/sci/ - Science & Math

Also, original content fresh out of the oven

Disturbing sea life would be bad for us because it's the backbone of the ecosystem.

I don't know much about deep sea mining, but shallow water mining already gets us Deepwater Horizon, not to mention trawling, so.

>>4638240
>Disturbing sea life would be bad for us because it's the backbone of the ecosystem.

So it kills them? That's what "disturb" means?

Many people have been brainwashed into thinking that preserving the wildlife is more important than economic growth.

>>4638245
0/10

>>4638253
And here is one of them.

>>4638243
Or fucks up the ecosystem for them, forces them to migrate, yeah, stuff like that. It's not a minor thing.

>>4638245
>Many people have been brainwashed into thinking that preserving the wildlife is more important than economic growth.

Well, in some cases it's true. Case in point, 1 in 4 worldwide depends on seafood for all of the protein in their diet. Most edible fish stocks need coral reefs to breed. Corals die, edible fish stocks die, people starve. Usually the same kinds of people who work in the overseas factories we outsource everything to. That's bad news bears.

>2012
>Shitting where you eat
>I slammity jammity doo

Oh, and re: nothing relying on rare earth mud, the ocean floor is basically covered in a layer of microbial (and occasionally, animal) corpses that tons of things feed on.

>>4638259

Stupid idiot, it doesn't matter if people die, as long as the economy's growing.

>>4638267

Okay, now we're onto something. Is thee a specific type of this shit that lives only on rare earth mud that the rest of the oceanic ecosystem needs? Or if it's more or less the same everywhere, what's the harm in vacuuming up small spots of it here and there?

>>4638259
>1 in 4 worldwide depends on seafood for all of the protein in their diet

And those people rely on coastal fishing, so it's hardly a problem if you mine deeper.

>>4638284
>And those people rely on coastal fishing, so it's hardly a problem if you mine deeper.

Totes, I was talking specifically about coral decline. That's a serious issue, hence why we've got an undersea base specifically for studying it.

>>4638281
Unfortunately I'm not a marine biologist, so I don't know. But as a very, very general rule, I assume that driving boreholes through things causes bad ripple effects in the surrounding ecosystem, until I learn otherwise.

I (the person who's been responding here, I guess) don't really have any objection to just the concept of deep sea mining, but it's difficult for me to see it working out, in practice, in an ecologically sustainable way. Of course, the way we get energy now isn't sustainable either, so, to cut this short, I think that if you want sustainable energy you'd be better finding a political solution (e.g. reorganizing how we, as a species, gather and distribute power) than a scientific solution (more areas to strip-mine). Sorry this isn't very /sci/ related.

>>4638236
What's the point of that picture? Rich folks engaging in an escapist fantasy under the sea?

>>4638318
>What's the point of that picture? Rich folks engaging in an escapist fantasy under the sea?

Rich people escapism put resorts and hotels on Hawaii. People who worked there needed someplace to live, so they built towns. Their kids needed an education so they built schools. And so on and so forth with shops, hospitals, fire and police departments, etc. etc. etc.

When wealth concentrates someplace new, civilization grows around it.

>>4638330
That's a rather oversimplified view of what happened to Hawaii.

Mad,

I don't see the value in an expensive car, big house, or jewellery. Not purchasing such things will leave me with money I will not know what to do with.

When will I be able to rent one of those underwater container crate things? I like the idea of being stranded in a small area (like in bottle episodes), and I therefore think spending a few days in a tiny room at the bottom of the ocean would be interesting.

>>4638330
>And then we found out Mad scientist was Andrew Ryan all along

>>4638342
>When will I be able to rent one of those underwater container crate things?

You can't rent the small ambient pressure habs, only buy them. $35,000 unfurnished, $50,000 with kitchenette, entertainment console, etc.

The permanent colony will offer apartment cylinders for $250,000 to purchase outright (not including expenses involved in transporting it to the site, deploying and then mating it to the colony hub) or $1097 monthly which includes air, electricity and water but not internet.

>>4638340
>That's a rather oversimplified view of what happened to Hawaii.

However, it's a valid model and Hawaii isn't the only example. Pic related, a city built in the desert without any resource extraction based economic rationale.

>>4638366
Las Vegas had better not be your model for sustainable development, holy shit.

>>4638372
yeah, Vegas is Malthus' wet dream

>>4638372
>Las Vegas had better not be your model for sustainable development, holy shit.

Hahaha, no. That's a different topic entirely. I'm only using it as additional proof that you can get grand, whimsical things like underwater colonies funded and that the average person's appetite for that sort of thing means that these projects can financially sustain themselves following completion. The market for that isn't huge, but there's no underwater colony at all right now and only two large resorts under development. If we build it, they will come.

