4w ago

In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat

spectrum.ieee.org In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat

The first step in the Deep Sentinel program, one of the most ambitious ocean-engineering projects in decades, will be completed this year. This initial step, called Vanguard, will shelter three aquanaut-scientists at depths of 100 meters. Eventually, the project will create a modular underwater habi...

Water Science and Technologies @mander.xyz

Nemeski @lemm.ee

4w ago

In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat

spectrum.ieee.org /ocean-engineering

6 1

135 comments

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.
- “Unless that man is an actual laborer, haha, fuck those plebs”
  
  Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his chattel property's brow?
- I'm having mixed feelings. Are we going here or not? On one hand no censoring... On the other hand... No censoring. Also doom, but there's also doom here too.
  
  the whole point of the game was to illustrate how dumb libertarians are
  
  I don't remember being able to play Doom in BioShock... 🤔
- "Oxygen."
  
  Lubricant is required

Because of its narcotic effect at high pressure, nitrogen shouldn’t be breathed by humans at depths below about 60 meters. So, at 200 meters, the breathing mix in the habitat will be 2 percent oxygen and 98 percent helium. But because of its very high thermal conductivity, “we need to heat helium to 31–32 °C to get a normal 21–22 °C internal temperature environment,”
😮
- So everyone is gonna sound like mice when they get crushed under the weight of the ocean?
  
  Hmm... maybe not? The low density of helium at 1 atm is what causes the amplification of higher frequencies in the voicebox, but in a pressurized container the gas would be higher density so it might offset the effect... I think?
  
  Apparently when doing saturation diving like that you can't even understand what the other person says, between the helium and the pressure the voice is too distorted to be intelligible.
  You can communicate with a computer that transforms your voice to be intelligible but it is really not a pleasant conversation so you can stay there for weeks without having a conversation except for the bare minimum.
- What they mean is they will need to use the amount of energy that you would normally put into air to get it to 31° C, but the helium will only get to 21° C. At no point will the helium actually be 31° C.

- “I dub thee Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, beater of ass.”
- Chopper Dave!
- Man why did I have to go so far down to find this one? Lol
- Eggers, sir
- Mustache on or off?
  
  Too bad
- If you're lookin for me,
  You'd better check under the sea,
  Cause that is where you'll find me,
  Underneath the seaaaaaa lab,
  Underneath the water,
  Seaaaaa lab....
- Bizzaro I love you bizzaro!
- Vanguard is now under Martian Law!

Will it be filled to the brim with billionaires so it can also malfunction and we are on time for the annual billionaire sacrifice to the sea gods?
- Researchers are rarely rich, despite deserving it more than others.

Sealab 2025?
- Lol, that show is among the stupidest things I've ever loved.
  
  Sparks: … would you ever put your brain in a robot body?
  Murphy: Why? I like my body. Ha, I love my body.
  
  It's not a toy. It makes real cupcakes... with a 40 watt bulb... and there's icing packets. But the secret ingredient is love... Damn it.
  
  Well hello, consumer, yes hello consumer bop bop bop bop be da bup bebop cola!
  
  Dart in the neck!
  
  I want to be an Adrienne Barbeaubot!
- Read headline, music immediately started in my head, "if you're looking for me..."
  
  You better check under the sea!
- I love me some Mingus Dew

So Bioshock….
- Well, it's just scientists, so Sealab 2021.
  Eventually, the techbros will make a cheaper version and add the pod to the end though.
  
  as long as they don’t use a logitech controller i’m sure it’ll be fine
  
  Pod 6? I hate Pod 6!
- Would you kindly...

Billionaires first
- Titan II: Back for more billionaires

And in 2026, deep divers will be searching for datapads to find out what went wrong.
- "So we found these slugs that produce magic stem cells..."
  
  Add in "But harvesting it angered the psychic primordial shark that we worship as a god." And you've got the rough plot for the water planet from Kotor 1.
- Maybe the pact holds longer in those silos 😆

Build them as connectable hexagons. Learn from the insects, they've had a half billion years to figure out what shit works and what shit don't.
- Sure when in air. Not so much for underwater or really anywhere where they have to deal with a pressure differential, either positive or negative, where large flat sides are detrimental.
- The hexagon is only stronger than a circle if you're gridding it.
  EDIT (stronger for the TOTAL material used)
- Did you mean "truncated icosahedron"? A hexagon is 2d.
  
  Nah if you only build a 2D structure, you won't have to worry about the water pressure because your structure will likely not be able to interact with 3D matter. It's genius engineering IMHO.

