/sci/ - Science & Math

An example of the interconnected alternative.

In defense of separate modules without connecting tunnels, it's vastly easier and cheaper to accomplish with existing infrastructure and if you're going to go live underwater you shouldn't be the kind of person who doesn't want to get wet or who doesn't like to swim, right?

Benefits of the interconnected design include increased productivity and community interaction, but require the modules to be neutrally buoyant and suspended up off the sea bed; If they are too heavy and emplaced firmly on the ocean floor, their position cannot easily be adjusted for the process of attaching the tunnel from it to the module it's meant to connect to.

Separate habitats can also have exterior thrusters such that they can be moved from place to place like submarines. However the inconvenience of having to suit up and dive outside to reach an adjacent module is significant. It would be mitigated by the use of micro scuba cylinders like the Spare Air which can be popped in your mouth and used for short durations without the lengthy suiting up process usually required for a full size tank, but you'd still need to wear a wetsuit basically all the time. That would just be your casual day to day clothing as it's fine to get it wet and it dries quickly.

I'm gonna need a little more living space than that. Maybe it just looks smaller from the outside but that looks cramped as fuck.

>Mfw madsci thread

WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?

>>Flexblue undersea nuclear reactor and a gulf stream turbine

So what are you gonna do about all that waste heat coming from the nuclear power plant? Surely that's gonna increase water temperature, decreasing dissolved oxygen content and fucking up temperature sensitive coral reefs.

Gulf stream turbines are cool, but if you build enough of them, you will sap away enough power from the gulf stream to change the climate in areas like the United Kingdom.

>>Kona Blue fish farms
Why is a human settlement on the sea floor necessary for operation of a fish farm? It seems Kona blue manages just fine by operating one from the surface.

>>4567508

The problem is every additional square foot of air needs 64 pounds of ballast weight, just to cancel out it's buoyancy and ideally two or three times that to hold it firmly on the ocean floor. So habitats should be only as large as is necessary to fit all the amenities inside like a toilet, fridge, microwave and so on with a comfortable amount of room for moving about. We're used to excessively large homes, but there's no reason you can't live just as comfortably in one with only as much space as you'll actually use. >>4567552
>So what are you gonna do about all that waste heat coming from the nuclear power plant? Surely that's gonna increase water temperature, decreasing dissolved oxygen content and fucking up temperature sensitive coral reefs.

Aren't you meant to be called Mad Science Enthusiast? I'm watchin' you.

>>4567552
>Why is a human settlement on the sea floor necessary for operation of a fish farm?

It isn't. I think there's been a misunderstanding. It's a chicken and egg thing: You have a group of people who want to live underwater because it's cool, they pay for the colony, then they farm fish and do that other stuff to cover the overhead expenses like maintenance and consumables. Not the other way around.

>>4567569
>Aren't you meant to be called Mad Science Enthusiast? I'm watchin' you.

Yes sir I'm sorry sir. (._. )

Aren't you the guy doing the hamster colony?

>>4567640
Step 1 - Hampture.
Step 2 - ???
Step 3 - Undersea settlements.
Step 4 - Profit.

>>4567468

Having to swim over to someone's pod to fuck sort of ruins the mood. It would be a necessity for me to have interconnected dry tunnels. What happens if your generator blows out? Do you radio over to engineering and they have to swim over with their equipment? I would think that a small colony with thrive on at least partially some sort of barter system. Water always in the way would definitely impede trade, and in general human to human communication. If I'm in at the bottom of the ocean floor I sure don't want to spend it alone. Skype and the internet are not quite the same as human interaction.

>>4567787

My concern is how you actually attach tunnels between two modules. Seems easy until you really start to try to figure out how it would work in practice. You'd need flexible attachment rings at either end and possible some method of extending/contracting the tunnel's length.

I guess you could attach them while neutrally buoyant so they can be moved around easily, then once the tunnel is connected to both pods you add weight until they are firmly weighted down...?

This shit is a lot more complicated than it initially seems. We'll have the same problems building a base on Mars, too, but without the benefit of being able to make modules weightless as needed via buoyancy control.

>>4567787
>Having to swim over to someone's pod to fuck sort of ruins the mood

Picture her comin' out of the moonpool dripping wet and peeling off her wetsuit.

I agree with the overall idea but I think you might be wrong about this. Swimming makes people horny as fuck. Or it does for me anyway.

>it is considerably easier to establish such a settlement one habitat at a time rather than lowering a single pre-connected structure into place all at once.
I'm unaware if this has been tried before, but lowering individual modules and then connecting them underwater would be easier than lowering one large structure and yet wouldn't require inhabitants to swim everywhere.