As for the environmental aspect it's shockingly clean. Internal combustion engines don't work underwater, every vehicle and tool must be battery electric, all colony power comes from a gigantic gulf stream turbine and every colony structure acts as an artificial reef thereby enhancing the local ecosystem.

>>4638366
More to the point - it's really not. The history of Hawaii is not "it was empty and then rich people showed up and retroactively recreated Bioshock", by any stretch of the imagination.

>>4638378
Oh, that sounds... not bad. Hopefully you can find some real biologists to tell you what you'll be doing to sea life.

Shit, now I want to life in a whale corpse.

mad, every miner knows that there's a pervasive dislike of mining in western culture.

media and education concentrate on environmental harm, ignoring the fact that western civilization will collapse quickly without mining.

we in the mining biz are used to it. we do what we do as cleanly as possible under existing laws and best practice, and we ignore the bitches that are only alive to bitch because we mine for them.

mining the seabed will happen as it proves economically viable. I expect one day it'll suddenly be where all the jobs are. Environmentalists need metal too.

>>4638388
>mining the seabed will happen as it proves economically viable.

http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Home.asp
http://www.neptuneminerals.com/
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/china-gets-isba-nod-for-deep-sea-mining-in-indian-ocean/
146011/on
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T110107004586.htm
http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/deep-sea-mining-india-takes-the-plunge/170088.html

Now, you might be wondering "How can they be turning a profit given the extra infrastructure, capital and energy needed to extract deep sea ore compared to ore in terrestrial mines?"

The little known reason why deep sea mining is taking off and makes business sense is that the ore in deep sea mineral deposits is seven times higher grade than what is found anywhere else. It is incredibly rich compared to what we're accustomed to.

>>4638233
>are there any legit environmental objections to deep sea mining?
I have the same concerns about deep sea mining as I do about the rainforest destruction. We know very little about the environment on the ocean floor. There may be some revolutionary scientific discoveries to be mad there. The life there may be drawing toxins out of the vent water that may build up in the ocean. The life around an individual vent may be unique and may have medical applications. Does each vent have unique life? What is the diversity of life?
>rare earth mud? Nothing relies on that.
Prove that first. No mining company that I have heard of would be prepared to spend the money to do the research. Would you trust a mining company to do objective research on the implications of their actions when there is gold to be found? The study required to answer all the questions may take years or decades for each vent.
I do not trust any mining company to do the necessary study.

>>4638419
>Would you trust a mining company to do objective research on the implications of their actions when there is gold to be found?

I would, but then I'm employed by mining companies to do exactly that.

if there were no laws or people enforcing them then it'd be a different story. However it's cheaper to do the study than to pay the fine for not.

>>4638418
> It is incredibly rich compared to what we're accustomed to.
source would be fantastic
also an explanation of 'grade'

>>4638388
>media and education concentrate on environmental harm, ignoring the fact that western civilization will collapse quickly without mining.
Western culture would collapse a lot faster if our environment was fucked. We stop mining from discharging their mercury into the rivers now days because we consider the environmental harm a greater danger than running short of gold. And for good reason you will die with mercury in your drinking water but you can get along fine without a giant stockpile of gold sitting in a vault somewhere.

For things like the vast number of manganese nodules, if I recall correctly, the only reason they haven't be mined is that it isn't economical enough to do so. Figuring out how to effectively extract would also take time/work, but I wouldn't see too many problems about this after you're done.

My biggest worry as a student of marine sciences would be the deep sea ecosystem. There's actually tons of stuff that live down in the sediment/oozes than 'small organisms,' many of which, not surprisingly, exist nowhere else. They have value, not only in what they do for the environment [ranging from useful and affects surface ecosystems to we don't know yet, but it's there and it probably does something], but also gives us a better understanding about the evolution of life, which then gives us a better understanding of our own evolutionary history. Also things like possible chemicals for cancer cures and whatever else comes from possible research.

>>4638429
>cont.

I think if you could properly survey the locations from where you'd be harvesting [nothing notable/unique/no need to conserve], then it would be fine to do so, esp. considering how vast the deep sea is. My worry then would be the extent of these 'small spots' once the companies who would fund this discover how profitable it might become. Basically, what >>4638298 this person said:
>I (the person who's been responding here, I guess) don't really have any objection to just the concept of deep sea mining,
>but it's difficult for me to see it working out, in practice, in an ecologically sustainable way.
>Of course, the way we get energy now isn't sustainable either, so, to cut this short, I think that if you want sustainable energy you'd be better finding a political solution
>(e.g. reorganizing how we, as a species, gather and distribute power) than a scientific solution (more areas to strip-mine).

