Jacques Cousteau’s grandson wants to build the ISS of the sea
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
The article is written in a very dreamy tone and contains very little substantial information. It firmly assures that "Proteus will be" such and such, as if they are making the finishing touches already, yet "Proteus is still in the concept phase". "Fabien is raising $135 million" (which, TBH, seems quite a conservative estimate for this project on the one hand, and on the other is a pretty huge investment for something that doesn't have any ROI projections attached), but there's no discussion about what else except for his surname this Fabien guy actually has to have any chances to succeed.
So, yeah, I would prefer if journalist learned to provide something more factual and informative in their stories, instead of telling me how cool deep-sea exploration is. I know it's cool, alright? I don't know if a project like that can actually happen in the observable future.
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 course but I guess I expect more from a publication with "Smithsonian" on the masthead.
The previous HN thread Proteus: Underwater research lab worthy of a Bond villain [1] points out that this is not just a questionable idea but a really bad one.
The amount of effort required to get down to actual information after reading most stories (about anything) is not trivial. In other words, they are now in the mode of writing click-bait pieces for traffic and letting interested readers to the work real journalists used to do in order to produce substantive material.
The simplest example of this are very short articles with an enticing subject line and lots of ads on the page. After reading such articles (and feeling cheated) you immediately go to Goggle and have to track down such things as the company URL, research papers, historical context, current state of the art, supporting documentation/legislation/whatever, and then apply some critical thinking. Yeah, what we have today, at many levels and kinds of organizations, is far from what I would call "journalism".
An article in the Wall Street Journal (chosen at random to have a proper noun) had a different gravitas than the hand-stapled 15 lb paper booklet the scruffy guy shoved at you in front of the market. Now the scruffy guy got shave and a haircut, has access to equipment that is almost but not quite as good, and the "WSJs" have reacted by engaging in a race to the bottom - more ads, less attention to detail. The signalling is gone.
I have seen this happen in local Facebook groups. I remember an instance where a dreadful, spiteful, verbally violent exchange of hundreds of posts was triggered by this community member starting a thread. Neighbors saying the ugliest things imaginable to each other. It was truly sad to witness.
Nobody bothered to see who started the thread.
It was someone who had just finished high school. In other words, a 17 to 18 year old, maybe a bit older.
The subject isn't important, what is important is that someone with exactly zero life experience, zero responsibility for herself or others, decided she could actually post one of the most ridiculous thoughts on a subject she could not possibly comprehend for many years.
People got launched into the most vile verbal battle I've seen in a long time because nobody took a moment to consider the source. Had this comment been offered in person, in the context of a town hall meeting, she likely would have been told to please sit down, listen, learn and come back once she had a kid or two, a mortgage, a job and the realities that come with adult life.
The internet has allowed this kind of thing to happen. It isn't about age, it's about a range of variables that used to create categories of trust. You had to earn this ranking over time in order to have reach. Today no such thing exists. Google, YouTube, FB, Twitter, TikTok and others will gladly hand you an audience of billions of people, truth and other standards of quality, in this context, are meaningless.
Are we the baddies?
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.
Genuine question, there's obviously something I've missed.
The Verge covered it back in June: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21278950/k-pop-stans-socia...
Recently, they've been involved with BLM in various forms[0] and orchestrated the "million ticket" Trump rally prank[1], so very direct involvement in politics. Whether that is "keeping democracy alive" is probably up for personal interpretation, but in general there seems to be at least a high interest in political participation.
In contrast to their fanbases, KPop artists are pretty absent from those political debates (which isn't uncommon for mainstream media stars), and don't speak out about political issues in fear they might turn away a portion of their fans.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52996705
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-...
“Cousteau’s grandson”, just that phrase, will grab attention around the world from people who never once saw the grandfather’s face.
Why not give him a try raising enough money to accomplish it?
In todays time anything can go viral quickly.
Maybe it will be only enough for a small, limited one?
Maybe only design work?
If you support maritime exploration, why not out of general principle also this? Maybe it goes off. In the context of saving the oceans and climate change, I think it is possible, but I also don't know more facts than the article that just described the dream.
But I am not aware of a project with better planning where this could draw ressources from. So, why criticize it to the ground from the start?
Because it is not your project? Well, this one at least has news article coverage and HN front page. I would call it a good start.
This project will need $135 million, and it's not clear even that will be enough, but my guess is no. For reference, estimates put the actual ISS cost around 150 000 million (150 billion)
Sure, you probably will not get to that level for a science project - but at least some extra money would be good.
