Posted by Motherboard on Wednesday, Mar 10, 2010
Watch our documentary “The Aquatic Life of Dennis Chamberland” above. Full screen recommended.
Dennis Chamberland doesn’t just want to live underwater: he wants anyone to join him. And he’s determined to make that a reality within a decade.
Chamberland joined NASA as a bioengineer in the mid ‘80s, just as the manned space program was starting to thunder forward. But rather than looking up to the stars, he began looking down – deep down. As a developer of the agency’s Advanced Space Life Support Systems, which monitors the safety for all off-planet habitation pursuits, Chamberland soon became a lead proponent of research on an idea being floated by NASA at the time: using the sea as a testbed for space exploration. Before long, this homegrown explorer would become one of the country’s leading proponents of undersea habitation, and an advocate for what he calls the “space-ocean analog.”
An aquanaut and Mission Commander on seven NASA underwater missions, Chamberland has also pursued landmark research in bioengineering and become a prolific writer ofscience books and sci-fi novels. But it was his work for NASA that resulted in his harvesting of the first agricultural crop in a manned habitat on the sea floor, and led to his designing and construction of the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station, a two man undersea habitat off Key Largo. The little permanent submarine has been visited by a range of curious futurist explorers, including James Cameron and TV producer Rod Roddenberry, Jr.
Chamberland’s next goal, he explains in this episode of Motherboard: colonizing the sea. To move humans to an underwater “Aquatica,” as he calls the habitable regions of the ocean, he launched the Atlantica Expeditions, which are attempting to build the first underwater settlement for permanent human colonization. This isn’t a glossy sci-architectural lark or a toe-dip. Starting with the premise that nearly three quarters of our planet’s largest biome have long remained invisible – and are increasingly endangered – the Atlantica project seeks
“a human colony whose primary purpose it is to monitor and protect this most essential of all the earth’s biomes. Soon, beneath the sea, families will live and work. Children will go to school. A new generation of children will be born there – the first citizens of a new ocean civilization whose most important purpose will be to continuously monitor and protect the global ocean environment.”
Set to commence by next year, the first expedition will be initiated by the submersion of the Leviathan, a small underwater habitat that can house up to four people. He’s not only certain that the colonization of the ocean floor is imminent; he’s making it happen.
Watch the documentary above, see Chamberland’s blog and dive into more Motherboard episodes in our archives.
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我的一些看法：
目前來說還不現(xiàn)實(shí)
有很多的問題需要解決，我看了他的視頻，發(fā)現(xiàn)一些問題：
1.光照問題，勢必要居住在淺海處，保證人體光照需求，而淺海在海洋面積中只是一小部分。
2，居住材料問題，他居住的鐵罐子可以明顯看出銹蝕跡象，而采取防腐措施必將造成一定的海洋環(huán)境污染。
3，能源供應(yīng)問題，成本問題。
4，突發(fā)災(zāi)難應(yīng)對以及造成人員材料比地面上更高量級的損失問題。
