In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat | Hacker News Reader

In 2025, People Will Try Living in This Underwater Habitat

spectrum.ieee.org

52 pointsthunderbong56 comments

I think the difference between this and Jacques Cousteau's ConShelf in the 1960's and the saturation diving habitats used today is the depth and duration? Cousteau's group spent weeks at 10m and the saturation diving habitats are meant for living in for a few days at a time until your shift is over.

They do not explain anywhere why you would want to live at 200m, where it's dark and boring and you sound squeaky all the time. Living at 10m I totally get, especially in somewhere like the Red Sea.

They do explain why they want to live at 200m.

As per the article:

> With current diving at 150 to 200 meters, you can only get 10 minutes of work completed, followed by 6 hours of decompression. With our underwater habitats we’ll be able to do seven years’ worth of work in 30 days with shorter decompression time. More than 90 percent of the ocean’s biodiversity lives within 200 meters’ depth and at the shorelines, and we only know about 20 percent of it.

And with fewer pressurization cycles I imagine the risk of being accidentally extruded à la Byford Dolphin is reduced?

> They do not explain anywhere why you would want to live at 200m

If for the sake of preserving humanity (a backup plan) this project seems easier to pull off than SpaceX mission to mars at least in the next 20 years. We already have hundred such underwater habitats called nuclear submarine that can accomodate 100+ people.

Many animals survived previous asteroid impact even though dinosaurs didn't - it actually made space of us humans. But you probably want to have such habitat deeper than 10m to survive tsunami.

I don't think this really qualifies as a backup survival option.

Power, food, and transport are provided from the surface. So any event that resulted in an extinction of the species would end the habitats, perhaps a month or two later.

Power is the key limiting factor. All the power is derived from the surface, and would likely be damaged or destroyed. Food would be the next factor - yes in some cases there might be local food sources (fish) but that would exhaust quickly as well.

Not to mention air...

You can pull power and air out of water, given enough infrastructure. Mix gases would probably be a pain in the ass, depending on what they're using.

Not sure what aquaculture at greater than sunlight depths looks like, but assume you could farm the upper layers of the water column.

The biggest limitation to self-sustainability is probably interior volume, given the need to have manufacturing chains available.

All this is true, but none applies to the project under discussion.

As an aside, I expect any kind of "backup humanity" goal would almost certainly be easier, more sustainable, and more likely to succeed on land than under water.

On the other hand if we messed up badly enough to require a backup, I'm not sure we deserve it.

Long term this would be still easier to make really sustainable than mars mision.

1) Power:

- power can be from nuclear reactors similar like with nuclear submarines

- you can drill down near some geothermal water

- you can still deploy some floating solar panels with 200m cable linked to habitat and fold back similar like kite in case tsunami

- you can put habitat nearby some water currents (e.g. nearby some 2 underwater mountains/islands and you will have water current because of tidal waves) and deploy some power kite or hydro turbine

2) Oxygen + energy

- just make electrolysis on water molecule to get both oxygen and hydrogen

- grow some seaweed food

- grow fishes and other sea food

Sure this is still hard to pull off but at least 1 order of magnitude easier than on mars. On earth you don't have to worry about gravity, lack of water, lack of geothermal power, radiation from space, protection from micro meteors, -73C temperature during the night on mars (deep water on earth even 200m below is not frozen but between 0-3C). Humanity after 10 years of living underwater can still try to go back to land after things gets better post asteroid impact.

Oh sure. Colonies on Mars are a complete fantasy right now. They start and end with Mars's lack of a magnetic field.

could we create a self-sufficient habitat underwater? Probably. But given that it would lack key abilities (heavy industry for example) it would inevitably decay (Probably quite quickly.)

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t you need a helium mix at 200 meters?

A nuclear reactor could suffice as a local power source. Maybe fusion in another 50 years. With a local power source, electrolytic oxygen generation is possible. Food, hydroponics.

Transportation? Could figure something out.

Most of this tech is stuff we already have or developed with NASA/etc for the ISS gearing it up as a self sustainment environment. Main problem would be internal volume.

They explain in the first paragraph that it's for scientists.

> There, the ocean-exploration organization Deep has embarked on a multiyear quest to enable scientists to live on the seafloor at depths up to 200 meters for weeks, months, and possibly even years.

I dont know why they would choose 200m deep, its pretty dark at that depth and not super interesting. Why not park it somewhere near a reef at 30-50M, dive in dive out experience for tourists, good vac options, good lighting and easy to work on.

Think of it like your first subnautica base.

It’s a cap, not a target. Up to 200m, initially only up to 100m. It’s also for scientists, so the benefits are that you don’t have to keep returning to the surface. The whole idea is to reduce the cost and interruption to the work the scientists want to do. At 50m you can get to the surface fairly easily. 200m much harder.

For the very fact that there isn't as much sustained exploration closer to 200m.

60m+ imposes a lot of requirements that limit the types of folks who can dive. (Unless they're also cross-trained tech divers)

It's for people who already work at that depth.

They should do it somewhere shallow first, next to a large city surrounded by water where the land values are high. Requiring a boat for access would make it less feasible, so perhaps just a stairway and/or an elevator at the water’s edge instead. Put it just deep enough that it’s not visually distracting to passers–by, and shallow enough that the residents can still see the sun through skylights.

