Science: Fresh Air in the Depths

When the submarine Nautilus in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea needed a new air supply, it came to the surface, blew noisily like a winded whale and filled its reservoirs with two days' supply of compressed air. This simple system was good enough for the imaginary Nautilus of 1870, but the real SS(N) Nautilus and her nuclear sisters of the modern U.S. Navy need better air, and are designed to stay submerged for months on end. In Naval Research Reviews the Naval Research Laboratory tells how their little worlds are kept almost as fresh as a sloop tacking...

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