Also, when talking about deep sea, it better be 'deep' sea. No reefs, nothing near coastal regions, nothing above the abyssal plains level of oceans.

Also, what >>4638419 said as well.

The main concern I see is, when it comes to deep sea mining, we could destroy ecosystems we dont even know about. We dont know what we would be messing with, and would therefore be unable to predict the repercussions of doing so.

For example, deep sea trawling has ripped up a number of deep sea coal fields. We've already seen this cause major issues in the communities that depended on the black coral. We didnt even know these communities existed before we messed them up.

>>4638427
>Source

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/2012/01/04/deep-sea-explorers-stumble-on-antarctic
-lost-world/

>"But deep sea hydrothermal vents seem to be particularly good at concentrating metals. Chown points out that at the Solwara Vent off Papua New Guinea, ore deposits may contain 7% copper by weight. Ore at copper mines on land contain about a tenth of that."

>Explanation of grade

Percentage of the total mass that is made up of the specific mineral you'e after.

>>4638428
I'm not saying the environmental improvements we've enacted are bad in any way.

I'm saying that without mining civilization will collapse.

>>4638422
Really.
How many tons of toxic mining waist are being dumped each year in the Amazon?
What have you done about it?
This is where the mining company can at least potentially be observed and their effects measured. Can that level of monitoring be done on the ocean floor? Who will pay for the independent monitoring?

>>4638441
>How many tons of toxic mining waist are being dumped each year in the Amazon?
yes, I regulate the entire world.

you seem to have overlooked my caveat regarding laws.
without laws the environment gets raped.
with laws the mining companies follow the laws.

you might be too slow for this conversation...

>>4638441
>Can that level of monitoring be done on the ocean floor? Who will pay for the independent monitoring?

this is already done with the oil and gas industries. the mining companies pay in a manner of speaking, but they just pass the costs of the oversight on to the consumer.

The exciting thing about mining undersea for me is in-situ ballast manufacture.

A really bizarre thing that isn't commonly known abut putting living space underwater is that a huge chunk of the expense is in making it heavy enough to sink. Every cubic foot of air needs 64lbs of ballast weight just to make it neutrally buoyant and two or three times more to securely emplace it on the ocean floor. This sounds trivial, after all pig iron ingots and other bulk ballast materials are cheap. But transporting them over land is not. You've got to move the habitat and the ballast, usually separately, via railroads because nothing else can carry the load, with cranes at either end for getting it on and off, and eventually putting it into the water. Then you tow it out to the site while it's floating, then boat small loads of ballast out a few at a time and start filling the ballast containers so the habitat will sink.

It's a huge pain in the ass that is totally overcome if you can use waste materials from mining as your ballast, and manufacture the habitats underwater. It's kind of the same rationale as mining in space in order to avoid having to push the product up out of Earth's gravity well, only in reverse.

>>4638452
I dunno. Mining is a completely different thing from milling, refining and smelting.

do you think the final steps of production will be carried out at sea? It seems like it'd be safer and cheaper to ship the mined ores to coastal refineries.

>>4638454
>It seems like it'd be safer and cheaper to ship the mined ores to coastal refineries
>ship
Slurry tubes all the way, my man.

>>4638454
>do you think the final steps of production will be carried out at sea? It seems like it'd be safer and cheaper to ship the mined ores to coastal refineries.

Right now most major players are putting the refineries on large ships. This cuts down on the amount they have to ship, so they send back only refined ore and not a shitload of worthless rock too.

>>4638452
>ballast
Why don't you use water?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Why can't you lift miscellaneous bottom muck with air-filled bags(or a pump) and use that to fill the tanks?
I'm sure there's a reason, but I can't figure out other reason than volume.

> we don't need to care about the ecology!
kiss your fucking fishery businesses goodbye, retards

mining underwater can be done safely and cleanly, but doing that is expensive. companies hate paying for expenses that they can get away with not paying for by being the scum of the earth. so unless the CEO literally has a gun pointed at their fucking brain, they're going to fuck around, cut corners, and create more environmental disasters that will devistate other industries (ex: fishing, artificial pearls, etc)

>>4638458
>Why don't you use water?
>
>Sorry, couldn't resist.

>>4638459
>kiss your fucking fishery businesses goodbye, retards

You mean undersea farm, right?

http://www.kona-blue.com/

>>4638459
fisheries are already fucked because...
surprise!
fishing.

Because I mean, at the rate corals are dying if we don't start manually meeting the survival needs of edible fish stocks with enclosed open ocean farms like these, seafood's off the menu.

