Looking at SeaLab
A couple months ago, I wrote about some of the early experiments to allow divers to live and work on the ocean floor. You can read them below.
Recently, I stumbled across this really interesting piece from NPR about SeaLab.
It’s worth a read although there are one or two things in it that make me flinch a bit from a technical perspective. It includes the video link below showing divers, including former Gemini astronaut Scott Carpenter singing and playing ukelele.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a space junkie and have always dreamed of being on the bridge of the starship Enterprise exploring the galaxy. It just seems like we were so close to making inner space breakthroughs 50 and 60 years ago, but then lost our way. For many years, the oil industry was the leader in saturation diving, but even there ROVs and AUVs are taking over. It’s safer and easier.
The now-defunct Mir Space Station wasn’t easy to build and occupy. Or the space shuttles. Or the International Space Station.
So why not dedicate even a portion of that budget to exploring innerspace? It just seems like understanding the ocean more would help us understand our world more.
"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean"
— science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke.
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