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James Cameron Commissions Submarine To Visit Challenger Deep

Posted by Soulskill on from the ed-harris-can-probably-help-you-out dept.

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."

27 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. Sequel? by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Oh no.

    1. Re:Sequel? by derGoldstein · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ...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.

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    2. Re:Sequel? by onkelonkel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
    3. Re:Sequel? by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Funny

      Did I say sequel to Avatar? I meant it was a sequel to "Titanic." It's a tragic love story between two deep-sea invertebrates living on the hull of the titanic.

    4. Re:Sequel? by mark72005 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The Matrix should have had sequels.

      It should have had sequels that didn't suck.

    5. Re:Sequel? by mark72005 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I found the IMAX "experience" entertaining, while at the same time thinking that if I watched this movie from my couch in 2D and 720p, I would have turned the dreck off halfway through.

    6. Re:Sequel? by element-o.p. · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Now if we're talking Highlander....

      "There can be only one."

      --
      MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
    7. Re:Sequel? by superdave80 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "...a lower-budget movie with a really good plot (Terminator) than a weak plot with high-budget special effects (T2)."

      Yeah, I much preferred the original's plot about a killer robot sent back in time to kill the mother of mankind's savior. T2's plot of a killer robot sent back in time to kill mankind's savior was weak...

    8. Re:Sequel? by Sparks23 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      --Rachel
    9. Re:Sequel? by geekoid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    10. Re:Sequel? by by+(1706743) · · Score: 4, Funny

      The characters in general were 2-diminsional...

      Dude, you should have watched the movie in 3-D...

  2. Re:Sooo by bigrockpeltr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Snorks! *Dives*

    --
    $ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
  3. *shudder* by GrumpySteen · · Score: 4, Funny

    Titanatar 2

    "God Himself could not sink this tree!"

  4. Sad, actually by blind+biker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    1. Re:Sad, actually by TheUnFounded · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:Sad, actually by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Sad, actually by camperdave · · Score: 3, Informative

      NASA is a train wreck at the moment. The shuttle retires this year and there is nothing to replace it. NASA has no clear plans, no guidance, and no funding. It'll be at least seven years before NASA will have a craft capable of even getting a person off this rock, let alone going to the Moon.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    4. Re:Sad, actually by willith · · Score: 5, Informative

      If we wanted to build a Saturn V rocket today it could not be done. The original design is gone.

      GOD DAMN IT. I really, really wish people would quit perpetuating this wildly incorrect urban legend. The original design details, down to the very last nut and bolt, are on file at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Absolutely nothing at all is "gone". Source.

      The experts that had been working with rocket engines since the late 1940s worked on the Saturn V. Today there is nobody that knows anywhere near as much about rocket engines left. While the main engines for the Shuttle are somewhat of a marvel, I doubt they could be reproduced today either. The people resources simply aren't there - it would take 10 years of experimentation and learning about rockets.

      Also ridiculously incorrect. You truly don't believe that the Space Shuttle Main Engines could be "reproduced" today? You're completely unaware of the fact that they've been continually "reproduced" since the beginning of the program, right? That they're rebuilt between missions, and that the design has improved and evolved over the life of the program? That as of right now there are in fact nine fully-built spare ones in storage at KSC? The engineers didn't just build a bunch of them in 1980 and then zap themselves with the Men In Black flashy-thing--SSMEs have been constantly built for the past almost thirty years. If my tone is coming across as a little coarse, it's because I'm having a hard time understanding how you could have a highly-moderated post to Slashdot when thirty seconds of research would refute almost everything you just said.

      The reason why building a Saturn V today from the old plans is impossible has nothing to do with "cheaper labor" or "people that didn't mind getting their hands dirty" or whatever stupidness you wrote. Rather, you can't build a Saturn V today because a Saturn V isn't just a bunch of tanks with engines strapped to it--it's half of a complex launch system, with the other half being the Apollo CSM that sits on top of it. A Saturn V is an end-to-end system designed around the IBM-produced instrumentation unit, two tons of analog and basic digital computers and instrumentation. It's not that you can't build it--it's that building it wouldn't make any sense. You'd need to completely de-Apollo the rocket for it to work right, and guess what? That's exactly what NASA has been doing, although the political will to make it happen is sorely lacking.

      Please educate yourself before you spout off such a mixture of urban legend and outright incorrect craziness.

  5. Sequel not to Avatar but to The Abyss? by D4C5CE · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096754/ is the kind of movie requiring some real submarine footage. The other one's Smurfahontas in CGI (quite an accomplishment nonetheless - that should be spared the sad sequel fate of Highlander) - so why would anyone risk their life (and/or sub) for what they could so convincingly render in 3D anyway?

  6. Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas by Corbets · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  7. cameron was a physics major by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    meaning: the guy is not a hollywood idiot

    i mean shape memory alloy turned into a villain in t2? or superconducting islands of rock in the air? the man is a true science geek in the vein of anyone else writing here on slashdot

    so if anyone is going to get this thing built, with the money cameron has, he's going to do it, because he most certainly understands all of the objections you raised in your post. he is also diving fanatic, he got cameras to the titanic site, his technical and science acumen is outstanding

    a science geek and an extremely successful movie director. frankly, cameron makes me completely jealous

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  8. Re:clever tax deduction by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Interesting point. Though he did use footage of the Titanic in the movie Titanic where he did much the same thing.

  9. Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas by onkelonkel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

    --
    None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
  10. Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas by lgw · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd bet Spun also doesn't like broccoli. When the Broccoloid Menace invades, he won't be doing his part to save Townsville, that's for sure.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  11. Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas by Toonol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas by Toonol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  13. Re:Space Smurf Pocahantas by boxwood · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?