>>4638444
>without laws the environment gets raped.
What laws govern the open ocean. FFS we can't stop whales being killed or put an international moratorium on fishing almost extinct species.
>with laws the mining companies follow the laws.
Really. How many citations do you require of mining companies breaking the law. Even in enlightened countries like the US substandard pipelines poorly constructed waist dams...

>>4638437
GODDMAN

Mines are fucking nasty. There's all kinds of toxins that come out of mines that will literally fuck you up for life.

Here, read about this and ponder the ramifications with regard to oceanic mining and the environment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit

>>4638478
the fun part about seafloor mining is that you are already at the bottom, there is nowhere for the crud to go except back down.

>>4638481
Yyyyyyyyeah, see the problem is that you're fucking UNDERWATER. Any toxic solutes you dig up are out and about in the ocean now, and there's no getting them back.

You thought the mercury content in our seafood was bad? Just wait until mines start unleashing untold quantities of arsenic and cadmium into the ecosystem.

>>4638486
>You thought the mercury content in our seafood was bad? Just wait until mines start unleashing untold quantities of arsenic and cadmium into the ecosystem.

There are some substances on the ocean floor like methane hydrates and clathrates that we MUST mine for the sake of the environment, because not doing so means allowing an uncontrolled release:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304142240.htm

>>4638489
Or maybe we could not heat the globe to the tipping point.
Anyway there is no possibility that we could capture all of that methane. We would have to mine millions of acres.

>>4638493
>Or maybe we could not heat the globe to the tipping point.
That is the same as telling an entire country of people to stop breathing.

>>4638493
Millions of acres is not as much as it sounds.

>>4638493

>Or maybe we could not heat the globe to the tipping point.

Hahaha, NICE. But for serious, lookin' for realistic solutions here

>Or maybe we could not heat the globe to the tipping point.
>Anyway there is no possibility that we could capture all of that methane. We would have to mine millions of acres.

So let's get to it.

>>4638236

>>4638501
Realistically the task is utterly impossible. It is just silly to think that it is even possible to stop the methane release from the melting tundra let alone areas far larger and covered with water.
>>4638494
The task of preventing climate change now is simple compared to the task of cleaning up the mess in 100 years.

>>4638517
>Realistically the task is utterly impossible. It is just silly to think that it is even possible to stop the methane release from the melting tundra let alone areas far larger and covered with water.
You are silly.
We just poke a couple dozen pipes into those pockets and suck em up enough that said methan explosions can't happen from pressure loss.

>>4638517
>Realistically the task is utterly impossible.

>2012
>Humanity consumes all oil in a few centuries
>You think we can't consume the comparatively small deposits of methane hydrate in under one century
>I blimpity pimpity poo

>>4638478
without mines you wouldn't be alive to bitch about mines.

personally I think mines and bitches like you should both be gone, but I don't make the rules.

Second issue; The US Navy is working on a new type of submarine with supercav propulsion. It's basically a rocket engine but that uses sea water as half of the reaction to prolong the burn. A small portion of the exhaust is redirected to the nosecone where it forcibly creates a bubble that the rocket flies inside of, so that it does't touch the water. The bubble clears the way but the water behind it is literally forced into vapor by the dramatic drop in pressure behind the vehicle as it flies. The result is vastly lower drag, and known speeds of up to 300mph for torpedos, and 115mph for the Navy's 100 foot prototype supercav sub.

The concern is that the tremendous sound will prevent whales from communicating. It initially sounds goofy but whales need to hear each others' calls over long distances in order to mate. This is the main argument holding back what is basically undersea warp drive. Thoughts?

Dagoth's fish people will eat you and use your skin to pass as humans.

Just to explain what a big deal this would be for subsea travel: Even at the lowballed declassified speed, which as per Navy policy is way under the actual and still classified speed, a supercav sub could travel across the entire Atlantic ocean in 18 hours.

>>4638530
>>4638526
>Implying they are not spread in a thin layer over millions of square kilometres that is covered in ice part of the year.
>Implying that millions of square kilometres of Arctic and Antarctic seabed won't have to be dredged in the next couple of decades.
It is just retarded to think this is a solution. Can you imagine the expense and environmental devastation of extracting the methane from the tundra. Now multiply that by hundreds of times.

Fuck the deep, lets discover the extended mind.

>>4638587
>Fuck the deep, lets discover the extended mind.

The two are more intimately related than you know.

"Of the 70 undersea labs that have existed worldwide between 1962 and 1980, all but a few made the study of human social interaction and psychological health in confined spaces a major component of their research agenda. Perhaps the most famous was Tektite, an unusually large station built by General Electric and deployed in the Virgin Islands first in 1969 and then again in 1970. The name refers to a type of meteor fragment that lands in the ocean, an appropriate name for a program intended to use a relatively confined underwater living space to study crew dynamics over a two month period in preparation for extended space missions.