Now "would I?" is a whole other question. Human missions are kind of old school now that we have fully autonomous devices such as the surf glider, underwater gliders, animal-tag based telemetry, multiple global satellite internet networks. If I was collaborating with Fabien, I would put that name to use raising money for something a little more modern, such as autonomous monitoring of military hydrophone arrays, measurement of radiation around nuclear sub pens, locating and monitoring the 60+ beluga whales just recently released from the russian whale jail.
Decent choice of name, of course.
Juicero raised $113M, anything is possible if you get the right people on-board (no pun intended). I agree it seems incredibly conservative for a large scale engineering project though.
A few companies have research or commercial projects, including Made In Space's work on ZBLAN ultra-clear optical fiber https://madeinspace.us/capabilities-and-technology/fiber-opt...
And Budweiser (a American beer subsidiary) has sent four experiments to the ISS on barley germination and malting https://www.issnationallab.org/blog/budweisers-fourth-invest...
While it's not turning a profit (ISS running costs are ~$3B/year) it is researching American space technology and agriculture for us down here on Earth.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/nlab/ind...
to you he is just “this Fabien guy” because you are uninformed of his qualifications. But blame the journalist, or blame the article for not providing that context, or blame Fabien for his last name, or maybe do a little googling before discounting the person and blame yourself
And don't most investors want some solidarity with their fellow investors? Brand recognition is a built-in safety feature that might help protect my money.
[1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...
If you really want something interesting, build a sub that can park itself in stationary locations or some sort of crawler lab with legs that do minimal impact on the floor and have the ability to reach the deepest parts such as the Mariana Trench. The ocean is huge and parking in one spot seems ridiculous.
My uncle is a marine biologist and spent time living in an underwater lab in Florida. Aside from all the diving he was able to do, he said it smelled like a high school locker room and everything was damp inside.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/octopod/images/f/fd/Octo...
They grow up so fast.
<3 Octonauts!
On the one hand, I definitely agree they're beautiful! And creative, clever, etc.
On the other hand, the books are not grounded in actual sealife the way the show is. Coming from the show to the books, this was disappointing. Hopefully it's a better experience if you know that ahead of time!
Moon pools or wet porches have been ubiquitous in underwater habitats for many decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_pool
That you know of them through a cartoon is not a good criticism of the proposal.
I recently watched "Diving Deep" https://de.oceanfilmtour.com/en/movies/volume-7/diving-deep/ a documentary (part of the Ocean Film Tour 2020) about Mike deGruy, an ocean cinematographer.
deGruy showed what the chemicals that were used to disperse the oil during the Deepwater Horizon spill did to the life on the ocean floor. The chemicals removed the oil from the surface of the ocean (where it was visible), but made a mess below the surface. A wakeup call for sure.
He also appears to have been a really nice, fun guy.
We also should have a plan B as a species.
I’m of the camp that believes we should go to space and also focused on saving the Earth.
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.
> Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the crescent-shaped opening measuring 60 centimetres (24 in) long created by the jammed interior trunk door. With the escaping air and pressure, it included bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.
> The blood of the three divers left intact inside the chambers likely boiled instantly, stopping their circulation
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.
- what will be possible that now is not?
(Pod six are jerks)
It made me realize that alien like life is more fascinating on earth than it will ever be on my lifetime lurking at the space.
(I was raked over the coals a few months ago for describing a person as "Jeff Bezo's ex-wife. I want to make sure we hold all these cases to the same rule.)
The grandson is a different person of course; but he invokes his grandfather's name as a reference and proof of competence. Don't fall for it.
The defense of Commandant Cousteau's anti-Semite private writings usually goes along the lines of "okay, but everybody did the same at the time". But this is not true. Most people did not actively call for the physical extermination of Jews in occupied France. They did nothing to prevent it -- but rejoicing and calling for more is on another level.
His brother was a frequent contributor to "Je suis partout" during WWII and was sentenced to death for his writings at the end of the war (later commuted to life in prison).
And yes, Cousteau is not his brother. Yet -- not a good family.
Even more so- what the hell is this "not a good family" business all about? Seriously? The whole family? Because of one member? This is just mud-slinging.
But he was a Nazi sympathizer and was protected by the Germans during the war. Then he falsely claimed to have been a member of the Resistance. This is all documented in his biography.
Why is what you are doing here any different than reminding everyone of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis everytime someone talks about modern Germany, or Angela Merkel?
I'm sorry to have to point this out.
