Undersea Exploration - A New Chapter

[zorgon]

James Cameron Now at Ocean's Deepest Point
Explorer-filmmaker reaches Mariana Trench on deepest ever solo sub dive.


A shipboard crane lowers Cameron's sub into the Pacific around 2 a.m. Monday, local time.
Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

Reaching bottom after a 2-hour-and-36-minute descent, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker typed out welcome words for the cheering support crew waiting at the surface: "All systems OK."

Folded into a sub cockpit as cramped as any Apollo capsule, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker is now investigating a seascape more alien to humans than the moon. Cameron is only the third person to reach this Pacific Ocean valley southwest of Guam (map)—and the only one to do so solo.

Hovering in what he's called a vertical torpedo, Cameron is likely collecting data, specimens, and imagery unthinkable in 1960, when the only other explorers to reach Challenger Deep returned after seeing little more than the silt stirred up by their bathyscaphe.

After as long as six hours in the trench, Cameron—best known for creating fictional worlds on film (Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss)—is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface

First Look: James Cameron's Sci-Fi Sub for Deepest Dive

Sideways Sub

Photograph courtesy Brook Rushton, DEEPSEA CHALLENGE

James Cameron's DEEPSEA CHALLENGER sub is lowered into Australia's Sydney Harbour from the vessel Mermaid Sapphire on January 26. A five-plus-mile-deep (eight-plus-kilometer-deep) test on Tuesday made the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER the deepest-diving submersible known to be in current operation and the deepest-diving single-occupancy sub in history.

James Cameron Now at Ocean's Deepest Point

Rapid Weight Loss

Illustration courtesy Acheron Project Pty. Ltd.

To return to the surface, Cameron flips a switch inside the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER to electromagnetically cast off the steel plates that weigh the sub down, as shown in a sequence illustrated above. The cork-style ascent from Challenger Deep is estimated to take about 90 minutes.

If the weights don't drop, Cameron will be stuck at the bottom of the ocean with a very limited oxygen supply.

[zorgon]

James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive
Solo sub dive is deepest ever.



The explorer-filmmaker emerges from his sub after returning from Challenger Deep.
Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and would soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane. Earlier, the descent to Challenger Deep had taken 2 hours and 36 minutes.

Expedition member Kevin Hand called the timing of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER sub's ascent "perfect."

"Jim came up in what must have been the best weather conditions we've seen, and it looks like there's a squall on the horizon," said Hand, a NASA astrobiologist and National Geographic emerging explorer.

Before surfacing about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Guam, Cameron spent hours hovering over Challenger Deep's desert-like seafloor and gliding along its cliff walls, the whole time collecting samples and video.

James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive

Filmmaker in Submarine Voyages to Bottom of Sea

James Cameron, the filmmaker whose credits include "Avatar" and "Titanic," plunged on Sunday in a minisubmarine of his own design to the bottom of the planet's deepest recess, sinking through the dark waters of the western Pacific to a depth of nearly seven miles.

New York Times

[zorgon]

[zorgon]

THE ABYSS

The final descent into the Abyss... from a French source... This is an awesome sequence (two parts)

James Cameron gave us this epic... but in his real life descent all he found down there was mud

[zorgon]

DIVE INTO THE DEEP

Richard Branson and Virgin Oceanic

Over the course of 2012 and beyond, Virgin Oceanic's one-person sub will journey to the deepest part of each of Earth's five oceans.  The first dive will be to the deepest place on the planet: the bottom of the Mariana Trench – 11 kilometers (7 mi) straight down. This will be the first time since 1960 that human eyes have set sight here – when the bathyscaphe, Trieste (which moved straight up & down like a hot air balloon) briefly touched down carrying co-pilots Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard.  This time, a sub that flies more like an airplane will allow the solo pilot, Chris Welsh, not only to reach the deepest point on Earth, but then to "fly" along the bottom of the Trench an additional 10 kilometers (nearly 6 mi).

The second dive – to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench – will be piloted by Sir Richard Branson. This trench is the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean at over 8 kilometers (more than 5 mi). This location is also near to Branson's home on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands.

Subsequent dives will carry a human pilot to the bottom of the Arctic, Southern and Indian oceans. Less than 3% of the seafloor has been explored, and none of the deepest points of the planet have ever been explored beyond a brief visit to one.  The opportunities to see and learn from these dives are monumental.

Virgin Oceanic

[zorgon]

Richard Branson on Deep-Sea Exploration

[zorgon]

Virgin Galactic promotional trailer starring Richard Branson



SS2 First Feather Flight, Mojave, May 2011



Overview of the Keys to New Dawn Event at Spaceport America







Spaceport America







Virgin Galactic

[zorgon]

So ummmm  I can count on your donations so I can buy a ticket?

[Linda Brown]

"The second dive – to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench – will be piloted by Sir Richard Branson. This trench is the deepest spot in the Atlantic Ocean at over 8 kilometers (more than 5 mi). This location is also near to Branson's home on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands.

As Morgan told us a long time ago " Where the Necker Berries grow"     Linda

[Amaterasu]

So ummmm  I can count on your donations so I can buy a ticket?

Sure!  I have some silver...hairs.  Will that do?  [smile]

[Littleenki]

Checks in the mail, Zorgon, can you hold it for about thirty years?
Very cool thread, and a favorite of mine the undersea realm! I hope to hear more in the coming days, and wonder what he saw down there.

How about the Zorg-sub? We need to get on that!
Le

[arc]

Subtle Zorgon...  real subtle...

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