Accordingly, crew mixtures were varied and often chosen primarily to satisfy scientific curiosity about the long duration viability of different kinds of pairings, including the historic first all woman undersea team dismissively labelled the "aqua belles" by the media of the day. Questionnaires plying into each crew member's feelings about various exercises, meals and events as well as what they thought of their comrades were compulsory although in some cases morale broke down to the extent that these questionnaires were ignored entirely and two crews even became overtly hostile to topside support."

"Later interpretation of their behaviors led the psychologists involved to conclude that they felt that they lived in what was essentially a different world, that the stresses and dangers they faced on a day to day basis were so alien to ordinary surface experience that they felt topside support could not understand their situation and was not in a position to issue them orders or advice. Topside support, in their view, lacked the direct experience with how day to day life underwater worked and therefore couldn't come to informed conclusions as to what changes if any were needed.

Reportedly the pace of life slowed, they became intimately well adapted to their environment and began to think of themselves as legitimate inhabitants of the sea. It felt as if they belonged there, a closely knit social bond formed and everyone from the surface whether issuing orders or bringing supplies became an unwelcome outsider in their eyes. This could be compared, speculatively, to the tendency for colonies to rebel against their founding nations and seek sovreignty. The increased complexity and stress of life underwater or on Mars with a pseudo-familial group in confined quarters may well accelerate this process, and magnify the effect."

The health effects of exposure to cosmic rays are, by now, relatively well known. Less well known is the full extent to which deep saturation affects humans. The deepest saturation ‘dive’ took place on land in a hyperbaric chamber as part of an experiment conducted by Comex in 1992. A diver was gradually acclimated to the air pressure equivalent of exposure to ocean water at 2,300 feet.[4] Just as cosmic ray exposure primarily affects the CNS, so too does exposure to high pressure. Apollo era astronauts suffer from cataracts as a result of their radiation exposure on the way to the moon as well as other sensory defects, impaired motor control, and even marked behavioral changes as non-trivial amounts of brain cells are destroyed by ionizing radiation.

The undersea equivalent is Nitrogen Narcosis, or “rapture of the deep” and the wide variety of different symptoms that manifest themselves with increasing depth. The shallow water symptoms are actually extremely pleasant; At 50 feet, considered to be the maximum safe depth for breathing a normal air mixture for long periods (115 feet being the short term limit for scuba diving) the effects are similar to intoxication. This is why the shallow water effects of NN are often called “The Martini Effect”. Aquarius aquanauts experience this for their entire stay and report a greater sense of wellbeing, deeper and more restful sleep, a propensity to laugh at even unfunny jokes and a diminished capacity for aggression. This explains in part why undersea living is so attractive and addictive to those who have experienced it and why some might wish to do so fulltime. The health effects, such as a tripled rate of healing and more restful sleep are attributable mainly to the higher oxygen content in the compressed air, the rest owe to the effects of higher air pressure on the permeability of neurons, but more on that later.

The symptoms of water pressure at 33-100 feet include mild impairment of performance of unpracticed tasks, mildly impaired reasoning and mild euphoria.

Symptoms at 100-165 feet include delayed response to visual and auditory stimuli, diminished reasoning and memory capacity (to a greater extent than motor functions), calculation errors and wrong choices, obsessive fixation on a single and sometimes arbitrary idea, over-confidence and an increased sense of well-being, laughter and a tendency to talk much more than usual.

Symptoms at 165-230 feet include sleepiness, impaired judgment, confusion, hallucinations, severe delay in response to signals/instructions, dizziness, uncontrollable laughter/hysteria, and occasionally terror.

Symptoms at 230-300 feet include poor concentration and mental confusion, stupefaction with further decreased dexterity and judgment, greater loss of memory and increased excitability.

Symptoms at 300 feet and beyond include severe hallucinations, increased intensity of vision and hearing, sense of impending blackout, euphoria, dizziness, manic or depressive states, a sense of levitation, disorganization of the sense of time, changes in facial appearance, and in some cases unconsciousness or death. All of this assumes a normal atmospheric mixture, hence the use of alternative breathing gases like hydrox, heliox, nitrox and trimix for different depth ranges, requiring very deep dives to transition from one breathing gas to the next on descent and ascent.

