/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3801338

>well i guess since the US try really hard and they have aircraft carriers, i guess i can have them too.

If I understand you correctly you're suggesting that because it takes sophisticated technology to visit 6.8 miles deep, people will never like 250 feet deep. This does not follow. The requirements for these two depths are worlds apart. If you are content to live at 25 feet depth, for instance among coral reefs, the structure required is something an ordinary person can afford to build, and in fact it has been done. Pic related.

>>3772482

>You forgot the part where it was a grossly expensive way to live.

It was. Not anymore. Pic related, a man of modest means who constructed two of his own underwater habitats and is now working on a third.

>Get back to us when we can all afford to live like highly-paid petroleum-extraction specialists in a unique environment.

Most of the expenses they incurred were due to the poor technology of the day, and are now avoidable. For instance, compact air conditioners and dehumidifiers are now cheap off the shelf commodities. This was not true, at least to the same extent, in the 70s. Conshelf II relied on a fully staffed surface support ship whereas the machinery necessary to automated undersea life support has since been miniaturized and computerized, such that Aquarius is supported not by a large overhead ship, but a compact ALSB (Automated Life Support Buoy).

The commoditization of the technologies required, including the computers necessary to control compressors such that they run only when needed to top off air banks (thereby greatly conserving gasoline) have dropped in price to the point where ordinary civilians can build ambient pressure habitats of their own.

This should surprise noone as all of this was done more than forty years ago, and technology decreases in price with the passage of time.

>>3588025

>The next big frontier is space, faggot.

Then go homestead on the moon or mars. Wait that's right, you can't. The technology necessary is still too expensive and methods to make colonization of space available to ordinary people are centuries away.

Meanwhile ordinary people can and do build underwater dwellings on modest incomes for their own enjoyment (pic related) and organizations exist to building permanent settlements on the sea floor.

Space is definitely the final frontier. But the ocean is the NEXT frontier. We will return to the sea before we truly expand into space, as a species. It offers a more immediate return on investment and the technology developed in pursuit of those profits directly benefits the eventual goal of colonizing other worlds. It's like a habitat/life support development program that pays for itself.

>>3549331

>You need a very, very strong reason to do things under the ocean to offset how fucking HARD and RISKY and EXPENSIVE (wasteful) it is, and I just don't see those reasons.

There are some unjustified assumptions here. First, that human beings only ever settle someplace because it 's necessary. Why did we settle Hawaii? Sometimes, we settle new places out of a strong desire to live someplace beautiful and exotic.

Second, you assume it's hard, risky and expensive. This is true of the 1960s attempts at undersea living, but we learned a great deal from them. The technology and methods are now sufficiently mature that scuba diving is an affordable and widely enjoyed sport, people commonly build their own submarines, and occasionally their own DIY underwater habitats. It is no longer possible to argue that it's especially hard or expensive, for that reason. Nor is it particularly risky, any moreso than living anywhere else, provided you have well designed life support equipment with redundant systems.

Pic related, middleclass biologist from australia living in a homemade underwater habitat.

>>3434646

Of course. You can't into space, but you can into water. The near future is the ocean, as it's someplace that ordinary people can live. Pic related, regular dude in homemade habitat.

We'll into space someday, but long before then we'll into ocean because it's easier, we can do it sooner, it's cheaper and there's more in the way of near-term profits to be had.

>>3341828

>>People only stay in those deathtraps for the life story. 99 percent of all hotels are built on land,not only is safer its more cost effective.

Of course. I never suggested this was for everyone. Just that it IS economically viable and provides for a specific niche.

>>seasteading makes no sense when we have so much land to live on,when I was an nerdy teen the idea of living in a underwater dome sounded cool,but when I got my hands on some complicated mechanical systems in the oceaneering field,I was like fuck this shit,its expensive,unreliable and dangerous.

We have plenty of land in swamps and deserts. Yet, we developed Hawaii. Why? We didn't need to go that far. It was impractical to move all the materials and capital there. Yet we did it because we are not creatures of pure reason, we also have desires. Some of us *want* to live in places that do not satisfy a bare cost/benefit analysis. Some want to live in the mountains. Some want to live on the coast. And some want to live underwater. If they have the will, and the money, you cannot stop them.

>>As someone who makes his living working at sea,I can tell you that anything in or under water is very expensive to maintain and without good ROI will not last. The largest and most permanent sea based structures are for energy extraction...not asocial communities full of nerds.

As someone involved in a civilian sea floor colonization program founded by a NASA bioengineer, I can tell you that the problems which plagued historical undersea habitats have been solved. There are *reasons* why it was dangerous and costly, it isn't just inherently so. And those problems have long since been solved, such that even private individuals have built their own underwater habitats out of pocket (pic related, Lloyd Godson's Biosub)

>>3307829

>>Many people have discovered this.

