Swigart had trained on MHD propulsion as had each diver in the event that any one of them needed to pilot Max, but for now it was Lou’s baby—under his control. “Hit the lithium-hydroxide blower for me, will you, Dave?”
Ingles did as requested, opening the blower that would keep their oxygen free of carbon dioxide as already the sub was becoming stuffy as carbon dioxide levels rose. Each phase of the operation was carefully monitored from
Swigart immediately dove below the surface by a simple means of opening initial ballasts intakes as in any sub. This brought her nose with her huge cross-styled front-viewing window facing sharply downward—at dive attitude. Lou then opened the throttle that brought in the seawater not for ballast but for propulsion, thanks to applied spinoff uses of military technologies. In this case the USN’s having developed a compact, self-regulating nuclear reactor. The unit was size of a typical coffin.
Max’s maneuvering thrusters, both in the two towers and along both sides, were a variation of magnetic bearing technology coupled with the principles behind maglev train propulsion or gauss cannons, which cycle magnets—magnetic field generating devices such as coils—in order with the proper timing so that acceleration was induced. This meant that a computer could reverse the cycling of the magnets or coils, thereby reversing the motion of the thruster blade, and tightening or loosening the timing to increase or decrease the speed of rotation, thereby providing a throttle control so that it wasn’t an off/on proposition.
And if that were not enough, all this generation of magnetic fields made the use of magnetic anomaly detection systems difficult if not impossible. However,
David, Swigart, and some of the others found it all incredibly exciting and fascinating. Basically all the information that the sensors onboard
All the old technology based on the same principle as sponge divers grabbing rocks to sink to the bottom no longer applied—nor did turbine-powered shafts linked to a rudder.
With Max, there were no spinning, noisy turbines, but rather intake sponsons—a term only an engineer might know. These devices took up room on each side of the sub where they sucked in seawater at its forward open ‘torpedo’ hatches and flushed the same amount of water per square gallon out the rear hatches. This created a more powerful and maneuverable forward dynamic than any previous small subs or large had ever enjoyed. The system was known as The Caterpillar—and was as quiet as its namesake and undetectable on sonar unless its captain wanted it to be.
This system made Max as silent as a living creature and just as fast and maneuverable under water. It could travel at remarkable speed over untold nautical miles, leaving not so much as a mist and no cavitations. The only cavitations or air bubbles came as a result of the sub’s bodylines, but even this only at her highest speed, and at this speed it was gone before detected. In other words, no sonar invented could detect or track it if its pilot wished it so. And even then it would have to be the most sensitive state-of-the-art sonar.
Max had no huge screws or turbines churning the water. In fact, there was no sign of a propulsion system whatsoever. Instead the submersible was thrust through the depths generated by water rushing through tubes enclosed in those sponsons at the submarine’s sides.
The force powering Max or MHD was so basic that it was taught in high school science classes. Flemming’s Left Hand Rule was a fundamental of electromagnetism stating that the confluence of a magnetic field and an electric current passing through a fluid caused the fluid to be propelled in a single direction. Not so recent technologies of 1965 saw the first prototype propulsion system. It was designed by senior undergrads at the University of California, Santa Barbara, under a Professor Seward Way. Way had worked for Westinghouse and his students began the long process to harness this phenomenon. By 1990, aboard a seagoing vessel thanks to Navy experiments were showing promise for actual application. As a result, in laboratories in Japan and the United States, systems known as magnetohydrodynamic or MHD drive units put the Left Hand Rule in small models and experimental flow loops. Replacing propellers with superconducting magnets allowed “jet” ships to ply the seas at 100 knots, a far cry from
David Ingles had studied this type of system for years since the summer of 1990 when the Japanese, after sinking $40 million into creating a practical MHD using a 150-ton, 90 foot long seagoing vessel called the Yamato-1. But it took years beyond this to develop extremely dense, powerful magnets compact enough to be placed on a ship the size of Max. It began with improvements in superconductive materials, enabling these materials to be formed into electromagnetic coils, and then a quantum leap in both imagination and engineering, not to mention a dramatic drop in the costs. Soon a way was found to use new high-temperature yttrium-barium-copper oxide that could be cooled with liquid nitrogen rather than the more expensive and far more difficult liquid helium.
As more compact, powerful and efficient magnets became readily available, the challenge shifted toward integrating all of the technologies into a complete propulsion plant, incorporating cryostats to maintain proper superconducting temperatures and a power supply to feed the magnets.
David recalled his training; they’d all boned up on Max from top to bottom, and this included the propulsion system. It was powered by a sponson on each side, and maneuvering thrusters, vertical thrusters—two per side, horizontal thruster per each tower on Max. Each sponson contained thirty superconducting magnets evenly spaced like so many rings along the length of the sponson. Max had more powerful and scaled up hardware than anything under the sea.
Max drew water in through the front aperture and propelled it through a smooth, Teflon-coated, featureless channel running through the center of each magnet. This reduced drag, meaning more efficient thrust.
The final movement of the water is its being jetted out the rear—propelled in one powerful direction, thus moving the ship forward due to the thrust at its wake. Reversing propulsion direction was a simple matter for any pilot; it meant reversing order of the magnetic rings. She was the future of subsea exploration and exploitation in every sense of the word—and there were fortunes to be made. Something Warren Kane, Juris Forbes, and Lou Swigart understood all too well.
In short, a complete nuclear power plant rested just to the back of middle of Max’s center of gravity—in the least precarious position in case of collision, and so that wire conduits might be as short as possible.
The Japanese were already speeding cargo holds filled with automobiles from Japan to Europe underneath the Polar ice cap in similar, cargo-sized subs and doing so in less than five business days. Thanks to there being no need of connecting the power system with the propulsion system via a huge shaft, elegant airliner-shaped cargo sub designs proliferated. These sub-ships were in great demand as well thanks to the zero noise and the lack of moving parts which lessened the need for maintenance, thus decreasing operating costs.
Passenger subs also riding on MHD submerged power pods were in the offing as such a submersible leaving Japan would take only three days to reach San Francisco while passengers enjoyed state of the art luxury travel beneath the waves with the occasional slow down to take photos of marine life at depths most would otherwise never experience. This in a vessel taken for a whale by sea life; a sub that did not disrupt sea life, but was rather a “part”of it.
Ingles realized that without Kane’s having gathered the money men together, they would not be traveling in such style, that in fact, Mad Max would not have been built, and that after the