Alternative atmospheric mixtures were also tried in Skylab (such as a 5psi 100% oxygen atmosphere) but lacking the frightening symptoms of saturation diving that are alleviated with alternative breathing gases for the most part but which return in force at depths in excess of 1,000 feet. It is not yet known what effects await deep saturation divers below the 2,300 foot limit, except to say that at very high pressures the firing threshold of neurons is diminished, possibly to a level that would make any sort of higher brain function impossible. The fmri image of that diver’s brain would make for a spectacular lightshow, and it is difficult to imagine the powerful madness he would be experiencing. It is because of this that ocean exploration is sometimes said to be more difficult in certain ways that space exploration, and also why the future focus of deep diving corporations has been the development of rigid 1atm diving exoskeletons like the Newt Suit, and upcoming Exosuit, the deep sea equivalents of space suits worn on ISS EVAs.

Fuck yeah finally, we got unfinished business in the ocean.
Come at humans, sharks. We ocean now.

>>4638342
>Mad,
>
>I don't see the value in an expensive car, big house, or jewellery. Not purchasing such things will leave me with money I will not know what to do with.
>
>When will I be able to rent one of those underwater container crate things? I like the idea of being stranded in a small area (like in bottle episodes), and I therefore think spending a few days in a tiny room at the bottom of the ocean would be interesting.

Is the guy who wrote this still here? I have a recommendation for him.

Basically, for anyone who just HAS to get the full undersea living experience today, there is a reburdished undersea lab from the 70s that was turned into a 4 room hotel called the Jules Undersea Lodge. It's actually one of the largest and nicest habitats that was built in that era, with the biggest windows on any habitat I know of. It's fully furnished, has all the amenities, and it sits a few dozen feet away from a second smaller habitat called Marinelab with a spherical glass observation bubble you can sit inside of while you pilot an ROV. So you not only get a hab to sleep, eat and relax in, but there's another one to go visit and explore during EVAs.

It all rests in about 30 feet of water which sounds shallow until you visualize it as multiples of your own height. There's a fridge, microwave, TV, DVD player, sinks in each room, a kitchenette and a moon pool to dive out of. Cost per night varies between $300 and $400 depending on the activity package you purchase (like whether you visit Marinelab or not, and whether or not you get a pizza delivered)

www.jul.com

Basically, for anyone who just HAS to get the full undersea living experience today, there is a refurdished undersea lab from the 70s that was turned into a 4 room hotel called the Jules Undersea Lodge. It's actually one of the largest and nicest habitats that was built in that era, with the biggest windows on any habitat I know of. It's fully furnished, has all the amenities, and it sits a few dozen feet away from a second smaller habitat called Marinelab with a spherical glass observation bubble you can sit inside of while you pilot an ROV. So you not only get a hab to sleep, eat and relax in, but there's another one to go visit and explore during EVAs.

It all rests in about 30 feet of water which sounds shallow until you visualize it as multiples of your own height. There's a fridge, microwave, TV, DVD player, sinks in each room, a kitchenette and a moon pool to dive out of. Cost per night varies between $300 and $400 depending on the activity package you purchase (like whether you visit Marinelab or not, and whether or not you get a pizza delivered)

www.jul.com

Basically, for anyone who just HAS to get the full undersea living experience today, there is a refurbished undersea lab from the 70s that was turned into a 4 room hotel called the Jules Undersea Lodge. It's actually one of the largest and nicest habitats that was built in that era, with the biggest windows on any habitat I know of. It's fully furnished, has all the amenities, and it sits a few dozen feet away from a second smaller habitat called Marinelab with a spherical glass observation bubble you can sit inside of while you pilot an ROV. So you not only get a hab to sleep, eat and relax in, but there's another one to go visit and explore during EVAs.

It all rests in about 30 feet of water which sounds shallow until you visualize it as multiples of your own height. There's a fridge, microwave, TV, DVD player, sinks in each room, a kitchenette and a moon pool to dive out of. Cost per night varies between $300 and $400 depending on the activity package you purchase (like whether you visit Marinelab or not, and whether or not you get a pizza delivered)

www.jul.com

>>4638655

Oh shit that's pretty cool I bet it's way too expensive for me th-

>$300-$400

....Okay, what's wrong with it? Did someone die there?

>>4638233
Uh, we sort of do deep ocean mine, Oil rigs, and soon to mine small nodes of minerals. Its just hard because turns out ships are eaten away and for deep underwater objects you need huge shipyard periods to replace everything.

>>4638667

Nobody died there. The expenses of building the habitat were covered back when it was commissioned for scientific use, the current owners saved it from the scrapheap by buying it for cheap at the end of it's scheduled lifespan and it costs them vastly less to run because it's in an emerald lagoon close to shore; instead of having to burn gas in generators 24/7 to keep the habs supplied with power and air they can use shoreside air compressors and grid power. Because the overhead costs are so low they can charge a reasonable amount.

