/sci/ - Science & Math

>manganese_nodules.jpg

>GSF_explorer.png

>Illuminati conspiracy to cover up crash landed aliens on sea floor.tiff

Mad, can you give me a bunch of links on general undersea exploration/mining stuff? I must add them to my copypasta...

Asteroid mining is way more profitable and beneficial...well, it's almost too successful in a sense. There's speculation that it would be so successful that it would fuck up the economy due to rapidly increased supply that can't match the demand at all. Not even joking.

We've had the capability for decades, just hasn't been economic. Also, it's going to do incredible damage to seafloor ecosystems.. Many of the organisms down there grow incredibly slowly, there are tube worms in the Gulf of Mexico older than the USA.

Right now most of the robot crawlers used employ a sort of underwater bucket wheel excavator (Made famous on the internet by photos of that towering, tank treaded excavation machine)

The problem with this is that it creates enormous, lingering sediment plumes. The deposits are exposed and separate, they could easily be mined more precisely without polluting methods, but we have no robots capable of doing that yet.

>>3127729
>makes plans to setup deep sea subs to rent to green peace

>>3127754

>>Asteroid mining is way more profitable and beneficial

Actually even if gold bricks were lined up waist high on the surface of the moon, we could not return them to Earth at a profit. In order to profitably mine asteroids we will need a space elevator. It's still quite a ways off, and an awful lot of trouble to go to for minerals that can be found in abundance underwater.

>>3127738

>>Mad, can you give me a bunch of links on general undersea exploration/mining stuff?

There are some in the OP. If you mean in general, that's a huge request, and would take hours of compiling links.

>>3127740

Manganese nodules are actually ridiculously easy to get at. They're either literally laying around nearby vents or can be chipped/snapped off using specialized ROVs. Manganese is one of the minerals necessary for modern electric vehicle batteries.

>>3127751

>>Also, it's going to do incredible damage to seafloor ecosystems.

Supposing we did away with the bucket wheel excavation robots and instead put humans down there in rigid 1atm diving suits. The Conshelf 3 program proved human beings can perform deep sea labor more quickly and efficiently than industrial equipment, at least given the technology available at the time. I don't know if that's still the case, but humans using depth rated excavation tools could dig more precisely and create less in the way of sediment plumes.

Naturally, they would need a habitat to work from. Obviously I am biased towards this approach but depending on how strict environmental regulations become for undersea mining, it may become necessary. Imagine crews of deep sea miners in exoskeletons working from subsea mining stations. My body trembles with untold readiness.

your science is bunk. it only works when no one's looking

>>3127842

.....Wat.

>>3127822
why not use remotely operated bots with what ever is needed to not pollute? Getting people down there seems like a waste of money

I have an idea, buil pods, big ones, sink it under the sea, have people live in it, work for couple of days straight, go back to surface in stage to avoid the bend. Just like oil worker, 3 weeks on, one week off.

>>3127894

>>why not use remotely operated bots with what ever is needed to not pollute? Getting people down there seems like a waste of money

Robots with that capability don't exist yet. And actually, operating from a habitat is cheaper than paying the salaries of everyone onboard a support ship overhead for however long the operation takes. For instance, we use saturation divers operating out of a hybrid hatched diving bell for subsea rig repairs. The only reason a ship is involved is because the repairs don't take long enough to make it economical to use a habitat.

For long term mining operations, having a portable work habitat onsite and paying miners to live in it and work from it for a few months out of the year might in fact be cheaper than paying the salaries of everyone onboard a support ship for the same period. With a habitat, you can do the same job with far fewer people.

Pic related; The Conshelf 3 work habitat being lowered into place. It was designed to determine whether or not human laborers could complete tasks quickly and efficiently at depth. It was enormously successful. Unfortunately Cousteau, the project's designer, turned his back on human colonization of the sea in favor of environmental conservation much to the chagrin of the French oil industry which had bankrolled the project.

>>3127792


you obviously didnt get the point of my post (Mn nodules)


back in the 1960s or 1970s, there was a supposed expedition to mine manganese nodules from the sea floor.

the real point of the expedition was to locate and salvage a sunken Soviet submarine.


its a well documented Cold War history piece

you can find references to it by searching that 2nd thing I posted in that post.

>>3127916

>>I have an idea, buil pods, big ones, sink it under the sea, have people live in it, work for couple of days straight, go back to surface in stage to avoid the bend. Just like oil worker, 3 weeks on, one week off.

