trek.
- 31:53Dave Bowman always fun with Dave does history.
- 31:55Thank you, my friend Dave. We'll talk again next Tuesday.
- 31:58I appreciate it, Sir. We'll.
- 31:59See you then. Dave digs deep in dusty past.
- 32:04Whisper echo shadows cast, old wisdom screaming through the
- 32:12void. Lessons learned in dreams
- 32:17destroyed. Ancient tales of fight and fall.
- 32:24Stone engravings crumble walls. Heroes, villains, changing
- 32:32place. Times are cruel and bitter.
- 32:36Rains. You gave U.S. history lessons to
- 32:44see through these ages. Who can we be?
- 32:56Wars and lives. Thanks Dee.
- 33:02Queen Dame does his story setting lives free empires built
- 33:19on fragile lives, dust and dashes.
- 33:24Kingdoms die echoes on the faded pride.
- 33:31Truth is always hard to hide. Voices from another time paint
- 33:41the picture right the right centuries of sifting sands
- 33:50grasping now it's in your heads. Dave does his story lessons to
- 34:06see through the eyes ages who can we be wars in life based the
- 34:21queen Dave does his story.