One design that I'd find particularly interesting is a large "town square" module being the first segment lowered, followed by many individual "home" modules for individuals and perhaps their families that would be connected to the "town square" module.

>>4567818
>lowering individual modules and then connecting them underwater

Yes, but this is more difficult than it sounds. Try to do it on a table using two large objects as habitats and a toilet paper tube or something similar as the tunnel. If they are both already emplaced, how do you get the tunnel into place between them?

>>4567566
Why would increasing the water temperature decrease the solubility of oxygen? An increase in temperature typically increases solubility.

>>4567828

Don't ask me, I didn't say it. I quoted someone else who did and forgot to reply to that part. :I

THE BEST TIME OF THE DAY HAS FINALLY ARRIVED

A MAD SCI THREAD.

>>4567823
A new module would be lowered to a predetermined location that aligns with the access points of previously lowered modules such that there is only a small gap between the two modules. An extendable tunnel would bridge the remaining gap. The edges of the interface would be sealed and the tunnel would be drained.

>>4567848
IT'S 2 IN THE MORNING WHERE I LIVE!

FFFFFUUUUUUUUU-

I have to balance my urge to post in these threads with my need for sleep.

>>4567850

Sounds workable but there's the problem of how to make an extendable tunnel that is still water tight.

The Atlantica Expeditions solution is that each module is hovered into position while neutrally buoyant and attached to an unused docking port. Once attached the supports underneath the habitat are unfolded so it can stand by itself up off the ocean floor when weight is added to secure it in place.

This works with relatively small modules but it would grow increasingly awkward with size.

Pic: Two NWE habs docked to a hub in the manner described.

>>4567858
It's two in the morning for me as well.

Technically it's a new day.

>>4567863
>Technically it's a new day.

The dawn of a new day indeed my friend. A new era of exploration and settlement of all frontiers. Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise. A morning filled with four hundred billion suns: the rising of the Milky Way.

>>4567872
Don't excite me like that, especially when I know fully well that I'll be dead before I see any kind of real exploration.

>>4567879
>Don't excite me like that, especially when I know fully well that I'll be dead before I see any kind of real exploration.

There's some in that image. Cameron's been to the Challenger Deep. Soon we'll all be able to follow along in theaters, in high def 3D Imax. And Richard Branson will soon follow, covering ten times as much ground in his high speed hydrobatic sub.

You were born at precisely the right time to witness man's exploration, industrialization and settlement of the ocean.

>>4567859
An interesting problem...

I've got some ideas, but I'm no engineer. It gives me a new appreciation for the international space station. Maybe I'll try and find the design for the seals used in space some time tomorrow.

>>4567894
>You were born at precisely the right time to witness man's exploration, industrialization and settlement of the ocean.
If I'm ever in your neck of the woods I'd like to buy you a drink.

. What type of skills is your group looking for? Skills that someone could train for in my free time that is. Personally I'd prefer at least startrek like Jeffreys tubes between the structures.

>>4567934

You do need to be scuba certified, but as for relevant skills they don't even need to be ocean related as there's a lot of other stuff we need like a full time web design/administrator guy.

>>4567894
>There's some in that image. Cameron's been to the Challenger Deep. Soon we'll all be able to follow along in theaters, in high def 3D Imax. And Richard Branson will soon follow, covering ten times as much ground in his high speed hydrobatic sub.

These are just dinky little overpriced toys, toys for the ultra-rich. Like space tourism. It saddens me when people point to such things and say 'everything is going along just fine'.

It ain't over until the fat lady sings. Thinking everything was 'going just fine' is why humanity failed to grasp the past opportunity for permanent human settlement beyond Earth.

I'm going to keep pushing like my life depends on it, until 10 years after the fat lady sings.

>>4567941
>These are just dinky little overpriced toys, toys for the ultra-rich.

Except, y'know, they are donating them for scientific use after the Challenger Deep stunt. For the first time in history the NOAA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and other ocean science outfits will have access to not one but four full-ocean depth subs.

>I'm going to keep pushing like my life depends on it, until 10 years after the fat lady sings.

Me too bro, me too. But take pleasure in the moments of progress. This is one of them. The sudden explosion of available next gen subs is going to be a huge boon for oceanic exploration and for the first time since the sixties there are actual undersea colonies in the works. All but one are for the rich, but for the rest of us there's Atlantica.

>>4567468
>Would the design of a colony on the ocean floor meaningfully affect your decision as to whether or not to live there?

