/sci/ - Science & Math

Dolphin: >"This land does not belong to you. We did not authorize you to build a settlement here"

Human: >"Shut up and do a trick"

The most ambitious projects to put large scale living structures in the ocean are the Poseidon Undersea Resort, the Coral World Park in the Philippines, and the Atlantica Undersea Colony.

On the industrial side, there are deep sea mining operations now, (long a staple of science fiction) as well as undersea fish farms, and soon nuclear power stations 300 feet deep courtesy of French energy firm Flex Blue.

>Requisition transparent sheet acrylic for the windows on our new residential pod
>Be told that there's a shortage of acrylic and we're being put on a waiting list
>Visit a newly constructed photic zone colony
>See this

You motherfuckers.

So I've been playing around with a concept for a TV show meant to popularize ocean science in the same way that COSMOS popularized astronomy.

It began when I was torrenting Vangelis albums to collect higher bitrate versions of the songs used in COSMOS and I discovered that they did an oceanic album also. One song in particular jumped out at me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrwSnc3y4O0

Almost immediately the outline of a television show following the COSMOS format but focused on the ocean fell into place, just from hearing the would-be intro theme. There are already plenty of deep sea docus that focus on wildlife, so this one would focus on technology; Specifically the history of man's attempts to visit the deep, to study it as a permanent resident, and how colonizing the ocean is a logical stepping stone to colonizing space (as it requires development of many of the same technologies, and it opens up an enormous wealth of resources we'll need to fund any serious expansion into space while meeting our food and energy needs here on Earth). Later episodes would show the very latest in cutting edge atmospheric diving exoskeletons, undersea science stations, amatuer efforts at building habitats (like Biosub 1 and 2) and future subsea technologies like Flexblue reactors, supercavitating military submersibles and liquid breathing.

The one thing that baffles me is who could possibly host this show? Cousteau was the official aqua-Sagan, and he's dead. Brian Cox is already the new space guy. Who would /sci/ cast?