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The tech that will help James Cameron win his race to the bottom of the ocean

38 points by ukdm 15y ago

evincarofautumn 15y ago
Compared to the deep, space is downright hospitable. The difference from 1atm to 0atm, after all, is vastly less than that to 1000. Your submersible fails at any nontrivial depth, then you’re dead, no two ways about it; but a human could survive for perhaps a minute and a half in the void. If you’re not too shy about opening all your orifices right away, you’ll even remain conscious for ten, fifteen seconds optimistically. I’ll take total decompression over getting crushed by depth any day.
hcurtiss 15y ago
I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the ocean that drop cameras have not already produced. I feel the same way about sending humans to Mars. Of course, I'm also the guy who went to the Grand Canyon and thought to myself, "meh, that's about what it looked like on my TV."
- fr0sty 15y ago
  > I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the ocean that drop cameras have not already produced. This is true only if you assume that the advances being made in materials and technology will not have applications beyond deep water manned submersibles. As a comparison: Do you contend that you got nothing out of the development of manned space flight?
- th0ma5 15y ago
  I had the same reaction as a kid to the Grand Canyon, that it looked like all of the postcards. I think as I get older there's something else about that, that reality's greatness can't be comprehended in the same way as other things that are more human specifically, like other people, maybe? So I mean while it was a let down, the fact that on the surface it seemed like a let down has not been a let down in its own right.
- freehunter 15y ago
  We need to think bigger, more long term. You might not get anything out of going deep or into space, but imagine colonizing the oceans or Mars at some point in the future. Every corporation and many home users have backups of their important data. How long can we flirt total system failure without an offsite backup? When the failover happens and our disaster recovery system works, our new generations will thank us.
gk1 15y ago
It's incredibly difficult to fathom (hah!) how high the pressure is at such depths. This quote puts it into [some] perspective: > The Deepsea Challenger itself will compress by about 2.5 inches during the descent, according to sponsor National Geographic.
joering2 15y ago
its interesting that major problem with going deep is pressure. wonder if there is, or ever will be some sort of technology, like antigravity that would reduce or push pressure away at a reasonable price. like some sort of electrical device that stabilize or neutralize pressure to reasonable numbers. is the only way of "fighting" with pressure a thicker material? air, for example is much lighter than water (duh!). what if I would surround myself with extreme hot membranes that would boil water before it reaches surface of my submarine? :)

38 points by ukdm 15y ago

Compared to the deep, space is downright hospitable. The difference from 1atm to 0atm, after all, is vastly less than that to 1000. Your submersible fails at any nontrivial depth, then you’re dead, no two ways about it; but a human could survive for perhaps a minute and a half in the void. If you’re not too shy about opening all your orifices right away, you’ll even remain conscious for ten, fifteen seconds optimistically. I’ll take total decompression over getting crushed by depth any day.

hcurtiss 15y ago

I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the ocean that drop cameras have not already produced. I feel the same way about sending humans to Mars. Of course, I'm also the guy who went to the Grand Canyon and thought to myself, "meh, that's about what it looked like on my TV."

fr0sty 15y ago
> I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the ocean that drop cameras have not already produced. This is true only if you assume that the advances being made in materials and technology will not have applications beyond deep water manned submersibles. As a comparison: Do you contend that you got nothing out of the development of manned space flight?
th0ma5 15y ago
I had the same reaction as a kid to the Grand Canyon, that it looked like all of the postcards. I think as I get older there's something else about that, that reality's greatness can't be comprehended in the same way as other things that are more human specifically, like other people, maybe? So I mean while it was a let down, the fact that on the surface it seemed like a let down has not been a let down in its own right.
freehunter 15y ago
We need to think bigger, more long term. You might not get anything out of going deep or into space, but imagine colonizing the oceans or Mars at some point in the future. Every corporation and many home users have backups of their important data. How long can we flirt total system failure without an offsite backup? When the failover happens and our disaster recovery system works, our new generations will thank us.

gk1 15y ago

It's incredibly difficult to fathom (hah!) how high the pressure is at such depths. This quote puts it into [some] perspective: > The Deepsea Challenger itself will compress by about 2.5 inches during the descent, according to sponsor National Geographic.

joering2 15y ago

its interesting that major problem with going deep is pressure. wonder if there is, or ever will be some sort of technology, like antigravity that would reduce or push pressure away at a reasonable price. like some sort of electrical device that stabilize or neutralize pressure to reasonable numbers. is the only way of "fighting" with pressure a thicker material? air, for example is much lighter than water (duh!). what if I would surround myself with extreme hot membranes that would boil water before it reaches surface of my submarine? :)