/sci/ - Science & Math

>>4662898
>Are these things out yet? They look expensive.

They're Deep Flight subs, which Richard branson acquired the rights to when he founded Virgin Oceanic.

http://virginoceanic.com/

The deep sea version that will take tourists to the Challenger Deep is very different in design. The normal two seaters seen here will be for sale and rent, the deep sea version won't.

Also, general seabro thread.

No spacefags allowed. >:|

Still struggling to amass viewers. :-\

>>2113388

>>Thanks to their embargo, they're shooting themselves in the foot and making it possible for mining of rare earth metals to begin again in the US and elsewhere.

They wouldn't have enacted the embargo if it were that simple for us to get rare earths elsewhere.

It takes decades to get a mining operation approved and set up on land. We're actually planning on buying from Canada and (I believe?) Australia in the meanwhile. But deep sea mining is particularly attractive because beyond a certain distance from shore, the legal barriers to mining decrease to almost nothing. There are environmental restrictions but because the equipment used in deep sea mining is unusually clean (subs are battery/fuel cell/nuclear powered) there hasn't been much resistance to the proposition.

So yes, while the Chinese monopoly is not absolute, it's close enough that we'll need a deep sea mining program to rival theirs if we hope to make up for the loss of their exports.