> Ici, nous n'avons toujours pas de logement. Nous sommes actuellement campés dans un petit pavillon d'une pension de famille sur la Corniche. Ce n'est pas gai pour Simone, mais il n'y aura d'appartement convenable que quand on aura fichu à la porte tous les ignobles youtres qui nous encombrent. [0]
A rough translation of the last sentence might be:
> It's not cheerful for Simone, but there won't be a suitable apartment until we have kicked out all the vile youtres [slur for Jew] that plague us.
But, to be more charitable to the man, it was a time where anti-semitism was wide spread, and doesn't seem to be more than the norm of the time. But it isn't really ambiguous.
[0] https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1999/06/18/la-plonge...
Dozens of other articles
Anti-Semitism: https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1999/06/18/la-plonge...
Cousteau's first wife Simone was independently wealthy and financed his boat (Calypso) and expeditions. She lived on board most of the time (yet never appears on camera). But he had another secret family (with kids) on the shore with a former flight attendant, since the late 70s. Simone only learned about it in 1990. Letters were published where she asks a friend in disbelief if this can be true. She then died within a few months. Can't find the letters right now but I did read them then.
Critique of "Le Monde du silence": https://www.rtl.fr/culture/medias-people/video-pourquoi-le-m...
In that movie from 1956 which won the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or, the team blows a whole coral reef with dynamite in order to "count fish living in it". They also catch live sharks on board and kill them with shovels "because seamen don't like sharks".
You can watch the documentary and see for yourself.
If this is your references, you end up having denigrated him.
About your allegation of J. Cousteau having protected marine life "by blowin' it", it is his work that has raised the current awareness of the richness and fragility of marine life. Compare his positive achievements at the scale of the whole planet (or at least Western world) versus some small part of a coral reef he blew up.
Interrogé par Le Monde, Erik Orsenna confie : « C'est évidemment une lettre ignoble. Mais j'ai peur que si l'on ouvre toute la correspondance des Français de l'époque, et si l'on écoute l'enregistrement de leurs conversations, on découvrirait beaucoup d'autre antisémitisme de cette sorte. Autrement, Pétain n'aurait pu rencontrer en France un tel accord, et des horreurs comme les rafles de juillet 42, organisées par la police française, n'auraient pas pu se produire. A la différence de son frère, Pierre-Antoine, dirigeant de Je suis partout, ce que je dis dans mon discours, et à ma connaissance, Cousteau n'a jamais émis ce genre d'ignominie en public ni ne s'est engagé dans aucune action antisémite. »
Which is not to excuse anything, but it seems to me the majority of French society (indeed, European society) at the time held such views. Why single out Cousteau? And why do it in an article about a project undertaken by his grandson, who is not himself, I believe, accused of holding any of those biggotted views? Kin punishment is no less a barbaric practice than antisemitism (and islamophobia, as per the article above).
As henearkr says below, the rest of your comment is about Cousteau's personal life, which is neither here nor there. This is not the Daily Mail.
In 80 years if you're famous people will be talking about how horrible you are as a person for being ok with the slaughtering of animals just to eat meat.
It gets really fucking old.
Pretty much the same thing happens today with islamophobic ideas and with "the last racism", i.e. hatred towards Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, even though they were also subjected to genocide by the Nazis.
Some people never learn- and Europeans, in particular, seem to have a particularly hard time to learn from our shared past of nationalism and racism and the brutalities committed because of them. In that, I'm speaking as a European, an EU citizen, a Greek citizen and someone very concerned about the waves of nationalism and racism that are still rising all around Europe. In my own country, it took cold-blooded murder for public opinion to face the fact that Xrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) is a band of criminal thugs and stop voting those bastards to the Greek parliament (now they vote for their dregs). If we expect blood to be spilled before we understand where fascism leads us, we'll just keep destroying ourselves over and over. And I'm very afraid that we will do exactly that.
But, again, this has nothing to do with the character of Fabien Cousteau, which to me is pretty clearly what the OP is trying to attack, through his association with his grandfather, a practice that I find as revolting as the ideas expressed by the grandfather in the letter discussed in Le Monde.
The part about his personal life is to further substantiate the "liar" part. It's not just that he had a "mistress"; he had another family and hid it from his wife, whom he didn't divorce because he needed her money. She died of sorrow when she eventually found out. I think it tells something about his character.
I'm getting downvoted heavily for all these comments, but I persist in thinking we should be more careful about the "heroes" we choose. This man is no hero. He's horrible.
In any case, why do we need to judge anyone's character in a HN thread? What is this, inquisition by internet forum? That is just the worse, lowest form of internet activity and I'm really sorry to see it on HN. This is at the level of the darkest recesses of 4chan.