I guess I'd want it to have walls and a pressurized hull, unlike all the current options. <span class="math"> oh~yes~I~did[/spoiler]

Why not build the tubes connecting the sides of the modules in stead ofconnecting the tubes directly between them?

>>4567955
This would be sensible. Put a central truss along the bed, attach modules as time goes on.

Even a modular structure like the ISS' would be a better alternative, really.

>>4567958

Actually, in theory you could do it exactly like the ISS. Modules only weigh as much as you want them to; If you ballast them to be precisely neutral buoyancy you could have a "seastation" hovering at any depth you like, slowly rotating, drifting along the gulf stream with neither the surface nor the ocean floor in view. Just hanging silently in a glowing blue void.

Now, the seastation design is not for me. I like oceanfloor terrain, coral and plants. But to float in a seemingly endless abyss like that seems extremely fuckin' serene.

>>4567960
>Just hanging silently in a glowing blue void.
I don't know why, but that sounds scary as hell to me.

I got no problem with the surface or the bottom, but hovering in between always gives me some kind of acrophobic attack.

>>4567468

>However this would mean that to visit any other structure you'd need to drop out of the moon pool and swim to the moon pool of the other habitat.

I love being in the water, so I wouldn't see that as a negative experience, although I have no to tell how old it would get over time.

>Secondly, what economic system best serves such a settlement?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

What about huge nautilus-style submarines that work as towns or at least villages?

I'm not very bright but this looks like a better idea.

>>4568000

That's basically what a seastation/cityship is. See: >>4567961

What you're leaving out is that you'd have to shower every time you entered another hab, to get the salt water off. Doing that multiple times a day every time you enter a new area will become tedious and intolerable very quickly.

Also, having to put everything in a water tight case when you take stuff between habs. Dry tunnels are just way more practical and I don't think all that hard to implement.

Mad Scientist you're american right?

Where are the ideal waters in your opinion, to settle down into and live permanently?

You know, like good water temps year round, quality food and good weather above (if that is necessary I dunno) for wave power generation.

What materials would be used at a shallow depth?

>>4568019
>Where are the ideal waters in your opinion, to settle down into and live permanently? You know, like good water temps year round, quality food and good weather above (if that is necessary I dunno) for wave power generation.

Continental shelf, equatorial waters, on the very edge of the gulf stream. Below 200 feet, weather above doesn't influence you no matter how violent, so that's not a factor.

>What materials would be used at a shallow depth?

At a shallow depth? Even plastic will do. If it's ambient pressure, it doesn't need to resist any pressure differential because there is none. The only stresses are upward forces due to buoyancy. You can even make your habitat inflatable. Pic related.

I should add that ambient pressure habs need to be at 50 feet or less because while you can go as deep as 115 fet on normal air for short durations without oxygen toxicity problems, any deeper than 50 feet for long durations and it becomes problematic. That's why Aquarius is up on legs at 63 feet deep with the moon pool at exactly 50 feet.

In water that shallow, you need to be somewhere that severe weather won't destroy your habitat. Sticking it among islands is the best option as they naturally break up the currents that storms cause. That's why Rougerie's concept undersea colony was situated among the Virgin Islands.

>science
>using feet
>2012

I've always loved water so having to swim from habitat to habitat wouldn't be to bad.

But wouldn't a moon pool in every building make them humid as hell? Also, do underwater buildings need air conditioning or heaters more so then land buildings?

>>4568019

madsci is not american you dumb shit.

>>4568044
Settle down nerd

>>4568042
>But wouldn't a moon pool in every building make them humid as hell?

Yes, which is why the section of the habitat containing the moon pool must be separated by a hatch. It doesn't have to resist pressure, just prevent the spread of humidity.

>Also, do underwater buildings need air conditioning or heaters more so then land buildings?

Yes, and with clever design your air conditioner can also condense water out of the air, dehumidifying the interior. The idea is, you do this in the main living area, and keep the moon pool room separate. That way it doesn't have to work overtime to compensate for the spread of humid air from the moon pool surface.

Aquarius does this; The "wet porch" is cube shaped, because it was easier to fabricate and that section never needs to resist any pressure differential. It's separated from the rest of the habitat by an airlock, which is where the main cylindrical hull begins. Everything after that point is one contiguous pressure vessel that can be sealed up and slowly reduced in pressure, so the crew can live normally in comfort with full access to all the habitat amenities even while decompressing. They just can't access the wet porch which is outside of the airlock and in a permanently ambient pressure area.

Pic related.

