/sci/ - Science & Math

>>1958391

Without a frontier to conquer, we've become fat, lazy and complacent. It's about time we had some dangers to struggle with.

>>1846699

Rapture discussion is fine, although that's more for /v/. Actual undersea habitats interest me more.

>>1740026

>>If we concentrated on underwater exploration after we won the space race, instead of landing on the moon over and over again and getting bored of it, we would be in a much better position to solve our resource and energy problems today. Geology, seismology, petroleum studies, and meteorology would all have improved.

Actually, although the energy part is true (hydro/tidal energy) petroleum exploration can be done with robots. The only thing they need men down there for is to maintain drilling installations, which is why Cousteau's funding (originally supplied by the French oil industry) dried up. Divers from the surface can stay down for only an hour, versus 8 hours for divers from a habitat, but 1 hour was usually enough for the highly trained.

Science is the real draw; we spend billions to explore cold dead rocks in the sky in the hopes of finding a microbe when we dredge up bizarre unknown lifeforms from the sea every other month. Part of the problem is that they dessicate due to pressure difference on the way up. Habitats at depth allow scientists to observe and dissect deep sea creatures at the pressure to which they are accustomed.