The Ben Franklin, also known as the Grumman/Piccard PX-15, was a manned underwater submersible built in 1968. It was the brainchild of explorer and inventor Jacques Piccard. The research vessel was designed to house a six-man crew for up to 30 days of oceanographic study in the depths of the Gulf Stream. NASA became involved, seeing this as an opportunity to study the effects of long-term, continuous close confinement, a useful simulation of long...
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The Ben Franklin, also known as the Grumman/Piccard PX-15, was a manned underwater submersible built in 1968. It was the brainchild of explorer and inventor Jacques Piccard. The research vessel was designed to house a six-man crew for up to 30 days of oceanographic study in the depths of the Gulf Stream. NASA became involved, seeing this as an opportunity to study the effects of long-term, continuous close confinement, a useful simulation of long space flights.
The Ben Franklin was built between 1966 and 1968 high in the mountains of Switzerland by Piccard and the Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, then disassembled and shipped to Florida. The vessel is the first submarine to be built to American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) standards. With a design crush depth of 4000 feet (1220 m), it was designed to drift along at neutral buoyancy at depths between 600 and 2000 feet (180-610 m). The 130-ton ship has four external electric propulsion pods, primarily used for attitude trimming. It...
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