/sci/ - Science & Math

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-07/09/china-underwater-mining-station

"A Chinese company is set to build a nuclear-powered mobile deep-sea station in the western Pacific, according to local reports.

The China Ship Scientific Research Centre's proposed station -- which will have huge propellers to enable free movement in the ocean depths -- will be manned by 33 crew for up to two months at a time and powered by a nuclear reactor.

Its main goal, according to reports in the South China Sea Post, will be to mine for precious metals. The nation, which recently announced it is stockpiling rare earth elements amid fears of shortages, would use the facilities to hunt mainly for copper, lead, zinc, silver, gold and oil."

>>4571160

Well, we don't need very large bases. Aquarius provides everything needed for a crew just large enough to do extended duration reef science.

What we need are more of them in other locations of interest like the Great Barrier Reef, the Red Sea and at least one on the edge of the conshelf than can deploy submersibles. They wouldn't need to be large or expensive, we just need more than one. Aquarius costs something like 3 million a year to run. It's a pittance compared to the ISS and it does considerably more relevant science, although it too is beginning to run out of things to study where it's stationed and should be moved soon.

The idea oceanic program would have perhaps a dozen undersea stations each capable of deploying a sub, and at least one in Papau New Guinea where the shallowest hydrothermal vents can be found; At 3,000 feet they are potentially shallow enough that a manned base would be feasible including deployable rigid atmospheric exoskeletons, basically deep sea space suits.

Pic related, Ventbase Alpha.

>>4219337

It's not especially messy to suction up rare earth mud, as Japan is planning on doing. It's using robots with bucket wheel excavators (like huge circular saws) to carve up deep sea vents that creates the plumes. The thing is we don't have robots dextrous enough to mine more precisely or carefully, the best we can do is have them shred the thermal vents using those huge circular cutting dealies.

If we could put human beings down there with powered mining tools we could extract minerals faster and more cleanly, possibly also preserving much of the vent ecosystem by carving around areas with no precious metals, leaving as much as possible for the remaining animals.

The problem is, robots are cheaper so that's how they'll do it unless environmental regulations force them to use human workers instead.

>>4068784
>Ocean exploration is in the same shithole

That's true. We can have some solidarity over that. The entire deep submergence program is run on 3 million, NOAA's total annual budget is 5.5 million.

Sometimes I like to imagine what the NOAA could do with NASA's budget. Pic related.

>>4060982
>Both have practically unlimited energy if done right.

This is true. However in the ocean if you have unlimited energy, you have unlimited everything else; You can use electricity not just for heat and light, but also for splitting oxygen and hydrogen out of sea water, and recombining some of it for fresh drinking water. From electricity and the surrounding medium you get air, fuel and drinking water. That's a hard proposition to beat.

>>4018642

>So what. There are plenty of new animal species found in rain forests too, and they're much easier to study.

New terrestrial species are not found with anywhere near the frequency of new deep sea species. They find several on literally every dive.

>On the other hand, deep sea organisms don't survive scientific study because they die quickly after capture.

Enough of their tissue survives for study that they fuel the bulk of cutting edge pharmaceutical development.

But you're right, we're constrained by our lack of a deep sea research facility. Being able to study these creatures on site and at depth would greatly accelerate marine science. Aquarius is cool but it has been in shallow water studying reefs since 1986. The conshelf is to marine science as LEO is to space science, in either case we need to move on to bigger and better things.

Pic: Proposed hydrothermal vent research outpost

/Oceans

Mad Scientist needs to get the fuck in here.

Also: Pair this system with a likeafish sea water oxygen extractor, and you're done. You have a system that provides a breathable atmosphere, indefinitely, using just electricity. A research base on the ocean floor with a nuclear reactor could be completely isolated with no surface support, yet sustain life for decades. MY MIND.

>>3798710

>>miles of barren wasteland where nothing lives and is boring as fuck

So just like Mars, then.

>pockets of shitty animals living off hydrothermic vents

So it's just like Mars, except it actually has life? Unique ecosystems of chemosynthetic extremophiles that make for a scientifically valuable study of evolution in isolation, with each ecosystem around each vent differing like darwin's finches on the Galapagos? Sounds worth checking out to me.

>anything worth seeing can move faster/deeper than human built objects and thus will escape our view forever

We don't chase them in subs. We set up probes that take footage when triggered by motion, or use traps.

