Image source, Sue Flood By Rebecca Morelle Science Editor, BBC News Ocean explorer Captain Don Walsh has passedaway at the age of92 More than 60 years ago he made the veryfirst ever descent to the inmost location in the ocean, the Mariana Trench which lies nearly 11km (seven miles) down. I was fortunate sufficient to count him as a excellent pal. This is the story of an remarkable dive by a amazing male. In 1960, space-mania was grasping the world and potential astronauts were dreaming of their veryfirst ventures skywards. But 28-year-old Captain Don Walsh had his sights set extremely much down. He was about to descend muchdeeper than any human had ever ventured previously. The US Navy had got a submersible called the bathyscaphe Trieste and Don, a submarine lieutenant, offered to signupwith the job. But when he signed up for the objective, the inmost he’d been in a sub was simply 100m down. He was in for a bit of a shock – the US Navy desired him to dive more than a hundred times muchdeeper. The strategy was to head to the inmost location on the world, the extremely bottom of the Mariana Trench, a narrow, undersea canyon, which lies in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Guam. Image source, Naval Historical Foundation Image caption, The bathyscaphe Trieste was developed to endure the tremendous pressures of the deep “My veryfirst response was ‘What!? Why didn’t they inform me before I offered?'” he informed me in an interview in2011 “After that, I believed: ‘Well, I understood the device well enough at that point to understand that, intheory, it might be done and we might pull it off.'” On 23 January, 1960, Don and Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard, who hadactually developed the bathyscaphe with his daddy Auguste Piccard, started their descent below the waves. They squeezed inside a thick steel-walled chamber. Don stated the area was about the size of a big home fridge, and that the temperaturelevel inside was simply about as cold too. As the set plunged gradually into the darkness, the craft started to creak and groan as the pressure grew. The bathyscaphe hadactually been developed to holdupagainst more than 1,000 times the pressure at sea level, however it had neverever been checked to its limitations at these kinds of depths upuntil now. Image source, Noaa Image caption, Don Walsh (l) and Jacques Piccard (r) had to invest hours in exceptionally confined conditions as they made the descent The start of the dive went efficiently, however at around 9,000m, the bathyscaphe jolted with an disconcerting bang. “That was uncommon – we’d neverever heard that before,” Don lateron informed me. It sounded like something huge hadactually broken. Don and Ja
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