>>4638474
Uh, we sort of did and do, I mean look how Canada and America use our coast guard vessels and naval ships to scare off fishermen (turns out claiming up to 200 miles have its useful.

>>4638674

Yo seabro. I had a question for you. You know about Darpa's Undersea Express project, right?

>>4638679
If it works out, it will be..well we will need to test it out, but it would require a complete retought on how modern subarines fight.

(also learning an entirely new plant,but thats eh)

>>4638690

If it uses a rocket motor, even one that can use sea water as half of the reaction, I have a hard time believing the burn time will be anything in excess of 10-15 minutes. It won't even travel 30 miles in that time. Let's be generous and assume a 30 minute "flight time". That's still only 50 miles.

My idea was neutrally buoyant fuel depots in the open ocean at classified locations, 30-50 miles apart depending on the actual declassified endurance. They would be capable of refueling these new subs, acting as jumping-off points to the next supply station, creating highspeed routes through the sea. They would be refilled periodically by much slower nuclear subs, and would also carry food supplies so as to do double duty as food resupply stations for SSGNs, as that is their only current endurance limitation.

Needless to say they would be equipped to defend themselves if discovered, and via their own compact naval reactor and pumpjets they could relocate to create new routes as necessary to prevent enemies from maintaining accurate maps of the routes for any length of time.

Better living through science.

Better living means that I have more money to spend on shit like a house with more rooms I don't use, in a suburb an extra 30 minutes out so I need to buy a better car to drive to work.

Justification of western lifestyle from mining is an easy argument but flawed. We mine more so you can justify buying cheaper shit from raw minerals refined offshore, which, will ultimately break and be sent back offshore for recovery refining.

Wake the fuck up. The future of business and mankind isn't in mining increasingly rare resources, it's always been in refining, and recovery.

>>4638697
>implying it wont be nuclear.
The nuclear mafia owns subs, we aren't going back to anything non nuclear just because we have no non nuclear logistics chain anymore, and with only 2 tenders, we can't force project without a nuclear sub fleet.

Also, we have Guam and Diego Garcia or Dubai as food resupply stations now, or we could sail a tender out do do that already.

>>4638703

Right, but supercav isn't nuclear. It uses a chemical rocket motor. The supercav prototype is 100 feet long. I would be very surprised if they somehow fit a reactor in that space.

Basically what I'm proposing are very large nuclear supply subs that hang in one place for a long time to act as fuel depots and food resupply stations until discovered, at which time they relocate to form a new route, so that supercav subs can make short quick jumps from one to the next and refuel at each one along the way.

>>4638236

As much of a seabro as I am, that picture could "support" the opposite point if you only replaced the shallow water resorts with pitch black shots of an abyssal plain on the left and the shots of war torn wastelands and riots with tropical rain forests and mountain ranges and fields of golden wheat.

>>4638591

This just shows people recording what response the mind has to being in an environment like undersea living quarters, not that the mind and the sea are linked in some special way.

>>4638707
twin drive, nuclear reactor for main propulsion, driving a generation system which produced the fuel midway. Its more of a spaceship design, and doesn't require a massive new logistics unit that would go overcost really quickly.

>>4638674
Open ocean. Protection of Antarctica is poor.
201 miles and you can mine the shit out of the ocean floor with giant dredges. What will you do then when plumes of toxic silt are invading your waters? Not a thing can be done. If Mexico decides to allow mining companies to dredge their waters how will you stop them. The harm they do may spread all through the gulf. The ecosystem may be fucked for years and you can't do a thing about it.
I worked on a fishing boat for a few years raping the sea for fish. We had to go into international waters because there is no quota there and our waters were fished to fuck. We soon ran out of fish in the areas we were working. Nothing was done. By the time the international community started to act the company I worked for had gone on as we had fished that stock to the point of non commercial viability. That was one shit job.

>>4638709
>As much of a seabro as I am, that picture could "support" the opposite point if you only replaced the shallow water resorts with pitch black shots of an abyssal plain on the left and the shots of war torn wastelands and riots with tropical rain forests and mountain ranges and fields of golden wheat.

It assumes a really fucked up climate in the next century or two. But yeah, the abyssal plain is a horrible place and nobody should live there although it is fascinating to visit and explore. I hold out hope that someday we'll be able to engineer a human capable of doing a saturation dive to that depth.

>>4638711
>>twin drive, nuclear reactor for main propulsion, driving a generation system which produced the fuel midway. Its more of a spaceship design

Holy fuck that sounds amazing. Subsea vessel technology really is coming along lately.

I always wondered, why do you, MadScientist do all of these? What's motivate you?

Now, I'm saying this because I am freaking jealous of you. You're able to churn out original content on /sci/, while me just lurks around and hoping a thread like this pops out.

