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Submarine to visit deepest parts of the ocean in Five Deeps Expedition
- lb1lf 8y agoWhile I have to admit I am dubious of the scientific value of sending humans down into the abyss, I'll keep an eye out for news on their progress; there's no denying that most of the world's deep oceans are pretty much blank spots. Also, while I think an AUV or ROV could accomplish as much as a manned submersible, I am envious as [] of the people who get to go down there! Where do I sign up?!?
- Insanity 8y agoReally? In my mind it sounds way too scary to do so! But for some reason I would like space travel rather as to me it sounds safer but I can't back that up. Going towards lesser extremes, I am also fine with flying but really dislike being on boats. Probably just an irrational tjinh I though.
- Shivetya 8y agoI think the psychological trick played on our minds is that the water is weighing you down, preventing escape, while the emptiness of space gives the opposite feeling
- JshWright 8y agoIt's also a harder technical problem. The pressure difference between the inside and outside of a spacecraft is pretty small (less than the pressure in your car tires). The pressure difference at the bottom of the ocean is several orders of magnitude higher.
- booleandilemma 8y agoCould it be that our species has had time to develop an instinctual fear of deep water that we haven’t had the chance to develop for space travel?
- throwaway5752 8y agoYour assumption that the species isn't afraid of space travel is invalid.
- herpes 8y agoWhich species are you referring to?
- jliptzin 8y agoI don't know, deep space terrifies me as well. I remember trying a VR game that had my flying through deep space and to me it was terrifying.
- davman 8y agoI'm no physicist or engineer but isn't it easier to deal with the absence of pressure (a vacuum) than with lots and lots of pressure?
- JshWright 8y agoIt's not so much the "direction" of the pressure as it is simply the scale of the pressure you have to deal with. ~15psi (space) vs ~15,000psi (ocean).
- davman 8y agoSorry, yes, this is what I meant. There is less "difference" of pressure in vacuum vs. depths of the sea.
- lb1lf 8y ago-That it is, but the upside to oceanographic research vs space is at least two-fold, IMHO: a) You don't strap yourself into a seat on top of a few hundred tons of high explosives prior to getting started. Major plus in my book. b) Barring catastrophic failure of the pressure vessel, all you need to do to get to a safe-ish state is to jettison enough weight to become positively buoyant - and off to the surface you go.
- mstade 8y agoWouldn't you also have to make sure you don't rise too quickly to the surface, or you'll suffer possibly fatal decompression complications?
- lb1lf 8y agoThe interior of the submersible is kept at surface pressure, so you'll be fine. (When diving in shallower waters, in a suit, this would be a concern; however, as you are at (or very close to) surface pressure throughout the dive - no problem.)
- robotresearcher 8y agoThe pressure difference is much worse underwater but in contrast to space it doesn’t take much energy at all to get there and back, the speed difference with your start/end point is very small, and it doesn’t matter very much how massive the vehicle is. Swings and roundabouts.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sfifs 8y ago> It’s a spot no human has ever explored, and it’s so deep that any communications from the submarine will take seven seconds to travel back up. I found this interesting. Are they going to use sound waves for communication? Aren't there any electromagnetic wave based communication mechanisms that work in the ocean or does the depth of water absorb all emails?
- ahje 8y agoI'd guess they use either aucustic communications with some encoding sheme[0], or some kind of VLF communication system with very low bit-rates. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_acoustic_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_acoustic_communicat...
- lb1lf 8y agoThe depth a RF signal reliably penetrates to in water is proportional to its wavelength. Hence the ELF sites used to communicate with submarines - we're talking EM radiation at a frequency of a few tens of hertz. These transmitter sites are huge - not to mention the power requirements, which is easily in the MW range - so they could only be used to communicate from shore to submersible. Return comms would have to be by acoustic means, due to size and power constraints in the submersible. Also, the bandwidth of ELF systems is very low - think several seconds, if not minutes per bit - the bandwidth of an acoustic system is orders of magnitude higher. Edit: I had bungled the first paragraph. My apologies.
- yawz 8y agoI’m pretty sure comfort is not the top design criterion when building a machine that can take multiple humans miles deep, but I’d love to see the inside of it. I imagine even a bathroom break could be challenging.
- kej 8y agoThere's some detail on the interior of the sub on their site [1]; note the slider on the "Key Features" photograph that shows you the inside when the slider is moved to the left. [1] https://fivedeeps.com/home/technology/sub/ https://fivedeeps.com/home/technology/sub/
- f4stjack 8y ago"Cthulhu likes that"
- 0xcafecafe 8y agoI wonder if they will find more ecosystems independent of the sun. Or may be a good footage of the giant or collosal squids. Or something we can't even fathom currently. This is almost akin to deep space exploration for aliens except that here we are guaranteed to find some...