Draper Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) prototype welding

Two hot-dog-shaped autonomous subs, quarter-inch titanium, ~4 feet diameter, ~50 feet long. Built at Pratt & Whitney type aerospace facilities under DARPA rapid-prototyping push after first Gulf War. Tom consulted at $50/hour on DoD rates.

In about 1980 or so, they built the Sea Cliff, which was a little bit larger. You can actually stand up in it. Alvin was about a 7-foot sphere, and the Sea Cliff was 8-foot diameter. Draper Lab had one a few years ago — they had to build two of them, and these were actually hot-dog-shaped subs, not spheres. They were going to make them out of titanium, quarter-inch, four feet diameter. They were autonomous vehicles.

Tom's early-1990s rapid-prototyping consultancy for Draper Lab on two 4-foot-diameter, 20-foot-long titanium submarines (mission classified). Material problem solved by using aerospace jet-engine-grade titanium tubing from Pratt & Whitney. The case then pivots into the consulting-rate dispute, which becomes the second half of §9.

About 20 years ago I was involved in a project for Draper Lab. They came over and said, "we have a project to build two four-foot diameter, twenty-foot long titanium submarines." Is this classified? No, the fact we're building the submarines isn't classified — what they're gonna do is classified. So I helped them with designing a four-foot diameter titanium submarine. Turns out four-foot diameter titanium submarines — only about a quarter-inch thick wall. You're not trying to go to the bottom of the ocean. I still have no idea what the mission of these two subs was. We basically went down to places like Pratt & Whitney. They're building titanium four-foot diameter pieces all the time. They're called jet engines. We used aerospace technology to build the components and then weld them together, and they were successfully welded.

Quarter-inch wall, four-foot diameter (per layer 2; flagged) titanium sub built by Draper Lab. Purpose classified, construction unclassified. Used as a counterpoint to the 30-foot Navy sub for thickness/diving-depth scaling.

Now a smaller submarine — I worked on a titanium submarine which was not classified. The purpose was classified, but Draper Lab was building it, and it was quarter-inch-thick wall, and I think it was four-foot diameter. If you start figuring the strength of titanium and everything else you could figure out how deep that thing could go. Four-foot diameter sub quarter-inch thick goes a lot deeper than a 30-foot sub however thick it is, right.