I am about to continue at some obscure grad school (you Westerners should feel lucky, believe me), but I don't think I can compete with you in terms of motivation and drive.

>>4638717
>What motivates you?

The ocean doesn't disappoint. It's never a letdown. We've already found intelligent life there, dolphins, and we're learning to communicate with them. There's never any shortage of bizarre new species discovered, it never runs out of surprises. The cost of access is so much lower, you see much more rapid development of new types of subsea vehicles, exoskeletons, habitats and robots. Anyone can go visit a subsea hotel for $300. Anyone can scuba dive. The landscape is astonishingly beautiful and alien to our every day experience. In the ocean, we move in three dimensions. Ordinary people can fly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcbHKAWIk3I

But there's more to it than that.

It was no accomplishment to climb out of the sea; we were driven from it by predators. At that time our greatest ambition was to survive long enough to reproduce, and from that point on up until perhaps a century ago, if one of us went below water it was by accident and almost always a death sentence. The year is 2012 and we have returned to the sea. We go not just to extract it's mineral treasures but to settle millions of years worth of unfinished business. This time it will not drive us out, for we've returned as masters.

>>4638733
Totally gave me a hardon seabro

Remember that thread about what dolphins must think when they see humans in mini-subs? Like to them, we are the UFO aliens? And when marine biologists capture and do checkups on them it's like close encounters?

That thread was fuckin amazing please tell me it got saved somewhere

>>4638744

I can't tell if that is the most profound or retarded thing I have ever heard.

>>4638733
>>4638730

>>4638733

>it's

>>4638761

Its okay.

>>4638758

My deepest apologies sir

>>4638762

>>4638762

>>4638744
>That thread was fuckin amazing please tell me it got saved somewhere
It is.
https://archive.installgentoo.net/sci/thread/S4606236

>>4638769
>https://archive.installgentoo.net/sci/thread/S4606236

Holy shit thank you this is the only time I thought you were worth a shit Harriet

>>4638570
>A small portion of the exhaust is redirected to the nosecone where it forcibly creates a bubble that the rocket flies inside of, so that it does't touch the water.
THis reminds me a bit of the FTL warp travel in EVE online.

They basically 'push' physical space away from themselves and travel inside an unstable bubble of supercavitating void. The downside is that the only thing is that they can't do anything except travel in a straight line, and that the only physical force that still interacts with them is gravity, so they are blind deaf mutes that can't measure speed or distance except by the effects of massive objects on their instruments.

>>4638733
> This time it will not drive us out, for we've returned as monsters.
FTFY

>>4640195
>THis reminds me a bit of the FTL warp travel in EVE online.

Everything about all of this reminds me of space travel/bases. It has all the same stuff.

>>4640226
>> This time it will not drive us out, for we've returned as monsters.

The deep sea is full of monsters. One must be a monster to go among them and live.

>>4640513
>thing
I don't remember when I last saw a more-appropriately named picture.

protip:

working in the deepsea is harder than in space in a way

the problem is that you'd need robots all over the place, making people work out there means a lot of problems and risks

For instance, to allow someone to work in the deepsea, a diver might have to spend a week in a pressurizing chamber to let his body adapt to the pressure

>>4640579

Wow, you don't say.

>>4638233
>>but it's never really explained what "disturb" means
well, it means bury. Sediment plumes can do other things too, like block out light, making photosynthesis impossible

>>why ot disturbing sea creatures is more important than plentiful high grade rare earth and precious metal deposits
Haven't you read Jacques Cousteau?

>>4640902

We're talking depths of 2.5 to 4 miles. In the ocean light penetrates measurably to around 3,000 feet and visibly to about 600. There is nothing on the abyssal plain that photosynthesizes.

>>4640918
where do you think the mud's processed? At the fucking surface. The ship makes the sediment plume.

>>4640925

Yes, and? There's no surface for subsea flora to grow on that is shallow enough in those locations for light to reach them anyway, and the phytoplankton and cyanobacteria only need sunlight to penetrate a few feet. Ultimately we are talking about creating temporary small dark spots on the surface less than a mile in diameter. This is so small in terms of total ocean surface that I'm struggling to understand what exactly you think it will damage.

>>4640579
You need robots all over the place in space too, if you want to get anything done.
It takes hours for humans to adapt to pressure, it also takes humans hours to get in and out of space suits. No serious change there.

Upside goes to undersea, as it's easier to build and deploy robots to the ocean depths instead of space.

>>4640967
I believe that poster's concern is that said sediment plumes will mean a lot of toxic mineral and chemicals will get consumed by the sea life.
Would such sediment plumes drift down to the sea floor again?