Just say that there’s a special sea-lab, to be stationed on the ocean floor (say the Challenger Deep) with a crew made up of 10 people, (e.g. scientists, mission specialists and technicians.)
How would such a lab have to be constructed to withstand prolonged exposure to the harsh conditions there? (Isn’t it something like over 35,000 feet deep?)
How large would it have to be for a crew of 10? (There’s no special reason for my choosing a crew of 10.)
If you were able to choose a staff for such a sea-lab, what would the specialties be of the people you sent there? (I’m imagine you might want an oceanographer for example.)
You’d probably want some kind of special manned submersibles that would be able to explore away from the sea-lab, so how might they have to be constructed and how might they look?
I don’t know any of the science and engineering that might make such a venture possible, as I’m just asking these questions out of curiousity.
Just for the record Chuck, this is not serious answer. It’s a board in-joke. And it’s still funny.
And frankly I’m surprised it took 3 hours for someone to make it.
Your question seems to have no factual answer, so don’t be surprised if it has been moved to the “Great Debates” or “IMHO” forum next you look.
I concur that there is no single factual answer here.
The only really harsh thing is the pressure, which could be handled by a thick steel hull. The fact that exposure to pressure is prolonged should not be an issue - once a properly designed vessel has withstood a few minutes it should be good for a very long time.
The energy cost of supporting 10 people for a longish time would be substantial - might call for nuclear power in some form.
I think the big problem would be identifying a suitable mission. What could be done by 10 people that a few couldn’t accomplish?
The International Space Station (suggested earlier in this thread as a model for an undersea station) is supporting a pressure differential of about 1 atmosphere (14.7 psi); moreover, with the higher pressure being on the interior, the skin of the ISS is in tension, a nice, stable situation.
A research station in the Challenger Deep (a depth of about 35K feet) would be subject to an external pressure of about 15,000 psi. Because the pressure is external (and hideously large), the walls of the station would have to be extremely thick in order to avoid buckling/crumpling (like an aluminum can being squashed). Generally speaking, the larger the enclosed volume, the thicker the walls need to be. The Trieste (alluded to earlier) crew compartment was a steel sphere with a diameter of about 6 feet, and steel walls five inches thick.
Yeah. The ISS is basically an aluminum can. A Challenger Deep Station would require enormously strong walls, and the more people you put in it, the more volume it will need, imposing more strain on the structure, necessitating even stronger walls.
At pressures much less than those present in the Challenger Deep, titanium submarine pressure hulls have collapsed – and the description, purely theoretical, as there are no survivors, usually involves the air inside the sub being compressed by inrushing water so rapidly that the temperature spikes, incinerating everything in the sub at white-hot temperatures in the split-second before its crushed by the metal banging together.
Of course Challenger Deep Station would be under much more pressure than that.
Certainly the weak point will be the entryway. The problem with that is that the entryway is used – it will have to be closed correctly every time or else there will be a weak point, and it will have to resist metal fatigue in its moving parts.
You don’t want to increase the size of CDS any more than absolutely necessary, but you also don’t want to have to run to the store for toilet paper and tacos every night, so there’s going to have to be compromise.
The Challenger Deep is the most hostile environment on Earth, and much more dangerous to humans than space.
Here is some information about NASA’s Aquariuslab. This is an undersea lab near Florida. It evidently usually has a crew of 4. It is only 62 feet deep, which is well within the range of SCUBA divers.
One problem that I see with a hypothetical Challenger Deep Lab is that there would be no point to it–it would be impossible to go outside.
You might find Peter Watts’ novels interesting, especially Starfish. It’s a hard sci-fi novel about a very deep sea station which was established to harness power from deep-sea thermal vents. The full text is online at his Rifters.com web site.
This sounds a trifle over-dramatic. Once the water is rushing in, there’s no force left to bang metal together. And inrushing water may limit the extent of that white-hot vaporization.
More hostile than, say, 50’ below this spot? (No one has ever spent 20 minutes there.)
I’d guess the prospects of surviving a couple of minutes in either one are about equal.
It will get pretty hot: adiabatic compression from 14.7 psi to 15,000 psi will get the air up to several thousand degrees. But you’re right, a catastrophic hull breach means you won’t experience those temperatures for very long: things will get singed on their surface, but not incinerated through and through.
I’ve heard the same is true for meteorites that make it all the way to the earth’s surface: despite the blazing high temps they experience during their descent, that descent is so brief that upon touchdown they are pretty much as cold as outer space.
Wait, why are we assuming it needs to be filled with air? Didn’t they make some fluid that humans could breathe and could be used to go to nasty depths? I remember seeing mice swimming happily in the stuff for any length of time and I know human trials were made. The transitions from air to liquid and back were a real bitch, but the stuff worked. (I believe it could also double as a blood substitute or was discovered while searching for one).
I am not sure if you could really live on the stuff at 15K psi, but it sure would make life easier for many things.
My understanding is that the inrushing water doesn’t equalize the force instantly; but it does destroy the ability of the hull to resist collapse, which then collapses. This is a shaky analogy, but sticking a pin into a balloon doesn’t “equalize the pressure” and cause the balloon to sit there undamaged while air exchanges through the hole.
Yes, the metal banging together will finish you off before you are charred through, but if you were somehow teleported to safety in that instant, your skin and lungs would still be seared fatally.
Yes, the most hostile environment on earth is the Challenger Deep. 20’ below your volcano might be one of the most hostile environments INSIDE earth, I’ll grant you.
Nope, you can survive thirty seconds or so of vacuum, and you only need a soft, flexible space suit to survive indefinitely. The Challenger Deep would kill you instantly even in the space suit.
I think the duration of the high temperatures would be so short that little searing would happen before the water arrived.
So you’ll allow excursions many miles below certain naturally occurring liquids, but not a few feet below others?
You need only wrap a (tolerably thick) layer of steel around you to survive at least, oh, 20 minutes. Unprotected, your long-term survival prospects are much the same in both places.
