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Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#131

Post by dheera »

vaidhy wrote: post #119

There are a lot of reasons for having a stationary lab under sea - I have seen a lot of experiments for acceleration of coral growth, bringing corals back to life etc that need long term study and sustained help. However, I am a bit confused as to why this project needs an expensive building as opposed to something like a submarine shell with living quarters (and a moon pool, of course).

Better quality of life? I've seen those submarine tours on Youtube and they look cool initially but I could imagine it could get old pretty quickly eating freeze-dried rations and living in such a small space with no homey human elements to its design. Even the Antarctic bases have mini-libraries, and ping pong tables and whatnot that look like they would be much nicer to spend an extended period of time.

Humans weren't meant to be cooped up in a vessel. In space we don't really have the tech to build something bigger but I imagine in the ocean we could do it if we wanted to.

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#132

Post by sandworm101 »

So they want to create a multi-story structure anchored at "60 feet"? Is that 60 to the bottom? 60 feet to the top of the structure? 60 feet to the moonpool? That thing looks 80 feet tall.

Fyi, moonpools are cool. They create all sorts of interesting practical physics problems. Take the one in the artist rendering. Say it is at 60 feet. What is the pressure depth of the rooms on the second floor, say 15 feet above the moon pool? What about the rooms below? If I poke a hole in a room below the moonpool room, does water come in or air leak out?

By having a moonpool, the entire structure has to be kept at the pressure/depth of the water at the moonpool. So rooms above are at higher pressure than the water immediately outside, while rooms below are at lower pressure. The simple act of having that open pool creates very interesting structural design issues.

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#133

Post by mensetmanusman »

hinkley wrote: post #128
sradman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would prefer if journalist learned to provide something more factual and informative in their stories It is deeper than that (no pun intended); many journalists seem to be lacking the critical thinking skills required to judge whether a story passes a basic sniff test when it comes to science and technology. The Proteus project is not the ISS of the Sea, it is a vanity project. Clickbait from cnet is par for the…

I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? Maybe the cycles are too quick, it's too easy to convince yourself that you can fix a mistake post-publication, and you don't interact with as many experienced coworkers throughout the process. Are we the baddies?

The internet destroyed the economics of journalism, without cash, where are the resources to hire?

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#134

Post by keithwhor »

sandworm101 wrote: post #132

So they want to create a multi-story structure anchored at "60 feet"? Is that 60 to the bottom? 60 feet to the top of the structure? 60 feet to the moonpool? That thing looks 80 feet tall. Fyi, moonpools are cool. They create all sorts of interesting practical physics problems. Take the one in the artist rendering. Say it is at 60 feet. What is the pressure depth of the rooms on the second floor, say 15 feet above th…

Aren't all of these problems solved by just having the moonpool room airlocked?

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#135

Post by gnu8 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #132

So they want to create a multi-story structure anchored at "60 feet"? Is that 60 to the bottom? 60 feet to the top of the structure? 60 feet to the moonpool? That thing looks 80 feet tall. Fyi, moonpools are cool. They create all sorts of interesting practical physics problems. Take the one in the artist rendering. Say it is at 60 feet. What is the pressure depth of the rooms on the second floor, say 15 feet above th…

My first thought was there could be an airlock separating the moonpool room from the rest of the structure. But putting the people through compression/decompression cycles would seem to defeat one of the benefits of having a habitat down there to begin with. Also, if the internal pressure was kept down to one atmosphere, how strong would the structure need to be to avoid being crushed like a soda can?

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#136

Post by reaperducer »

hinkley wrote: post #128
sradman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would prefer if journalist learned to provide something more factual and informative in their stories It is deeper than that (no pun intended); many journalists seem to be lacking the critical thinking skills required to judge whether a story passes a basic sniff test when it comes to science and technology. The Proteus project is not the ISS of the Sea, it is a vanity project. Clickbait from cnet is par for the…

I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines? Maybe the cycles are too quick, it's too easy to convince yourself that you can fix a mistake post-publication, and you don't interact with as many experienced coworkers throughout the process. Are we the baddies?

I wonder if journalists are no longer getting the same on-the-job training they got with print magazines?

They don't, but the roots run deeper than that.

College journalism departments used to stand on their own, or be part of a Communications department. Now, a lot of them are part of marketing departments because that's where the donor money is.

For example, one of the "Big J" journalism schools used to be Medill at Northwestern University. A decade or so ago it changed to become the "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications."

I used to mentor interns from that school. The first few years after the switch we started getting students who didn't know the first thing about journalism. They were being taught how to edit videos for YouTube, not how to find out how a congressman voted on a particular topic. We had students about to graduate who didn't know important recent historical figures. Couldn't tell you what party any president belonged to earlier the current one, and his predecessor.

It goes along with a long-running theme on HN: That universities are no longer about education. They're only in it for the big money now.

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#137

Post by sandworm101 »

keithwhor wrote: post #134
sandworm101 wrote: post #132

So they want to create a multi-story structure anchored at "60 feet"? Is that 60 to the bottom? 60 feet to the top of the structure? 60 feet to the moonpool? That thing looks 80 feet tall. Fyi, moonpools are cool. They create all sorts of interesting practical physics problems. Take the one in the artist rendering. Say it is at 60 feet. What is the pressure depth of the rooms on the second floor, say 15 feet above th…

Aren't all of these problems solved by just having the moonpool room airlocked?

Airlocks are actually rather dangerous. Things can go wrong very quickly. An accidental rapid/unplanned decompression, even only across a few feet of pressure, can do real damage. Then there are the issues building the doors, which hold enough force that should they pop open they could kill. The biggest advantage of the moonpool approach is having the entire complex at the same pressure, with the pool acting as a passive safety valve against wild pressure fluctuations.

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#138

Post by lisper »

Just in case anyone here is considering donating to this project, do your due diligence. There is quite a bit of behind-the-scenes drama in the Cousteau family, which is why both Jacques's son, Jean-Michelle, and his grandson, Fabien, each have their own 501(c)(3) separate from the Cousteau society. JM has http://www.oceanfutures.org/ and Fabien has https://www.fabiencousteauolc.org/. According to JM, he broke away because the Cousteau society had been taken over and corrupted by one of Jacques's ex-wives. I never verified this, but it is consistent with Charity Navigator's one-star rating [1]. We used to be major supporters of Ocean Futures, but they too seem to have become dysfunctional. Neither JM's nor Fabien's organization even merits a rating on CN. It's kinda sad actually.

[1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

Re: Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea

#139

Post by dghughes »

victornomad wrote: post #60

When I was a kid I used to watch a TV series called SeaQuest. Pretty much the same idea, isnt it? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQNXOscKEhY

Same here and it was fairly complex in its geopolitical views. It wasn't just fish and bikinis.
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