Wednesday 2/6
The Trieste made its famous dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench on January 23, 1960. To go down to the deepest point on the seafloor the bathyscaphe had 9 tons of iron shot for weights to bring it down. Plus the air tanks were flooded with seawater to help it sink even faster. It descended 3 feet per second until it reached a depth of 27,000 feet, when they slowed it down half as fast.
The Trieste only stayed at the bottom for 20 minutes, but getting there took almost 5 hours. At that depth, the pressure was more than 16,883 pounds per square inch put a bunch of stress on the Trieste, cracking an outer plexiglass window. Pretty intense stuff. Although, there weren't any other problems after that. The Trieste was the first and only vessel to enter the Mariana Trench in history. In 1963, it was used to find the Thresher and then was put in the Navy Museum in Washington DC.
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