The Aquarius will have long since been decommissioned and replaced with a next generation 1atm research station on the abyssal plain, 2.5 miles down, situated next to a cluster of hydrothermal vents. From this facility discoveries about unique vent ecosystems will generate advances in medicine, biotech and the study of life's origins.

>>3663101

There's not much rhyme or reason to it, except that anywhere there's a chamber directly exposed to the outside pressure via a moon pool, it's separated from the rest of the base by an airlock. Whether people would actually want to undergo 17 hours of decompression just to visit the artificial beach dome is another question.

While this colony is on the continental shelf and no more than 300 feet deep so that sunshine is plentiful, your game sounds like it would be better off in the deep sea. Use lots of ambient sounds, that's often overlooked but adds tremendously to atmosphere. Dripping, steam hissing, hull creaking, etc.

Set it in a research facility studying hydrothermal vents. That gives it a reason to be that deep.

Most conceptions of an effort to colonize mars require modular habitats to be constructed on the planet's surface. Each module must be delivered by a lander, then moved off of it by robot and attached to the rest of the habitat.

We've never done this. It's how we constructed the ISS, but that was in zero G. delivering modules into a gravity well and then needing powered equipment to lift and move them around, eventually mating them to each other is something we've simply never tried to do.

What I propose is that we simulate this mission in the ocean. Modules will be delivered via slow descend aboard replica landers, using ducted prop thrusters instead of retro rockets, but using the same software and principles involved in landing habitat modules on the surface of Mars.

The landers and modules will be ballasted such that they weigh exactly what they would on Mars, adjusting for the strength of the thrusters of course, and they will be assembled by robots nearly identical to the ones we plan to use on Mars (but designed for subsea use.)

Once the habitat is constructed, a crew of aquanauts will live in it for one year, performing EVAs, gathering samples and so on, with power provided by a nuclear reactor aboard one of the landers (as per Mars semi direct) which will also provide oxygen, hydrogen and desalinated water from nuclear powered hydrolysis the same way modern submarines do. The crew will be cut off from the surface and without any kind of support for the duration of the mission, reliant on dehydrated food stores and whatever they can grow in the hydroponics module.

Would /sci/ support this?

>>3656201
>>3656198

We're gonna. But this is an excellent rationale for funding a true 1atm modular research outpost with nuclear powered oxygen/water production in the deep sea.

Nobody throws money at expensive projects like this "just because". There needs to be a compelling case for it, and simulating/practicing construction of a Mars base in an analogous environment seems like a promising raison d'etre for a project like this.

>>3564291

>You bet your butt I'm gonna get into that damn lab.

Or even the next one.

"We don't need a deep sea research station. It would be expensive, and there's no way you'll find anything living down there that justifies the expense. I mean it's not like you'll find an immortal jellyfish or something."

http://news.discovery.com/earth/rare-earth-elements-found-in-seafloor-sediments-110705.html

>July 5, 2011 -- China's monopoly over rare-earth metals could be challenged by the discovery of massive deposits of these hi-tech minerals in mud on the Pacific floor, a study on Sunday suggests.

>China accounts for 97 percent of the world's production of 17 rare-earth elements, which are essential for electric cars, flat-screen TVs, iPods, superconducting magnets, lasers, missiles, night-vision goggles, wind turbines and many other advanced products.

>These elements carry exotic names such as neodymium, promethium and yttrium but in spite of their "rare-earth" tag are in fact abundant in the planet's crust.

>The problem, though, is that land deposits of them are thin and scattered around, so sites which are commercially exploitable or not subject to tough environment restrictions are few.

>As a result, the 17 elements have sometimes been dubbed "21st-century gold" for their rarity and value.

>Production of them is almost entirely based in China, which also has a third of the world's reserves. Another third is held together by former Soviet republics, the United States and Australia.

>But a new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, points to an extraordinary concentration of rare-earth elements in thick mud at great depths on the Pacific floor.

A deep sea research base situated amidst a cluster of such vents would permit fulltime experimentation on their resident organisms. Potential applications in medicine, biotech and life extension studies are considerable (One deep sea jellyfish species is the only known organism that is biologically immortal.)

The station (pictured) would need to be 1atm as no human can endure ambient pressures at 2.5 miles deep. The materials absolutely exist, as submersibles exist today which can cruise effortlessly along the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 7 miles down. It would absolutely be expensive, but an invaluable tool in oceanic research. It would permit scientists direct, constant access to the vents, the ability to experiment on live subjects at a pressure where their cells aren't an exploded mess, and the endeavor would serve as a perfect analog for a manned mission to Mars. NASA's Neemo program, which currently takes place aboard Aquarius, could take place here instead and benefit from both an expanded facility and a more similar environment to the one they would face on Mars.