Even the smallest habitats maintain a division between the moon pool room and the living area. That was one of the most valuable design lessons learned from the first gen 1960s undersea labs, which lacked this barrier. Without it the interior becomes intolerably humid. You can't sleep, you can't work, it's miserable. And if you have heating/air conditioning very little extra equipment is needed to use it to condense moisture out of the air and keep it dry, you just need a door between the living space and the moon pool area to keep the humidity from spreading faster than the condensing system can remove it.

>>4567468
>underwater nuclear reactor
how did you solve the issues of... heat without the cheats that submarines do I'm curiously.

>Secondly, what economic system best serves such a settlement? Assume most employment comes from a large cluster of undersea fish farms of the sort built today by Kona Blue, as well as a Flexblue undersea nuclear reactor and a gulf stream turbine plus various wave power installations.

I think it's more reasonable to assume most employment will come from some primary industry: tourism or mining. The colony obviously won't be self sustaining for a long time; fuel for the nuclear reactor, building materials, clothing, amenities would need to be imported and presumably the initial investment would need to be repaid.

In which case the economic system would likely be the same as in most frontier industrial settlements, corporate central planning.

>>4568054

>on /sci/
>insulting someone else with the taunt "nerd"

>>4567468

>Would the design of a colony on the ocean floor meaningfully affect your decision as to whether or not to live there?

Can I grow a garden in it.
Can I fish in it: Rod, Bobber, hook, the little doodle bug at the end.

Really, my biggest fear in an undersea colony or space whatever is I wouldn't have access to the sorts of mundane shit that make me feel "naturey". Like, I'm mostly just concerned we'd be living in small cubicles with no sort of "nature" stuff to do.

Gardening of any kind is incredible charming and endearing.

And There's nothing I love more then bobber fishing in a city water channel- even if it's just for a disgusting carp.
It means a lot to me.

>Would this be tolerable or is it a necessity that the colony include dry tunnels connecting the various modules?

Yes and no.

Aren't there numerous health issues with being wet all the time?

I think maybe my main issue with the whole deal is I'd like some sort of "illusion" of dry land or I'd go batshit...but.

Do you think there'd be underwater equivilents to do? Or amazing underwater biodomes/green houses?

>>4568079

>Aquaponics

Make it an aquaponics system in the "park".

And make it so I can fish in it.

Then I'll join.
I can have a one room bloc for all I care- it'd be a blast.

>>4568067
Store it and reuse it, or dissipate it through the sea floor.

>>4568067
>>4568089


I'm sure there's a million and one uses for hot water.

Or is this a nuclear waste thingy issue?

Cause I'm pretty sure there's things living in the marinar trench that EAT nuclear waste.

WHAT ABOUT THE SHARKS

A way to do it which would have some notable advantages and, not mentioned here yet, would be:

create each unit with a moonpool, and use these as expansion placeholders for tunnels traveling between main and subunits. once the bridge expansion is built,connected, and mostly sealed, the bridge would be purged of water (if using an ambient pressure enclosure). the tunnels would be standardized and modulated so that one could build connect and disconnect tunnels between moonpools. also worstcase scenario the tunnel has a leak big enough that, the tunnel fills with water, but the unit/subunit are still dry (because the moonpools and tunnels are lower than the floor of the building).


This would have the advantage that people living in the underwater settlement could build their own expansion of the settlement without having to rely on external machinery, (only needing scubagear and waterproof drills for bolting pieces together)

I'd like to know what you think about this method.
Also, realistically, how much would a single underwater house cost, once the manufacturing of is optimized I estimate that it would be comparable to the cost of a a house (maybe even less)

>>4568164

Seems workable, actually.

>Also, realistically, how much would a single underwater house cost

Ambient pressure: $35,000 to $50,000. 1 atmosphere: $150,000 to $250,000. This assumes interior volume and furnishings equivalent to a modern mobile home/RV.

>>4568107

This actually.

What would garauntee our safety swimming inbetween homes?

Like, what will keep away sharks, barracudas, tuna fish, and the threat of simply being carried away in the tides?

And what about weak swimmers?

>>4569363

What guarantees your safety against traffic accidents, muggers, etc. on the surface?

Nothing's perfect. It's a question of whether you want to live underwater badly enough to risk those things.

>>4569384
I do. I really do.

>>4569384
>traffic accidents
Signal lights, road signs, street lights, visible lane markers, sidewalks, barriers, ect.

>muggers
Street lights, random police patrols, other citizens in the area

Could have a kind of chain link pathway between the pods. It's not going to stop a charging shark but it'll stop one from just casually swimming up to you. That and make sure you don't drift too much with the tide.

>>4568164
You see those. I want one of those.