$7 Million Xprize For Deep Ocean Exploration (businesswire.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Peter Diamandis announced today the launch of a new Xprize competition. $7 million is available for teams who are capable of pushing the boundaries of ocean exploration. "Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet's surface and are a crucial global source of food, energy, economic security, and even the air we breathe, yet 95 percent of the deep sea remains a mystery to us," Diamandis said. The competition goals are as follows: "In each round, teams will complete a series of tasks, including making a bathymetric map (a map of the sea floor), producing high-resolution images of a specific object, and identifying archeological, biological or geological features. Teams also must show resiliency and durability by proving they can operate their technologies, deployed from the shore or air, at a depth of up to 4,000 meters."

Comments

This does make a little more sense

[invictusvoyd]

We have explored more of space then our own oceans. Maybe we should take a domestic vacation before going international .

Re:This does make a little more sense

[Gavagai80]

Unless saying "that's a galaxy" is exploring, we've explored a lot less than 5% of the space. 0% of the other oceans in this solar system.

Re:This does make a little more sense

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because space is a pretty constant. Once you can maintain hull integrity in LEO, you're pretty safe to let it fly anywhere outside of an atmosphere, limited only by your fuel supply.

The oceanic depths have no such consistency. As you get deeper, the pressure gets insane, light can no longer penetrate, and every meter further down, the worse it gets. Not to mention the sulfuric vents, potentially territorial creatures, and host of other hostilities.

Space? Space is easy. It's just big.

Re:This does make a little more sense

[stjobe]

Space? Space is easy. It's just big.

And hard to get to.

And rather hazardous, what with the radiation from solar storms, the risk of hull breaches from (micro)meteorites, the problem with cooling/heating, the lack of oxygen (or anything to create oxygen from), and so on and so forth.

It's not exactly a walk in the park.

Yes, the pressure difference is just 1 atmosphere rather than then 1 atmosphere/10 meters of the ocean, but on the other hand there's no DNA- and electronics-destroying radiation in the ocean, you're actually inside a very efficient heat sink, and have all the oxygen-containing molecules you'd ever want, and you're a lot less likely to get your hull punctured.

Bottom line is that neither space nor the deep sea are "easy", and that's part of the reason we don't generally go on vacation there.

Re:This does make a little more sense

[hackertourist]

No, we haven't. We have maps of the sea floor that are more detailed than pretty much anywhere in the solar system. We routinely get samples from the sea floor, while the amount of samples we have from space has been stable at less than 400 kg for almost 50 years now. You can set up a deep sea expedition down to 4000 m for a few million. Going anywhere in space requires 4 orders of magnitude more money.
One DSV (Alvin) has made 4400 dives to 4 km, spending 100x more hours on the bottom than astronauts have spent on the Moon.

Oceanographic research goes on every day around the world. Because it's affordable it doesn't generate headlines the way space exploration does, so it's less visible. But just because you haven't read about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Granted, detailed in-situ exploration of the sea floor below 4 km is difficult. But we haven't done manned space expeditions beyond our back yard either.

Re: And how does this help children?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't. That is why rose people do it.

Re: And how does this help children?

[Anonymous Coward]

They would rather funnel money to their friends than help children.

Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

Kongsberg and others already make AUVs that do this. Shell uses them all the time. The only difference is the requirement to deploy them from the shore or the air. I'm not sure really what they are getting at on this one.

Re:Weird

[Anonymous Coward]

They are getting the research done and stuff built and then stolen by the military-industrial-complex

This is helping drill for oil

[rgbe]

This is not about discovering the oceans and what lives there or the geology of the depths. This about helping Shell (the sponsor) create cheaper technogolies such that they can drill for oil. The requirements they have laid out are weak, for example "depth of up to 4,000 meters". The ocean deepest point is almost 11,000 meters. The drilling technology in the future will be reaching 4,000 meters.

I usually envisage Xprizes as advancing the worlds technologies on a shoestring budget in areas that we have limited knowledge, such as sending a rocket to the moon and taking a photo of the surface and beaming it back to Earth.

Re:This is helping drill for oil

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the average depth of the ocean? Well, it is about 4000m. The Pacific is a little deeper.
That is still a remarkable engineering feat given that you will have to reliably contend with about 5900psi on the outer skin.

Re:This is helping drill for oil

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Shell would be able to tell where to drill just from a topographical map of the ocean floor.

Re:This is helping drill for oil

[rgbe]

You're right. But it's about furthering the technology.

Re:This is helping drill for oil

[Solandri]

Sigh. Yes, and all space exploration isn't about discovering what's out there, it's about keeping the defense contractors fat. If you take anything and cherry-pick one reason for doing it, of course you can make it sound like it's for nefarious purposes.

I usually envisage Xprizes as advancing the worlds technologies on a shoestring budget in areas that we have limited knowledge, such as sending a rocket to the moon and taking a photo of the surface and beaming it back to Earth.

