| Re: oms rebreather
Hello,
I agree that what is holding back generational, or revolutionary change is simply numbers. There isn't enough demand/money in the market for organizations to spend the large amounts of resources needed to develop radical new rebreather technologies.
The current technology works well for the people using it, and there are darn few who need anything radically different. As a result we get people using existing technology and evolutionary changes to refine the design.
When I break it down there I only see two areas that are really open to revolutionary change for technical diving: Scrubber technology and Monitoring/control technology. The gas supplies and physical breathing loop have specific requirements based on physics and aren't likely to experience a revolutionary change but rather evolutionary changes that mix and match features to suit preferences.
Scrubber technology itself is really pretty good. The scrubber technology we have available now is pretty cost effective and efficient. Technology already exists to make it easier, more foolproof, and to prevent caustic cocktails (membranes, cartridge systems, traps). Evolutionary changes can certainly be made in these areas, but I doubt they'll solve any real, substantial problems.
A revolutionary step for scrubbers would be a practical CO2 to O2 converter. I expect that that is being explored to the best of existing knowledge and technology for other applications. Outside of that the only change I can see would be to make it last longer for a given size or make it cheaper.
That leaves monitoring/control as the real source of improvement, although the opportunities seem more evolutionary than revolutionary. Obviously everyone wants higher reliability electronics, better gas monitoring sensors for O2/CO2/He/other, direct measurement of scrubber duration remaining, and better failsafe designs for gas injection. There is obviously more to do in the eCCR world than the mCCR world.
I don't consider decompression tracking to be rebreather technology. I realy is an outside technology grafted onto the rebreather for convenience. It isn't a necessary part of a rebreather.
The real revolutionary, and market, opportunity is in moving outside the technical diving market and into the mainstream rental strap-it-on-and-dive market. This requires major changes in design philosophy, electronics/controls, and, most importantly, overall durability. That is hindered by the early adopters who will reject most of the technology that makes moves in those directions as they also tend to limit applications to areas outside the early adopters use areas.
Hmmm... interesting....
-p |