James Cameron Commissions Submarine To Visit Challenger Deep

frank249 writes "In January, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Trieste descent, the X Prize Foundation announced a $10 million prize for the first privately funded craft to make two manned descents to the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the oceans. Now, James Cameron has announced he has commissioned a submarine capable of surviving the tremendous pressures at a depth of seven miles, from which he will not only try for the X prize but also shoot 3D footage that may be incorporated in Avatar's sequel."

Comments

Sequel?

[Dr. Evil]

Oh no.

Re:Sequel?

[derGoldstein]

...that Avatar, like Terminator and Alien and The Matrix, is a movie that should never, ever, ever have a sequel.

Terminator *2* was the good one. People remember Arnold fighting the T1000, not some soft human.
And you can edit the Matrix Reloaded down to about 50 minutes of entertainment.

Re:Sequel?

[onkelonkel]

The first Alien movie was good, but the second one, Aliens, although completely different in tone, was better. There were no other sequels. Period. That is all.

Re:Sequel?

[mark72005]

The Matrix should have had sequels.

It should have had sequels that didn't suck.

Re:Sequel?

[element-o.p.]

Now if we're talking Highlander....

"There can be only one."

Re:Sequel?

[Sparks23]

In fairness, the Lord of the Rings films were basically just one single unbelievably long movie, which happened to be broken into thirds for semi-sane human consumption.

Re:Sequel?

[geekoid]

Are you crazy? both the Terminator sequel and the Aliens Sequel we're awesome and well made movies.

And Avatar was a fine movie, the was beautiful toy watch, even if the plot was one that had been done several times before.

Ideally he will be success, add further to mans knowledge, help advance science in a small way, and go on to to do an Avatar Sequel you will be free to not see.

Of course you will come up with a reason to see it anyway, and then complain about how bad t is so you can look like you are a hip nerd.

HINT: nerds aren't haters.

Re:Sooo

[bigrockpeltr]

Snorks! *Dives*

Sad, actually

[blind biker]

To clarify: I find it a bit sad that humanity just isn't capable of building on pre-existing accomplishments, solutions and ideas. The Trieste has already achieved this goal 50 years ago, as the summary states, so why would this be such a difficult challenge? We had the technology half a century ago, and it worked perfectly well.

Sort of like the Apollo program - almost half a century after, we are not capable to go to the moon - we simply and stupidly "forgot" how to do it. The great designers and engineers left and/or died off, and we, as humankind, went on with out collective dicks in our collective hands.

Re:Sad, actually

[TheUnFounded]

On the other hand, it got them there, but didn't do a whole lot of good. From Wikipedia:

"The descent took almost five hours and the two men spent barely twenty minutes on the ocean floor before undertaking the three-hour-and-fifteen-minute ascent. Their early departure from the ocean floor was due to their concern over a crack in the window caused by the intense pressure of their descent, and also because their landing on the sea bed had stirred up a cloud of silt which reduced visibility to zero and showed no sign of settling." So hopefully the new technology will give us a longer, more interesting time at the bottom...

Re:Sad, actually

[_Sprocket_]

To clarify: I find it a bit sad that humanity just isn't capable of building on pre-existing accomplishments, solutions and ideas. The Trieste has already achieved this goal 50 years ago, as the summary states, so why would this be such a difficult challenge? We had the technology half a century ago, and it worked perfectly well.

Sure. And take aeronautics. Clearly we should have stopped in the 1800s with functional gliders. Or maybe the early 1900s with powered flight. I mean... surely the Wright Brothers should have just put away their wind tunnels and called it a day before doing all this testing. By the mid-1900's it was just getting silly. The 1940's saw jet engines - as if that wasn't just coat-tail riding in it's fullest. And as if this hasn't all Been Done by world Governments, private commercial aviation has to get in to the mix. What the heck were these guys thinking?

Sort of like the Apollo program - almost half a century after, we are not capable to go to the moon - we simply and stupidly "forgot" how to do it. The great designers and engineers left and/or died off, and we, as humankind, went on with out collective dicks in our collective hands.

Yeah - I'm sure it's all about lost knowledge and nothing about the resources it took to accomplish these things. It's not like going to the moon is involved or anything. On a more serious note - you should go download yourself a copy of the CAIB Report and look in to the chapter that talks about funding; specifically comparing the Apollo era to today.

Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas

[Corbets]

Sorry, buddy, but I have not seen James Cameraschlock's Space Smurf Pocahantas and I never will. There are plenty of us who actually, really and truly do not like crap Science Fiction, will not see it, will not buy the Blue-Ray and won't mention it until some idiot tries to defend it or imply that, actually, I really really like it but I'm too much of a snob to admit it.

Um, not to disagree or anything, but how do you know it's crap if you haven't bothered to watch it?

Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas

[onkelonkel]

I'm imagining a 5 year old at the dinner table, making faces and sticking out his tongue

I hate broccoli!
How do you know if you haven't tried it?
Broccoli is yucky!
How do you know its yucky if you haven't tried it.
I'm not going to try it because its broccoli and broccoli is yucky!

Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas

[Toonol]

Tomatometer: 83
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 268
Fresh: 222 | Rotten: 46

You have to be pretty damn selective to find a group of critics who didn't like Avatar... which I have no doubt you are. I'm sure you're attracted to like-minded critics. That's understandable, but realize that it is a flaw when you come to believe that's representative of actual critical acclaim. It's like reading nothing but Daily Kos, and thinking that's normal and representative political discussion.

Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas

[Toonol]

Please, are you really claiming anything Cameron has done is art?

Of course it is. Opinions may differ on whether it's GOOD art, but of course it's art. There isn't a threshold of quality that determines whether something is art. "Twilight" is art, just crappy art. So are my son's crayon drawings.

Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas

[boxwood]

I wouldn't say that he's a crap director, just that he's not very ambitious. You aren't going to get any surprises from his movies, you see the trailer and you know what to expect.

But he does deliver on what you're expecting. From Avatar I expected pretty CGI, the noble primitive blue people to triumph over the greedy technologically advanced humans, and thats exactly what happened. Its not challenging, but it was well executed for what it was trying to do. Yeah it wasn't trying to do very much. But it didn't fail.

Hating on James Cameron movies is snobbery. No one's telling you its going to be Citizen Kane. Its entertainment, don't read too much into it. Complaining about a James Cameron movie being shallow and predictable is like complaining about poor acting in a porno. Is it really that important that you believe that the wife has an inattentive husband and the man is really a pizza delivery guy? Is it that important that the plot be original when the audience is there to see pretty 3-D animation?