As someone who's actually worked with AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles), I can tell you that our technology when we're deprived of electromagnetic waves as a means of communication and sensing is pitifully primitive. When Challenger exploded and fell into the sea, some friends asked me why it was taking so long to recover the pieces off the ocean floor. I had to explain to them that comparing radar with modern sonar, it was easier to locate stuff on the moon than it was to find stuff on the ocean floor. Sometimes the thermal profile of the ocean even form a refractive layer which makes it impossible for sound from the surface to reach beyond a certain depth, and you're effectively blind unless you can get down below that thermocline.

Advancing technology on a shoestring budget in areas that we have limited knowledge about is precisely what's needed in the fields of underwater acoustic sensing, underwater acoustic communication, and underwater operations (imagine how difficult designing equipment would be if air conducted electricity - that's basically what you're dealing with in the ocean). Honestly, the biggest advance I've seen in the last four decades is computer tomography of sonar signal returns to recreate an image field, a process which borrows heavily from x-ray CAT scans (except the source and sensor are in the same location). And we're still not very good at doing it in an open environment like the ocean - a process dolphins, toothed whales, and bats seem to have perfected. Imagine if this was the best image a camera could produce of a bicycle. That's pretty much the technological state where sonar is currently at.

The primary problem is multipath due to density changes in the water caused by uneven temperature and salinity. It's like shooting video through the heat waves rising off a long asphalt road baking in sunlight. Due to a lot of the equations being the same, advances in the mathematics governing sonar and sound transmission are mostly interchangeable with the math governing radar and radio transmission. If you can lick the harder problem (sound), you will dramatically advance the easier problem (radio). WiFi connections from your home router could maintain high speed out to longer range despite having to travel through several walls or moving tree branches and leaves.

Or who knows, maybe there's some as-yet uninvented means of sensing objects using something other than EM waves or sonar. And we just haven't thought of it yet because EM is so easy to use in the air and in space that it hasn't needed inventing yet.

why only 4000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just make it full ocean depth, 5000 - 6000m? That gets you to the bottom of most of the world's oceans. Sure the foam costs a bit more but most of your electonics are already going to be oil compensated and pressure rated.

Re:why only 4000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 4000m is the average depth, and 6000m is not the maximum depth on Earth, so that's quite arbitrary.

Re:why only 4000?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, most of the pacific is around 5000m. The pacific is a big chunk of the ocean

Re:why only 4000?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Full ocean depth" is not really an arbitrary term. It typically means around 5-6000m. Trenches are not included, they are a sort of special case and equipment must be designed specifically for those depths. Take many oceanographic instruments from seabird or wetlabs as an example. Yes they make some inexpensive versions of various instruments for shallower depths, but the typical instruments they produce are rated to ~6800m. Full ocean depth plus a bit more for safety margin.
4000 may be the average depth for the ENTIRE pacific, but that includes everything from challenger deep to chest deep at the beach. We already know a lot about the shallower areas. It is the wide expanses of deep areas which we know less about that we need to explore. Eliminate the shallow parts that we know about and I bet your average depth of the area of interest is not 4000m. That 4000m average is actually the arbitrary number.

I'll do it for 1 million dollars!

[Nidi62]

How about sharks with frickin' cameras attached to their heads?

Re:I'll do it for 1 million dollars!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because common sharks don't dive very deep, because then need to breathe, because their preys also need to breathe and depend on photosynthetic plankton.

Deep down in the ocean there is no light and no oxygen, so life needs to depend on other energy sources.

The deep ocean

[Anonymous Coward]

is no mystery to the US Navy!

Longevity?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any of the criteria cover longevity? What we really need is something that can comb the depths for weeks or months unattended. And bring back video/audio/sonar/etc for that entire time and let scientist thumb through it. Most of our current expeditions into the deep ocean are quick jaunts, I think some of the expeditions down to titanic took a day, and only a couple hours of that was actually at the wreck.

Re:Longevity?

[malditaenvidia]

Sounds like a job for James Cameron.

Re:Longevity?

[bobbied]

Any of the criteria cover longevity? What we really need is something that can comb the depths for weeks or months unattended. And bring back video/audio/sonar/etc for that entire time and let scientist thumb through it. Most of our current expeditions into the deep ocean are quick jaunts, I think some of the expeditions down to titanic took a day, and only a couple hours of that was actually at the wreck.

Well there are two problems here.. First is that you cannot take humans with you. It's just not possible to cram in all the necessary life support stuff and batteries to run it all into a pressure hull anybody can afford to build on this budget..... Second, just dumping the data into the hands of people requires that you first get the data to the surface which means you waste time at the surface or you are tethered to a boat that's pulling you around.

