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Remembering Sealab
An anonymous reader writes "'Some people remember Sealab as being a classified program, but it was trying not to be,' says Ben Hellwarth, author of the new book Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor, which aims to 'bring some long overdue attention to the marine version of the space program.' In the 1960s, the media largely ignored the efforts of America's aquanauts, who revolutionized deep-sea diving and paved the way for the underwater construction work being done today on offshore oil platforms. It didn't help that the public didn't understand the challenges of saturation diving; in a comical exchange a telephone operator initially refuses to connect a call between President Johnson and Aquanaut Scott Carpenter, (who sounded like a cartoon character, thanks to the helium atmosphere in his pressurized living quarters). But in spite of being remembered as a failure, the final incarnation of Sealab did provide cover for a very successful Cold War spy program."
I guess that explains Hesh's voice.
#DeleteChrome
Fignuts
It's like a koala bear crapped a rainbow in my brain!
There was the idea in the 1960s that the ocean was as important a frontier as space. There was talk of undersea cities. Today, zilch. There are pretty renderings of underwater hotels on the web, but none of them actually got built. The one "underwater hotel" in the world is a recycled two room research habitat.
Drilling wells in the ocean floor is a big business, but that's about as far as it's gone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRrQSGD2e14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Institute_of_Oceanography This is also the area where they keep the lone remaining Avro Arrow for further study, that Hydrofoil warship that we did and the telephone. It's all super-secret.
The next when they call the Whitehouse with the helium voice, just tell them you're Papa Smurf calling the President telling him that they need talk to about his fling with Smurfette and the white stain on Smurfette's blue ass.
Well, it worked from 1992 - 2001.
I remember Sealab 2021 very well
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Do you think that's Greek?
(Seriously, one of the funniest things I've ever seen...)
...but the Sealaughter we all shared.
I'd rather remember this version:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064417/
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
I'm not sure that the fact that the "aquanauts" had funny-sounding voices when they were in their undersea, "synthetic-gas environment" is a sufficient explanation for the public and the media ignoring the Sealab programs.
If the media and a cereal company could turn Kim Kardashian's cross-dressing step-dad into a symbol of American manhood, then Scott Carpenter's helium-induced impression of Felix the Cat could not really have been that big of a public relations problem.
Really?
This show actually made me very interested in underwater exploration when I was young. It was a little over the top at points, but overall I think it was a quality show.
My fondest memory of Sealab was when Hank got trapped under the orange soda machine . . .
I am so glad that it was canceled. We could be living in the world of bioshock now. That would really suck. Wireless signals under water are awe full.
I am a 5th level dwarven warrior. I have shuriken.
Like America use to.
He sounds like Yakky Doodle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uaa9ZJ2KSoQ
Divers sometimes use helium to replace some of the nitrogen. If you're at pressure, then the amount of nitrogen that goes into your blood stream can cause nitrogen narcosis. If you lower the partial pressure of N2 (by using He) then this is less likely.
Helium also diffuses quicker than nitrogen. But this can mean that decompression is a bit more difficult.
It talks about it a bit here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimix_(breathing_gas)
Mainstream magazines certainly covered it. That's how I knew about it as a kid. Hit Google Books with 'sealab popular' and select Full Version, for what ran in PopSci at the time.
It wasn't anywhere near as big a deal as the Moon program, but it got very good coverage for a single science program. Off the top of my head I can't think of another back then that got as much other than the Moon race.
I think it's hyperbole to say 'largely ignored'. There was a pretty good proportionate recognition. A little better than it deserved, arguably.
Really?
See, as I look at it, burning petroleum from other planets on this one should make it even more Venusian than burning the pre-solar petroleum under the basaltic plains.
I wonder if we'll see some steam-punk space travel of using our petroleum to get more petroleum elsewhere. Go us!
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Place was like a frickin' bomb on stilts. ;)
... and the tapping of communications cables. ... somebody is always interested.
Civilian or military, analogue, digital
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...was Athlete's Foot.
The high-pressure, high-humidity atmosphere of the lab caused the fungi to spread like wildfire, to the point where it would spread to the entire body, and even cause a secondary bacterial infection with alarming ease.
[End Of Line]
Space, sadly, doesn't even have oil exploration going for it.
However it could have something akin to natural gas exploration. Space has fuels such as ethane, methane, hydrogen, etc.
"the final incarnation of Sealab did provide cover for a very successful Cold War spy program".
'Nough said Dan'O. We are finished here.
But it doesn't have Harry Goz. And it still hasn't answered the real question at hand, which is would you put your brain in a robot body?
Sealab 2021 is not forgotten.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Did not RFTA, but this was wonderful.
Alan Krasberg, one of the researchers connected with Sealab, was the son of one of my mother's best friends, Tammy Krasberg. Apparently one afternoon Alan was testing some rebreathing equipment in the family pool. Tammy, who was reading a magazine pool-side, realized she hadn't seen any activity from him for awhile, so she put down her magazine, dove in, hauled him to the surface and, at least according to the story my mother told, gave him CPR. He revived and his mother went back to her magazine.
I'm tempted to believe this since Tammy was one of the most unflappable people I have ever met.
Aquanaut. Water sailor. Isn't that a little redundant?
I come here for info, ads are on the side, not the stories themselves... please.
I see that other threads have mentioned the same thing, but omitted the important part: Seaquest. Jonathan Brandis.
What a terrible waste of a young twink. I don't know what awful social circles drove him to suicide, but he had a few good years left in him spreading his man dressing into mouths and across faces.
It was technically accurate, and besides, we renamed Uranus to Urectum to get around that stupid joke.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Aurora made a plastic model kit of Sealab III. It came out when I was 10. I desperately wanted it but never could manage to save up enough. Probably just as well, as at that point my kit building skills wouldn't have done it justice.
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/SEALAB%20III%20PAGE.htm
Loved that show, Roy Scheider was great in it.
My favorite part of the book was when Murphy got stuck under the Bebop Cola machine.
Since my parents divorced when I was five, my father taught marine biology in a different city and died in a car accident in 1976, I didn't know him all that well. I do, however, remember getting a sweatshirt from him with the Sealab logo on it. I recall that he lived underwater for 5 or so weeks off the coast of Saint John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I wore that sweatshirt until it had holes in it and my mother ripped it to shreds in what I took to be an obvious sign of jealous rage. At least she didn't find the Sealab project info folder tucked behind my bookshelf.
That folder is somewhere in a box in storage. If anyone's interested I could find it, scan the contents and put it online.
...with a can of Mingus Dew! Bizarro!
A blowout in the space-station can be plugged with duct tape (from the inside)... a blowout in an undersea habitat at 100' depth is considerably harder to deal with.
When the submarine floods at near the beginning of the movie (obviously more than 100' down, but still)...I have never been so scared in my entire movie-going life. There's something very, very terrifying about drowning in enclosed spaces...
And how about when the two main characters are deciding who gets the dry suit as their submersible fills up with water? God damn....
With the first link, the chain is forged.