Precisely, except with a 1 atm habitat, their tissues would not saturate with nitrogen, and as a result they would never need to decompress. They could come straight to the surface without problems.

Ambient pressure habitats aren't advisable at the depths we're talking about here. Longterm exposure to that kind of air pressure has adverse effects on bone density, immune system, etc.

A deep sea mining station would preserve the same pressure inside as at the surface. Divers would exit through an airlock instead of a moon pool, and submersibles would mate to the station via docking rings, like on the ISS.

Pic related.

>>3127960

>>Something something cold war

Oh I know I just didn't really care about that so I talked about something that interests me instead. :3

>>3128038


you still dont get it bro.
the point:


they have had the technology to do sea floor mining since the 1960s.


furthermore, the diamond cartel(s) have been buying up tracts of ocean floor and coastal land since the 1980s so that they can dredge the silt that exits rivers like the Congo and others.

>>3127963

then your suit must be pretty strong to withstand the presurre different (a bit above 1 inside and whatever outside), or otherwise we might have problem since 1atm is just a bit under 10m of sea water.

>>3128063

>>they have had the technology to do sea floor mining since the 1960s.

We didn't know about hydrothermal vent deposits until 1977.

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/deepsea/level-2/geology/vents.html

All plans for seafloor mining at the time involved sifting through sand for trace metals, which turned out to be wildly uneconomical.

We're doing it now because vent deposits are pure enough and easy enough to get at that it makes sense to go after them, and the equipment necessary is inexpensive *enough* now that a tidy profit can be made.

>>3128071

disregard this, very I realized that very deep sea mining is very different from what we are talking in this thread. My bad.

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/seafloor-mining-a-new-frontier

>>Dr Wilson says record world demand for minerals now means the seafloor around Australia is increasingly being seen as a new frontier.
>>new frontier

My body is readier than ever before. ONWARD SEABROS, TO THE BLUE FRONTIER.

>>3128074
Just curious, what do you study OP?

>>3128111

Modeling. Like with Maya, lightwave and whatnot. Totally unrelated to my interest in subsea tech except that I can do 3d visualization of subs, habitats and whatnot.

That's part of what I'm doing for the Atlantica Expeditions, as well as building a prototype life support system for the 2012 dry run.

I do sometimes think I ought to pursue a degree in subsea engineering, though.

Sucks about all the eco-damage that is obviously going to be happening due to corporations being the ones doing this(particularly China and maybe Japan). Probably good for technology though.

Wait what

What is going on. What is this

>>3128161
Archmedian Dynasty. Now all we need to do is nuke the surface.

>>3128176

>>Archmedian Dynasty.

Fuck yes, I loved this game. Also the Aquanox series, although imo 2 was much better than 1.

But yeah, life imitates art. Subsea mining stations today, defense systems for them tomorrow, and soon the fullscale industrialization/settlement of the sea floor.

It's not just mines, btw; Siemens corporation has subsea power stations for getting electricity from the mainland to offshore rigs and subsea installations.

There's a lot of industrial activity in the sea already and it'll only increase with time. :3

>>3128161
youre twelve.

>>3128222
>>Industrial activity in the sea
>>Implying this is a good thing
>>Mon visage

this is too technical for me, I'm a computer guy. Are we bombing our ocean floors and digging for gold or what

Did we find Atlantis?

>>3128142

A strong background in 3D modeling is a nice advantage however you need to know how to engineer.

>>3128279

It's in the Pegasus galaxy, please do try to keep up.

>>3128279
We're scraping up thermal vents basically, for untold mineral riches worth trillions of dollars.

Some people are upset though, since we'll probably wipe out a lot of the life on the sea floor.

>>3128351

Well, thermal vents have some of the most fascinating life in the sea, so I'm conflicted about it too.

But the way I see it, we might strike a deal where research habitats could be placed on site and scientists could study the organisms for a while before moving out and letting the miners get on with excavation. They could even work alongside one another for a while as it'd take ages to fully excavate the vent deposits.

>>3128348
No, it was there, it is on Earth now.

Please do try to keep up.

Will this help with our upcoming rare earth metal problem?

>>3128460

Yeah, that's mostly what we're going after. However there's also plentiful gold, silver, platinum and various metals needed in EV batteries and fuel cells.

We can also mine rare earths on land but they're in smaller deposits spread out in the Earth's crust. Vent deposits have been purified by volcanic action and then forced up to the seafloor where they cooled, making for very large, pure deposits that don't take much work to get at. Often they're directly exposed, we've just got to grind 'em up so we can haul that shit topside.

bumped for good thread.