Very interesting to read, but sounds so astronomically expensive and reliant on zero mistakes in every single aspect of manufacturing every single thing going into the pods, that no one will sustain paying for this shit beyond angel investors.
- you should read michael chrichton's book sphere. it talks about some of the tom & jerry tier physics and biology disasters that can happen in a deep sea habitat
  
  Yep I own a hardcover of it; fucking fantastic book, and excellent film adaptation.
- Many people said the same things about the ISS, I'm sure.
  
  Sure, but space habitats are far far more useful than underwater ones
  There is definitively no shortage of challenges in orbit
  
  What government is interested in this project. Please name one.
- Well, they gotta get those angels somehow...

If your looking for me
\ You better check under the sea
\ Cause that is where you'll find me
\ Underneath the
\ Sealab, Underneath the water
\ Sealab, At the bottom of the sea.

About 4 years late, but whatever.
- Why do I apparently have the entire theme song still in my brain meats? I only thought the show was ok during its original Adult Swim run, and it wasn't even a brain wormie theme. I apparently need to go back and watch it again to see what's up.
  
  I am probably a minority, but I think it's the funniest of the early Adult Swim originals.
- The best show on Netflix
- The jerks in Pod Six made you late, didn't they?
  
  Once again, your stupidity has killed us!

high pressures are scary as shit.
apart from that, there's no sunlight down there. it's basically like living in antarctica.
- Good thing that doesn't cause any pr-
  https://www.livescience.com/52467-why-antarctica-fuels-excess-drinking.html
  https://theweek.com/crime/antarctica-sexual-harassment
  Oh.
- Will there be penguins?

- The episode where he tells Jonathan Brandis about condoms remains to this day the cringiest thing I have ever seen on a TV show. By far.
  
  Wow, that's way more detail than I ever want to remember.

If anything goes slightly wrong I die instantly you say? I need to sign up NOW
- Yeah, wouldn't mind that for the next 4 years or so, possibly longer.

Space is hard to get to, no gravity, and there's radiation.
Underwater has high pressure, corrosion, and no natural lighting.
When you get an air leak in space, you find the hole and patch it. When you get a leak underwater, you don't have to worry about it at all because it takes care of things in microseconds.
- Just like with space you can build in redundancies though. You don't have to be all Titan about it.

So basically Rapture
- I was thinking more like PATHOS-II.

One step closer to SOMA

I have an idea. Let's stick all of the world's billionaires into a submarine and see if lightning strikes twice.

I've been playing lots of Oxygen not Included, so... Yeah good luck, what could go wrong?

This is for the oil and gas industry.
Ain't nobody paying for an underwater habitat for researchers when all researchers do at depth is take photos and samples, which can be done by an ROV.
Oil and Gas OTOH need deep see divers to do welding and other maintenance all the time.

What happened to biodomes? Did the Pauly Shore movie ruin the concept?
- https://youtu.be/96HP_waLWPw
  We never got them working properly here on earth, which isn't great news for a self sustainable moon or Mars colony.
  
  Wasn't that mostly due to mismanagement rather than any technological hurdle?
- He made too much trouble in that bubble

Watch our oceans die before your very eyes!

The trouble with all these schemes is that it's totally contrary to poweful real world trends. The surface of the Earth has an overwhelming abundance of rural land that is incredibly hospitable to life. And these places are depopulating because people prefer living in cities. How are you gonna get people to move to the bottom of the sea, or Mars, if they don't even want to move to West Virginia?
- The trouble with these commenters is that they don't read the articles. This one isn't at all about getting people to move underwater, it's very specifically about habitats for ocean researchers to live in, rather than spending enormous amounts of time decompressing after relatively short dives.
- People don't really want to live in the cities they just want to live where they can get a job. Largely rural communities don't really have an overabundance of employment opportunities, tend to have crap internet, and most of the properties are already owned by rich people who want a second home, so house prices are completely insane.
- Which part of the article mentions any of that?
- West Virginia is the very opposite of barren, just poverty stricken. Nevada would be a better example.

Subnautica vibes.

A friend of mine has just broken the record of 100 days living under water. He is aiming for 120 days.
- My mate Paul...

Ocean is tough. Tougher than floating cities. Which are more realistic as real habitable environment.
I vote for Stanford torus stations in various L points.
Or, naturally, Mars.
Before that, of course, there are plenty of locations on Earth hard to live in, but not as hard as underwater domes. They should try that.

Ocean horizons 2.0 I hope.
Elon is probably the only superhero who could actually go there an show them all! Definitely not just any rich guy could do it.

What happens in the abyss stays in the abyss.

i legit thought this was some wacky futurist article from 10 years ago that someone posted for fun

I guess the people in charge haven’t read the rifters trilogy. I don’t trust any of ‘em, but at least we already have a pandemic; they probably can’t make it worse.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/43561-rifters

i did that in vashj'ir in wow in 2010

That's a face
- There are plenty faces if you look for them!

135 comments