Exactly. And we wouldn't be talking about it were it not for the affiliation.
> This is at the level of the darkest recesses of 4chan.
Right. Does this count as Godwin's law?
I posted the article and I didn't post it because Fabien is Jaqcues-Yve's grandson, but because I find the idea of underwater habitats interesting. You're the one who is focused on the "affiliation". And for no good reason other than to throw some dirt around, from what I can tell.
I know because I watched and enjoyed the shows as a kid and most people at the time liked him. The only person I knew back then who didn't like the man was my dad (a sailor).
What I mean is the name is still strong enough to attract some interest.
But the reality is grey and whatever his flaws might have been he contributed a huge amount to diving technology, to make the public discover the marine environment, and for the protection of oceans.
The grandson's NPO is named after himself.
"The founder of the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting and preserving the planet’s oceans, coastal areas and marine habitats, is building the world’s largest underwater research station."
It would be one thing if people knew Jacques was a bigot and touted his science as being great because it promoted bigotry. I had no idea. But I do think of ocean conservation when I think of him and that is the truly important part.
And, as you point out yourself, its the grandson. Sins of the grandfather?
My guess is he made more kids (and adults) happy with his programs, than he made sad with his personality and opinions.
Say I listen to a LGBTIOAQ+* muscian who hates straight people like myself (they exist), who is a feminist who hates men like myself, but I enjoy their music, their personality is definitely horrible to me, but I don't care because I love their music and I will listen just the same :)
If you like Cousteau's movies, good for you. But invoking his name and making him a hero is, I think, wrong.
But the name is connected to the ocean and the grandson wanting to do somthing with the ocean, its not surprising that his name is invoked on that basis.
Edit: Cousteau's work is as bad as his character.
They certainly are not fans of his life, his life is extremely irrelevant, it may as well be totally forgotten, and it would not hurt.
About your last edit: here I beg to disagree.
I love his work as a filmmaker, it made me love the sea and nature in general and made me want to protect it. When I was a child he contributed to educate me and make me an environmentalist. On me at least, his work was tremendously successful.
As an engineer, he created a lot of devices used today for diving. His boat Alcyone was even sporting revolutionary static turbosails.
(I ask rhetorically because even a cursory read of his Wikipedia page would demonstrate that his actions afterwards undercut that sort of cavalier attitude to the undersea environment. I believe he explicitly repudiated that action besides but I can't find where.)
Moreover, what _else_ of his work is bad? That one thing? He produced educational films, books, speeches, etc. for almost four decades after that film.
Anyway, he did not make disappear coral as a species, did he?
Please do not confuse nature protection with sentimentalism. There are very serious environmentalist jobs whose description is "destroy all the cats on this island".
Just to precise, there is none of this kind of cruelty in his films. What he transmitted to generations of children (and still does) is respect and fascination of nature in all its beauty and complexity.
I don't know what you saw about sharks, but what I saw as a child was Cousteau's team filming sharks from inside special cages, and even outside the cages in the open, with special canes he designed to keep them at distance without killing them. If he ever had cruelty towards sharks, he had also compassion, and this is the compassion bit that reached me.
https://www.levif.be/actualite/environnement/quand-le-comman...
Nowadays scientists use poison instead of dynamite, is it better? That shows you these methods have strong rationales, even if they seem stupid at first.
And at the time the Sea was still a big unknown, Cousteau greatly contributed to open this unread book.
So you see, you do not have to feel compelled to destroy him and his work.
“Cousteau was a showman, nothing more – a man prepared to do anything to sell his films and books, even if it meant martyring animals.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/117...
Drove a car without plates so he could park in handicap spaces, Denied his daughter was his, etc.
Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and the entire culture was dictated by him, it is inexcusable to say that Apple products are separate from that.
Or we can say that unreasonable, and even bad people also have good points and that we want to try and take the good they have accomplished and build upon it. This does not mean we have to celebrate the person.
Jacques Cousteau much like Steve Jobs did not develop many of the things we think about when their names are mentioned but they both worked to promote and popularize their fields.
Yet that's what we are doing when we introduce an article about an underwater device by the name of the grandfather of the promoter of said device.
"Joe Shmoe's grandson wants to build something" doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?
Recently Alexandra Cousteau, the grand-daughter of Jacques, had her name surface in regards to Epstein and whatever operation he was running.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/titanic-discovered-top-secret...
And the Glomar Explorer was an actual CIA operation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer
...but dragging Epstein into this? Really?