
The tech that will help James Cameron win his race to the bottom of the ocean - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/121183-the-tech-that-will-help-james-cameron-win-his-race-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean
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evincarofautumn
Compared to the deep, space is downright hospitable. The difference from 1atm
to 0atm, after all, is vastly less than that to 1000. Your submersible fails
at any nontrivial depth, then you’re dead, no two ways about it; but a human
could survive for perhaps a minute and a half in the void. If you’re not too
shy about opening all your orifices right away, you’ll even remain conscious
for ten, fifteen seconds optimistically. I’ll take total decompression over
getting crushed by depth any day.

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hcurtiss
I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the
ocean that drop cameras have not already produced. I feel the same way about
sending humans to Mars.

Of course, I'm also the guy who went to the Grand Canyon and thought to
myself, "meh, that's about what it looked like on my TV."

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fr0sty
> I, for one, will get nothing out of Cameron traveling to the bottom of the
> ocean that drop cameras have not already produced.

This is true only if you assume that the advances being made in materials and
technology will not have applications beyond deep water manned submersibles.

As a comparison: Do you contend that you got nothing out of the development of
manned space flight?

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gk1
It's incredibly difficult to fathom (hah!) how high the pressure is at such
depths. This quote puts it into [some] perspective:

> The Deepsea Challenger itself will compress by about 2.5 inches during the
> descent, according to sponsor National Geographic.

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joering2
its interesting that major problem with going deep is pressure. wonder if
there is, or ever will be some sort of technology, like antigravity that would
reduce or push pressure away at a reasonable price. like some sort of
electrical device that stabilize or neutralize pressure to reasonable numbers.
is the only way of "fighting" with pressure a thicker material? air, for
example is much lighter than water (duh!). what if I would surround myself
with extreme hot membranes that would boil water before it reaches surface of
my submarine? :)