I don't think the tethered option is what they are looking for. They want more underwater drone than towed sonar array. Popping up to the surface might be viable, but I'm guessing the problem will really be data storage and compression...

Re:Longevity?

[Anonymous Coward]

"manned/tethered option"

I wasn't suggesting a prospective craft for this X-Prize should be either tethered or manned. In fact as you noted an underwater drone is probably the most likely solution. However even an unmanned underwater drone is going to have some serious challenges staying down very long. I highly doubt that data storage is going to be an issue, push comes to shove an array of off the shelf multi-terabit drives in a pressure cylinder would do. The issue is going to be power, batteries can't store that much power, nuclear isn't politically acceptable. The only option I can think of to allow these craft to stay down for weeks/months would be several drones staying within a 20 miles or so of semi movable tethered (to a surface buoy) base station that generates power using a tidal generator and stores/transmits that power down to the base station in the area being studied. The drones would return to the base station from time to time and recharge, the base station would either have the ability to move itself or from time to time a ship would have to stop by and move it. Your only other choice would be one of those rigs that either moves with the currents or changes its buoyancy as a form of propulsion and those are going to have massive limitations (slow, unpredictable, limited science payloads, etc)

Re:Longevity?

[mikael]

Electromagnetic waves like radio and light don't travel far through ocean water. Not more than a few dozen meters at most. Sound waves travel for hundreds of miles, but the bandwidth is too low for digital communications, though it's good enough for dolphins and whales. So every ROV needs an umbilical cable consisting of shielding, power and data). Given the hazards of pulling these cables along, it's easier to have the ROV release cable like a spider.

Having autonomous ROV's has always been a dream. Making ROV's depth proof is doable, but they need to be air-tight, pressure-resistant, and electrically isolated. Digital control of movement has already been done, it's just getting the AI to work that's the problem.

Re:Longevity?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ROV doesn't stow any cable. That would make doing anything with the ROV impossible due to weight. The cable is on a winch on the ship. For full ocean depth operations it isn't uncommon to have a 7-8000m spool of something like rochester .681. Three armor layer strength member, 3 copper conductors for 3-phase power typically running up to 3kv, and 3 fiber for communications. Depending on design you may have a two piece system such as a separate depressor weight and ROV to help isolate the vehicle from ship movement. The depressor weight could have a small spool for managing a neutrally buoyant tether between it and the ROV, but now you have an underwater winch which can be a real pain in the ass.

Re:Longevity?

[KGIII]

Pop a hole in the hull and compression will no longer be a problem!

Err... I'm kind of sorry but not sorry enough to not hit submit.

Re:And how does this help children?

[B33rNinj4]

Don't rob me of my SeaQuest dreams, man. We need this.

how about taking high def pics of K129?

[k6mfw]

The Soviet sub sunk and which Glomar Explorer got only a portion of it. Supposably when they were raising it (according to a documentary) and when the sub began to break apart when one of G.E. lifting arm broke, one of the missiles slid out of its tube. The documentary had an animation of the missile leaving the sub and then vanishing into the blackness of the depths. It left me the impression the Glomar Explorer crew were thinking, "if we are still here in a few moments, then it didn't explode." (actually there are many steps and procedures to make the bomb go boom, much more than dropping it). OK getting back on topic, can this be used to examine what was left over? Many examine other submarines (or maybe Navy already did but that's all hush hush)?

Re:how about taking high def pics of K129?

[bobbied]

I'd be real surprised if the Navies of a number of countries haven't closely surveyed just about all such interesting sites in international waters. I'd be willing to bet that it's been decades since it was done.

After all, the finding of the Titanic really was just a military funded smoke screen, where the military was interested in a very close survey of some targets of military value and was willing to pay handsomely for the privilege. The "We are looking for the Titanic" was a clever cover story at the time that explained all the equipment and Ballard being along.

Re:how about taking high def pics of K129?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The "military" was interested in a target of military value in the nowhere middle of the Atlantic Ocean and that is how the Titanic was found? Where do people come up with this shit?

Re:how about taking high def pics of K129?

[k6mfw]

target of military value in the nowhere middle of the Atlantic Ocean and that is how the Titanic was found? Where do people come up with this

Well documented that Ballard was part of a team to track down a submarine that disappeared in the Atlantic. Not the Threser (early 60s that led to the Sub Safe program of engineering) but another. I don't remember the story but appeared it was sunk by its own torpedo or some other mishap that sunk the boat. Navy put this a high value to find out what happened as the vessel never arrived in port. So they funded a team to meticulously search the vessel using latest technology. They found the vessel. But there was some funding and interest so why not use it to find Titantic. Locating that famous ship answered a decades long question did it break in half? Many experts said it could not even though some survivors recalled seeing it break in two (the experts said they don't understand maritime structural elements and simply imagined it).

Exploration or exploitation?

[Anonymous Coward]

My entry is the Burns Omni-Net