/sci/ - Science & Math

The only aquanauts left would be the ones who service and inspect oil rigs. They would be gradually replaced by robots. The largest undersea habitats will be hybrid diving chambers the size of closets used to ferry them between the work site and surface.

For fuck's sake, don't vote for someone who would do this.

>>3773575

>>Use cheaper, more immobile high atmo habs for those living underwater, and regular 1 atm transporatble dead-weight habs for short-term undersea operations for things like deep oil?

We already do this in a sense; They're called diving chambers. Elevators, in a sense, and hybrid ambient/1atm habitats. The hull can withstand enormous pressure from either side, permitting it to be used as a decompression chamber on the way up, but it can be equalized to ambient pressure once on the bottom so the hatch can be opened and the diver can exit. With this, the aquanauts are exposed to the pressure only as long as necessary, and they can begin decompressing as soon as the job is done. Once it's hauled to the surface, the inside is at much higher pressure, so the chamber is VERY carefully mated to a larger decompression chamber on the deck of the ship containing beds, a toilet, food, basically a habitat above water that keeps *in* high pressure. This allows them to decompress for several days in relative comfort. However on the very few occasions where accidents occur and there is a sudden, catastrophic loss of interior pressure, the results have been horrific.

>>3623475

>Uh huh... so when you're using far more energy to dig up more of these lower-grade ores

Lower grade ores? Citation please.

>from less accessible locations

It's just as far down, but instead of digging, you can sink a robot.

>it's more ecologically sound because you are forced to burn oil in a generator ship and transport it down by cable to charge batteries, instead of directly powering your equipment with internal combustion engines?

Yes, because a generator which runs at a single speed for which it is optimized wastes less energy than an ICE which operates over a wide range of rpms. It's how the Volt's range extender works and why it's more fuel efficient than the engine in an ordinary car. It's also how diesel electric locomotives work.

There is a depth within the ocean of Europa at which the pressure, for humans, is between 1 and 1.6 atmospheres.

It would mean that a human being in a wetsuit, flippers and a scuba mask could go swimming from a diving chamber like the one in the picture. Swimming in the ocean of an alien moon, his skin in direct contact with the water in some places, no different from diving in the arctic.

It's one of just three places (that I know of) in the solar system where man can survive without a space suit. The other two being Earth, and high in the atmosphere of Venus.

>>3313621

>>you see how the water around them is pretty blue? those divers are at <200ft. that is not a picture of a saturation dive.

I'll bet you $500 that it is. (I happen to know the story behind the picture, fair warning, you'll lose the bet.)

And surely you know that not all saturation dives go below the photic zone? I thought you said you do this for a living.