Comment by FatalLogic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FatalLogic | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

A lot of the more interesting anecdotes are in the second half of this article:

• The crew are constantly affected by nitrogen narcosis, making some behave as if they are slightly drunk

• The support team used to carry supplies down from the surface by free diving (with no oxygen), because that was much quicker, but it was impossible to enter Aquarius because breathing the higher pressure air inside could have killed them.

• Toilets are a problem due to pressure and privacy issues. The crew try to avoid using it

• A tiny puddle of spilled water can take weeks to dry inside Aquarius. Article does not explain why, unfortunately.

Aquarius site at FIU: http://aquarius.fiu.edu

Nat Geo story (2003): http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0309/feature4/index.ht...

I think the puddle would take a long time to evaporate because the air is basically saturated with water vapor (100% relative humidity). Saturation at the higher pressures in Aquarius occurs at a much lower water vapor concentration than up here.

In other words, the water has nowhere to go.

But they do have air conditioning, so they are able to condense water vapor out of the air. It seems like it's not very effective in that environment, so I'm curious to know why and if it could be improved. I assume the poor performance of the a/c is simply a result of the very high air pressure, but I don't know exactly why.

Breathing compressed air tastes so funky sometimes, I hope it's just nitrogen causing the narcosis.

Looks to me like the living chamber is pressurized to match the ambient water pressure, so realistically a free diver could enter but would still have the same limited "bottom-time" as when they are using scuba at that depth, otherwise the same decompression regime would be required upon ascent.

The conditioning of air for a relatively closed system should not be expected to resemble or contain the same elements as an ordinary residential application where cooling is the main consideration and moisture removal is a side-effect of the most common apparatus in humid environments.

A regenerative industrial air-drying unit could be adapted, at least I know I could do it, but may not be within their energy budget.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com