The renders with tropical ocean life right outside the windows are a fantasy; most of the sea bottom is undifferentiated mud.

Of course you could just build a marina and let people live in houseboats. You’d get the same population density with fewer of the problems and lower costs.

>They should do it somewhere shallow first,

Does no one remember “Bioshpere”?

It didn’t go well; and it was in the desert.

Biosphere II is worth a visit. They're still running it as a non-isolated research station. The original had several very specific problems (trees need wind to form strong roots, fresh concrete absorbs a lot of oxygen, their crops besides sweet potatos had serious soil nutrient problems, which meant they spent almost all their time desperately subsistence farming). Based on what they did we could run a Biosphere III today pretty well, which means I would call the Biosphere II experiment successful.

It went pretty well. A small amount of extra oxygen needed once during the 2-year period. Ecosystems that shifted in unexpected ways but did not collapse. 100% sealed and self-sustaining is going to be very hard, but 98% is much easier and good enough for many purposes.

This is revisionism. It failed weeks in and was constantly failing the rest of the time it was running.

Yes, they failed every single one of their objectives, within weeks. They failed the psychological ones even harder than the others. (Whoever keeps pushing at a colony on Mars, should look at those later ones.)

But the GP also has a good point. They failed due to overambition more than to lack of results.

Is starting a colony experiment 200m deep not overambition?

Getting people to live a month in a well-known but extremely harsh environment?

There's actually way fewer things that could go wrong than on the Biosphere experiment. Time exponentiates every failure mode, shorter times fix lots of things.

It may still be overambitious, we will only know after they try, but it's less ambitious than the other one.

We should give that another go. Unless humanity can build and operate BioSphere 3 as an unqualified success, we are nowhere near ready for a settlement on Mars.

It's still there?

Yes, it's still an active laboratory, currently owned by University of Arizona.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

However, it hasn't been operated as a long-duration closed-cycle ecosystem since 1994. It's surprising to me that lots of people talk about bases on the Moon and Mars, but basic fundamentals like this are neglected.

Biosphere was an attempt at a sealed ecosystem. It's not at all comparable to a building designed as living quarters for people who come and go as they please.

This is kind of what I feel about McMurdo Station. Why put it so far away? Put it near a Vail resort. Lots of snow. Same with the ISS. Kind of useless that far away. Treehouses are so much cheaper.

> They should do it somewhere shallow first

That's what they are doing. They use a flooded quarry as a test "sea".

Are you thinking this is going to replace residential housing? They're designing these as research bases.

Logistics of getting clean water, electricity, reliable internet, and food is going to be literal hell. Then there's managing fecal matter and other waste management.

? Just put the poop outside. That's how it works in most oceangoing anythings, assuming you're not in port.

I’m surprised to see no mention of the other Aquarius Reef Base in Key Largo, which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting (from the outside only, freediving) in person: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarius_Reef_Base

I just read one of the linked articles about saturation divers, it was absolutely fascinating https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-a-saturation-d...

I immediately thought of that Futurama episode where Fry was looking for an apartment:

https://youtu.be/t69yuxD-iBU?si=Bm84ggtpIWwY0M3f

> If you like dank, fuhgettaboutit!

Rust Underwater Labs

People will do anything except upzone and institute a land value tax, huh

Or read an article!

The way your comment just assumes your way is the right way does very accurately capture the problem though perhaps not in the way you intended.

Edit: and before I get strawmanned I feel I should mention that I say this as someone who has "fire up the guillotines" level hate for zoning.

As with humans in space, the real question is, why send humans to do a robot's job? Most work involving undersea cables and wells uses remotely operated vehicles, not human divers.

Robots are still very clumsy. I've seen videos of researchers taking minutes to do basic tasks like "yank on a lanyard attached to the ROV" using a robot arm. Oil and gas companies use a lot of robots but they still employ divers.

Humanity expanded for the last ten thousand years but now all the easy places to expand to are full, making Earth into a prison some people dream of escaping. Sending robots won't help.

The easy places to expand to are emptying out.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_ghost_towns_in_the_Un...

Sealab 2025?

One can hope

Just stay out of pod six. Those guys are jerks.

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

“No.” Says the man in Washington, "it belongs to the poor."

These projects deeply, deeply capture my imagination for some reason, although I suspect that life on or in them would likely be pretty miserable. I am a little skeptical that people will be in this thing by 2025 if so far all they have is 3d-renders though. Same company that bought the condemned FLIP ship

Joseph Dituri recently finished a 100 day stint underwater[1]. It's described as "It's basically like a really small RV" and "One of the things that has surprised me the most is how much I miss the sun"

Honestly, I think it's like most things, some people would love it, some will hate it, and a bunch will be able to tolerate it well enough.

[1] https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/rivers-oceans/meet-...

I guess depth is going to make a big difference too. I've eaten at an underwater restaurant[0] before that was shallow enough that it was bright and sunny (while still being very much underwater), and I could see that working well.

0: https://www.conradmaldives.com/dine/ithaa-undersea-restauran...

dustin hoffman's best horror movie took place in this habitat

I was thinking of Peter Watts' Starfish series, myself - equally horrifying, if not more so.

You can also say that dustin hoffman’s worst horror movie took place in this habitat

“I chose… Rapture!”

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