I don't claim to have invented algae bioreactors or biocoils. But historically every design for a bioregenerative life support system has placed the biocoil/reactor or hydroponics system on the inside of the habitat. As a single human being requires many tens of square feet of plants in order to meet his oxygen needs and remove the CO2 he creates, this winds up requiring unnecessarily large habitats. As undersea habitats obviously aren't mass produced (yet) their price scales exponentially with size, which is why most are very cramped.

My innovation is to design a system that functions outside of a habitat, as a chain of linked enclosures on the seafloor containing either wheatgrass (in which case watertight dryboxes with soil and overhead LEDs would be used) or chlorella algae (in which case transparent plastic cylinders, less resistant to outside pressure (as they don't need to be) could be used.)

Pic related; the algae biocoil in Lloyd Godson's Biosub I. He ditched it in biosub II because the outcome of the Biosub I project revealed that he couldn't fit a biocoil large enough to fully sustain himself inside the habitat. I don't get why nobody seems to have thought of sticking a larger array of coils outside of the habitat, freeing up more space for people. Plants and people have very different needs.

>>3296417

>>Other than that a mechanical/chemical CO2 scrubber will always be used when humans are involved to insure reliability.
>>Always

You sure about that? Pic related.

>>3262319

>>Are there actually any shallow areas (<100 feet) in international waters?

There are a few seamounts where this would work, yes. And you'd want to be near a seamount anyway for the abundance of free food. The exterior lights on the habitat would attract crabs, shrimp, squid, etc. so you could simply affix traps to the exterior and empty them every day or so for your next several meals. :3

Pic; Biosub 1, one of two modest habitats built by Lloyd Godson, a marine scientist. Useful to demonstrate that the requisite technologies really have become cheap enough that anyone who wants to can have at least a small home underwater.

>>3231648

>>He seems a bit full of himself :s

He is, but if you get to know him you find out his overconfidence is invested mainly in his projects, not himself. He's actually a very cool guy, just super super passionate about his projects and eager to sell people on the idea.

Pic; Lloyd Godson's Biosub 1, with its innovative biological life support system, the biocoil. It used blue/green algae and his own urine to sublimate CO2 and produce a steady supply of fresh air. In it, he spent roughly 14 days in a lake, although the biocoil proved just barely too weak to cope with the task and by the end of the mission CO2 concentrations had become dangerously high.

For Biosub 3, Lloyd is hoping to use a revolutionary device called Like A Fish which can separated oxygen out of sea water for 150 watts per person. He hopes to get permission to station Biosub 3 near the great barrier reef of Australia.

>>3215095

>>pointed out, floating cities are much more realistic, as they lack allmost all major drawbacks of underwater while maintaining allmost all advantages.

Perhaps you missed the tsunami that devastated Japan recently. Hurricanes are no small threat either, either would destroy a floating city, and the frequency of both will only increase.

200 feet below the sea, you're completely insulated from surface storm action. And provided the weighted base of the colony is connected to it via shock absorbing supports, it's insulated from undersea quakes as well.

Pic: Undersea habitat built by one ordinary guy, paid for out of pocket, made from a cargo container. It's not cutting edge tech, anyone determined to do so can build one. It's no longer a future possibility, but rather a present inevitability. Whether for science, luxury (like the poseidon undersea hotel) or permanent living, man will return to the sea.

>>2392572

>>Oh, heating. I forgot to ask about heat. LEDs and halogens aren't going to keep you that warm.

Actually, cooling is the problem. In ambient pressure habitats, the periodic compression of air due to ocean swells combined with the confined spaces and waste heat from the life support machinery can make the interior intolerably hot, and if you don't seal off the moon pool when not in use, also intolerably humid.

It's why the commoditization of compact air conditioners and dehumidifiers was such a big deal for undersea habitat projects. That, plus cheap electric air compressors, makes it possible for even an average person to build a modest undersea habitat and live in it for weeks at a time like Lloyd Godson did. Twice. pic related.

>>Also are there backup systems to prepare for power failure or would you just be screwed?

All systems are triply redundant.

>>2385183

>>Also, glad to hear that farming algae for O2 is working pretty well.

Here's Lloyd Godson using a biocoil in Biosub 1 to produce his air. Unadvertised downside? It's fueled by urine. If you intended to use these en masse for waste reprocessing and O2 production you'd want them in a separate module for odor reasons. They look cool as fuck, though.

If the technologies required to live undersea have become such affordable commodities that an average man can build his own self sufficient habitat, then undersea colonization is an idea whose time has come.

Pic related, dude built his out of a shipping container and used an exercycle to power the grow lights for his biocoil.

Here's the interior, roomier than in looks in the diagram. Space to sleep, the exercise, to use the shitter and to fish through the moon pool. The whole thing was actually built from a repurposed cargo container.