Anyway, that's what I'd have NOAA do with a greatly expanded budget. What about you guys? Let's hear your best, most visionary ideas. :)

"A bigger question is whether the technology exists for recovering the mud at such great depths -- 4,000 to 5,000 metres (13,000 to 16,250 feet) -- and, if so, whether this would be commercially viable.

In an email exchange with AFP, lead author Yasuhiro Kato, a professor of economic geology and geochemistry at the University of Tokyo, said the response from mining companies was as yet unknown, "because nobody knows the presence of the (rare-earth) -rich mud that we have discovered."

"I am not an engineer, just a geoscientist," Kato said. "But about 30 years ago, a German mining company succeeded in recovering deep-sea mud from the Red Sea. So I believe positively that our deep-sea mud is technologically developable as a mineral resource."

>>3269036

>>perhaps the world is struck by a meteor, and the only survivors are 3 water deep water research colonies.

Actually I've always liked the idea of a zombie movie set aboard a deep sea base.

The crew watches the news in horror as it reports a zombie virus outbreak, which quickly consumes the globe. They decide to stay aboard the self sufficient station rather than return to the surface to search for uninfested regions.

Until bloated waterlogged zombies begin to approach the station, walking along the ocean floor.

As the tragic/romantic sublot, the protagonist's wife is an astronaut still alive with her crew aboard the space station.

>>3255008

>>and then only give the nerds at nasa 18.7 billion

The NOAA, who operates one of only three undersea research stations in the world (the other two are tiny, spartan 2 man habitats owned by universities) has an annual budget of only 5 and a half billion.

The ISS is ten times the size of the Aquarius. Something is seriously wrong with that. I'm not saying NASA deserves less, they certainly deserve more, but NOAA is being shafted far more severely, and we can do a lot more valuable science with a deep sea hydrothermal vent research station than we can with the ISS at this point.

Pic related: What NOAA could do with NASA's budget.

>>3246475

I agree we need at least one reef base, because in order to use reefs as a barometer for oceanic health you need to monitor them in person over long periods. It's why we still run the Aquarius, but no over government funded habitats. (Marinelab and Baylab are still in operation, but only for students.)

The thing is, why not a reef base on Australia's Great Barrier Reef? And why are we still limited to the photic zone? (the first 400 feet of ocean depth.)

The photic zone is to sea exploration as low earth orbit is to space exploration. The few times we've been beyond the photic zone, we've sent small crafts that lingered for a few hours, then came back. Like the handful of lunar missions. And only one mission so far to the Challenger Deep! (Although Richard Branson's Virgin Oceanic will be returning soon, in a race with Triton Subs)

Just as space exploration needs to move beyond LEO, sea exploration needs to move beyond the photic zone. I want a permanent science outpost amidst a cluster of hydrothermal vents. That's the most interesting area of research in marine science right now, and we need the ability to monitor their ecosystems longterm for the same reasons we have the Aquarius for the longterm study of reef ecosystems.

Pic related; What I would build if I were suddenly put in charge of NOAA and given funding comparable to NASA's.

>>3233651

Doubt it, since most weren't designed for that purpose.

Although it's a huge waste to let them sit around rotting, or in museums, at the same time perhaps it's better not to cling to the past. Those old habitats had fundamental design flaws that have since been corrected in newer generation habitats like Aquarius. The sudden abandonment of undersea habitation owes largely to those flaws, which were at the time seen as proof that living undersea was inherently a bad idea. Bringing them back would just be trying to make a broken approach work a second time without changing anything.

What we need is a new generation of subsea science platforms, using a new generation approach; No more ambient pressure, 1atm only, with ISS style docking rings for submersibles and airlocks for hardsuited divers. We'll put them deeper than ever before, at sites of high scientific value like hydrothermal vents, rather than the endless study of reefs (the only thing ambient pressure habitats are suitable for, which is why the Aquarius didn't vanish with the rest of them).

Something like the vent base in this photo will become the new standard for seafloor research bases, although realistically I expect we'll have just one, and it will be compact enough that we can relocate it to study different vents as needed. The minisub and suits in this concept art are real products though, by a company actively working towards the realization of a next gen deep sea 1atm research base just like this one.