Has any serious thought ever been given to using one (or more) of America’s giant nuclear aircraft carriers as a mobile base and platform in support of deep ocean exploration? They could sure stay on site for a long time and carry all kinds of specialised scientific equipment. Could nuclear submarines also be used for peaceful scientific exploration of the oceans?
To answer your second question first: it’s already being done. The U.S. Navy submarine NR-1 is primarily a research vessel (although it’s research may be oriented more towards vessel & propulsion characteristics than the sea around it), and the U.S. Navy has allowed researchers aboard other naval submarines for research under the arctic ice (I don’t off the top of my head know the submarines or research projects but I think they’ve pretty much all taken place during the last 2-3 years).
As far as the aircraft carrier: the operating costs are way too high. To keep a dedicated research ship like NOAA’s McArthur, a 200 ft ship with 22 crew, costs about $15,000 a day. That is so expensive that research cruises are most often planned to provide as much 24 hour per day use of the ship’s facilities as possible, and is out of the range of many researchers even then. I have no idea how much an aircraft carrier, at 900 ft and 5,000 crew costs per day, but it’s got to be a lot more than that.
Research projects might be run incidentally off a carrier that happens to be at sea anyway, but it seems inefficient compared to the use a researcher can get off a dedicated research ship (plus, I doubt a carrier has some of the facilities a researcher might need. How many carriers have A-frame hoists?).
Navy has some Research vessels. I believe the Pegasus was one.
USS Pegasus (PHM 1)
When I was in the USN in the late 80’s she was doing some work with Whales and Dolphin research. I don’t have any details.
BTW she was a hydrofoil.
Here is a link to current US Navy Research & Survey Vessels
http://www.hazegray.org/worldnav/usa/aux_res.htm
There were rumors that in the 90’s some subs were helping with tracking whales as a form of silent running drills. I definately cannot cite this.
A Nimitz class aircraft carrier costs $250,000 per day to operate. That’s when it’s at the pier. When it’s underway, it costs ten times that.
For those prices, I really only want them used for war.
There’s also the point that the principal mission of an aircraft carrier is to launch & recover aircraft. It would not be especially well suited to deep ocean exploration.
When I first hired on at Boeing I worked on the boat program. It’s a wonder they ever were built, trying to build a boat the same way an airplane is built did not work so well. They were poorly designed and required a lot of rework to complete. Being transferred from the boat program to the new 757 program was one of my happier days at work.
What about using them as nuke power plants to supplement our electric needs when they are docked at a US base connected to the grid.
That would cause them to need to be refueled more often, and time spent in the yards is time lost at sea.
They are capable of generating the electricity necessary to meet their needs (and some extra). But the lion’s share of the power produced is designed to go toward propulsion, not the generation of electricity.
The biggest point, IMHO, is that they are scarce. The Navy would gladly have twice as many to do the tasks that need doing. These things are not sitting around on shelves waiting to be put to some use.
If, in some alternate reality, they weren’t needed for their current use, could they be used for other things, such as research platforms? Certainly. In a pinch, your car can be used for a house, or for a horse-cart or for a kindling. But in each case there are better, cheaper ways to get the job done.
I would also like to point out that warships are used for lots of peaceful purposes all the time. Saving lives at sea, bringing in emergency supplies, mapping, weather observation (of course that is no longer so critical) and of course deterring war.