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."

Comments

The ocean frontier - not

[Animats]

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.

Re:The ocean frontier - not

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason all of those "big ideas" suddenly went away in the 70's was because President Johnson's "Great Society" programs exploded in cost and we could no longer afford to spend money on research like we previously had. In the intervening decades the expense of social programs has multiplied many times to the point we can't afford any kind of space program even unless we borrow money to pay for it. The future is indeed grim. Just imagine what we could have accomplished by now if we hadn't decided to go the socialism route. We've spent at least $16 TRILLION dollars on social programs and the percentage of people in poverty has barely changed. Imagine what we could have done in space, the ocean, research, etc. with that kind of money.

Re:The ocean frontier - not

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a list some time ago, just to inventory how many actual underwater destinations there are and came away with about a dozen. There's more than you're aware of, and they are already built. The Ithaa is an all glass panoramic undersea restaurant (1atm, in just 15 feet of water) the Huvafen Fushi undersea spa is another 1atm facility, concrete hull, big picture windows, perhaps 20 feet underwater. The Red Sea Star is a more ambitious undersea restaurant, 30 feet deep, concrete hull, wraparound segmented window panels, lots of interior space. There's also the Aquarius, America's undersea research lab, Marinelab (in the same cove as the Jules) and Baylab, still active in Chesapeake bay. If you also count general public access undersea observatories there's one in Australia, one in Eilat, Israel and more than one in China.

Re:The ocean frontier - not

[JoeMerchant]

Well, I _can_ see some motivations for living in a habitat located on a 60' deep tropical coral reef.

A) The cool factor of having fish right outside your window, oh, sorry, ummmm... access to do long term observations of marine fauna in their natural habitat, for research, yeah.

B) relative protection from surface storms, although you'll need more than 60' depth for that in hurricane conditions.

C) ready access to fresh seafood...

D) no morning/evening commute to work: sorry man, I'm saturated, can't come up today.

E) stable (non-moving) habitat to work in (relative to a ship.)

F) in the 1960s, I'm sure they were also thinking natural Nuclear bomb shelter too.

Yeah, very expensive just for those things, and important to our cash driven society is that you can't really generate anything of value more efficiently by living underwater to do it. Still, I think a 6000 square foot structure, with decent 8'+ ceilings, ample natural light in every room (bigger windows than terrestrial structures due to less light at depth), moon pool entry at about 25' depth (internal pressure ~+12.5psi), hella powerful A/C system to keep the humidity at bay, ROV spearfishing system, and some kind of self-sufficient ocean generated energy system would make a decent working platform for 3-4 people to study, well, ocean generated energy systems for one thing. I could also see studying underwater building materials (3d printing with underwater concrete?) and any number of other things related to sustainable ocean dwelling.

Thing is, it looks like a playtime project, so nobody will fund it, even if it would generate useful spinoff tech, and waste less resources than any number of less visible pork projects.

Oh, and a random thought: how much water (ice) would it take to effectively shield a Earth-Mars shuttle from radiation? And, could we collect asteroids/comets to put together an ice-ball big enough to put a nice transit lounge habitat (not too dissimilar from the undersea habitat mentioned above, except that the fish will be frozen) into an Earth-Mars figure 8 orbit? Think solar-powered ion engines instead of chemical reactions...

Re:The ocean frontier - not

[tgd]

That's not really true, only some of these thing is open in the bottom, others have airlooks.

BTW, you have that exactly backwards. If you have an opening at the bottom of a submersible, you eliminate ANY issue with water pressure on the structure. (Because the water coming in the opening will pressurize the air to the same pressure -- the hull then has no pressure differential between inside and outside.) Of course, the oxygen in the air you breathe becomes toxic, and the nitrogen does bad things to you. (woo hoo! Narcosis!)

If you want to maintain 1atm inside, your structure now has to handle the differential between inside and outside, and be rigid enough to not compress. At 30 feet depth, you need to handle a 14psi differential (which is greater than the pressure differential you get from an atomic blast! That's why even at 30 ft, you need fairly thick steel to handle the pressure.

SeaQuest

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

So secret for so long

[AHuxley]

... and the tapping of communications cables.
Civilian or military, analogue, digital ... somebody is always interested.

The Most Annoying Problem...

[IonOtter]

...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.

I remember when his mother saved him from drowing

[hedronist]

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.