Current Events > Why haven't we build a lab at the bottom of the ocean?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Imagine all the marine life we could study. It could have helped us solve climate change!

ProfessorKukui posted...

there were plans for one back in the 00s, to be completed by 2021. canceled in 05.

It did keep blowing up, to be fair.

2021 came and went and Sealab never happened.

We are truly in the darkest timeline (take that subspace!)

Aliens

Crabsquids keep knocking the power out.

We obviously couldn't get a sub to tour the Titanic, I don't see safely being able to build a lab down there.

Looking at the fish we are are about to cause extinction for wouldnt save them. We already knew what we needed to do to stop climate change decades ago but didnt do it

Ocean floor labs already exist. They usually aren't very deep though.

Because we're too busy ignoring the ones that already exist.

Pod six is jerks

Only one exists and its only roughly 65 feet deep. Owned by NOAA.

ProfessorKukui posted...

there were plans for one back in the 00s, to be completed by 2021. canceled in 05.

Fffffff

The documentary show already showed why this was a bad idea. Do you really think the average American is better than Captain Murphy?

probably hard to sustain

Medussa posted...

Pod six is jerks

TC is a Mailbox Head.

SychopathicRyda posted...

We obviously couldn't get a sub to tour the Titanic, I don't see safely being able to build a lab down there.

I mean, we could if we really wanted.
We have reached the deeps of the Mariana Trench after all, and that is much deeper.

Even if it's a engineering nightmare with all that pressure deep down, I think some deep sea rover browsing the depths for months would be pretty awesome.

INB4 we already have such things, and I didn't get the news.

a lab staffed by actual humans living down there sounds very difficult but some sort of AI lab building / mobile rover with science facilities attached probably wouldn't be that bad?

Honestly it'd be such an insanely difficult and expensive undertaking I can't imagine it being remotely worth it. If you're taking about a lab built at crush Depths, it'd clearly need to be designed to somehow survive the constant pressure, and would need to be built entirely by submersibles. If somehow they got all that done, it's horrifying to imagine the repercussions if ANYTHING failed. One minute you have a lab filled with people, the next it implodes in a fraction of a second. It's ironically easier and safer to build a space lab.

We had one, but they declared Martian law and the project was abandoned.

When the easy bake oven was lost, so was the whole idea

Probably the thousands of tons of pressure the lab would experience at the bottom of the ocean . Idk tho .

For shallow stuff, a boat with scuba gear and whatever else you happen to need for a given research project is cheaper.

For deep stuff, a boat and a submarine and whatever you need is MUCH MUCH cheaper.

Unless you have a particular reason to do it, and cannot emulate it in a lab of some sort, there just isn't much point. Which is why most of the ones that actually exist tend to be related to space agencies.

Pitlord_Special posted...

2021 came and went and Sealab never happened.

We are truly in the darkest timeline (take that subspace!)

We also don't have our Adrienne Barbeaubots.

Those things only ever exist so someone can claim to have lived under water for x amount of days.

But yeah, it is one of those "why don't you see mining bases on every asteroid" thing. A ship is just better for anything other than something as big and long term as Ceres, which itself can potentially then be converted to other purposes as its original purposes of tests, mining, and such are no longer needed, yet its still potentially useful as a low-G shipyard.

Likewise, a mothership is just better for anything other than the most niche reasons. And unlike sci-fi, there is a nice habitable sea surface within relatively short range of any longer term resource like, say, oil, so its easier to just build the big stuff to float. Particularly since you can then potentially just tow it and set it up somewhere else too.

So yeah. Oil rigs are essentially the thing that would be closest in purpose to having underwater resource bases. But don't need to be such because its easy to just secure yourself in a location and live above water with a bunch of extra piping and drill stuff for the extra distance.

Can't smoke Marlboro reds down there. All they got is those weird Pall Mall lights.

First we need to invent a way to build strong AF materials. Then we can think about deep sea bases and space elevators.

Why do you think we call them killer whales?

I said it was dodgeball time, bitch.