The Front Fell Off

You have got to be kidding me. This was formerly the Russian guided missile attack submarine Kursk, of latter days a mausoleum housing the bodies of over 100 men. Rumors have the cause of the boat's sinking as a faultyweapon, probably one propelled by a fickle hydrogen peroxide system. It's no surprise to a ship designer that the weapon guys would be to blame. The weapon designers are darlings to naval officials because their product is sexier than the giant chunks of steel that ship designers use, so the weapons are allowed a much narrower safety margin than the boats they are carride on. This brings us to a famous tenet of naval architecture

(narrow safety margin)=(resting on bottom)

I did find a few things interesting from the top picture, especially. Note the monstrous size of the boat, second only to the American Ohio and Soviet Typhoon Classes of submarine for length and displacement. Despite that, the drydock in turn dwarfs the submarine. What a facility! Note that the missile tubes straddle the central pressure hull on both port and starboard. The pressure hull itself actually appears elliptical, but that could just be due to the perspective of the photograph. The missile tube fairings are decoupled from the missile tube hatches themselves, and each fairing covers two hatches. There could be a separate hydraulic or electrical interlock, but there appears to be no mechanical link between the two. The fairings seem to have a couple of linear hydraulic actuators apiece, but with a very precarious alignment in the full open position. In other words, they look like a wave or missile launch wouldn't have a tough time breaking them. From the picture, there is no sign of the hatch operating linkage at all, so it must be pretty flimsy. As for the sail, it looks bigger than a double-decker bus. I wonder what they put in that thing.

On a lighter note, here is more lighthearted case of the front falling off.