Another fatal record attempt in Lake Garda, Italy

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What is sometimes humorously called “testosterone poisoning” IS responsible for enormous amounts of stupidity.

The Apollo program resulted in enormous technological progress, with spin-offs that every one of us benefit from daily. And, it kept us from watching people like Putin rule the skies.

I don’t understand deep deep diving, but I can see how wing suits must be very fun. Is there a difference? I don’t know. But maybe Hollywood had it right: If you want the ultimate thrill, you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price. I’m sure there is a thrill to blowing through a gap at high speed just above ground level. Is there even a good adrenaline shot from deep diving, or is the attraction something else?

I’m going to go see how many hot dogs I can eat underwater.
 
I have other software :)
And it’s about 6 hours. Still a stupid dive, but I’ve done a 100 8 hour dives and literally thousands of 6 hour dives.
And how do we know which is right? What research has been done on dives to that depth?
 
And how do we know which is right? What research has been done on dives to that depth?
No idea. I have no intention of doing my own research. I know what works for me, for now. Lol
 
@Superlyte27 — What set point do you plan with for a v.deep bounce dive? Also do you switch diluent to reduce helium loadings?

Planning with Bulhmann yields enormous CNS and OTU levels. Switching to lower helium mixes reduces the overall dive duration.

Just curious as it’s good to learn from people who’ve actually done these dives.
 
Questions about v.deep (say 400m/1300ft) saturation diving...
  • Do they collect exhaust gas for recovery/recycling?
Does anyone know if v.deep saturation diving recycles exhaust gas from the helmet, or is it just vented off? That's a lot of gas lost if its vented as the bottom time would be a whole working shift, or measured in hours at least.
 
JFK basically said, "Hold my beer. We're going to the moon." NASA managed to justify the stunt of landing on the moon.

Extreme deep diving for the heck of it was just as much of a stunt as going to the moon and just as recreational as doing anything stupid underwater while sport diving. It's just more difficult to justify it without NASA's marketing department. This next moon trip is being done just for the heck of it and being sold as a necessity to put a person of color on the lunar surface for one. It's a stunt. It just takes a bigger group to pull it off than a few guys. Most record attempts have a support team.
Totally off topic Trace but in 2019 and 2020 I read up a lot on the moon race and it's slightly more complicated than that. There was more calculation behind Kennedy's speech. Part of it was real politik and the fact that the technology race (which the space race a very public presentation of it) in the context of the cold war was very real.

The USSR had beaten the US in every step so far in the space race. Instead of trying to catch up, by setting the goal (bar) so high, NASA reset the race, because neither side had developed any techniques, processes, technology to reach that goal.

Reading up on it, it also totally amazes me to this day how amazing this process was. The average age of the engineers working on the various projects that resulted in the moon landing were all in their early twenties. The teamleads and managers up to mission control were in their late twenties/early thirties. It was a real "start up" vibe but in a organisation (that would become) the seize of a big multinational. A can do mentality but with the necessary process control to back it up.

It still is one of the most amazing feats of human cooperation/participation/engineering and dare devilling (sp?) I've ever seen.

Back on topic. I don't care if someone wants to achieve a personal record, whether driven by ego, potential financial gain, or whatnot. I do feel sorry for their relatives, and wonder if they 've communicated well enough how risky the endeavour is for how little relative gain. But like I said free world and all. If someone wants to eat himself to death on ping pong balls, or wants to get the record for tickling the most gorilla balls, or doing the deepest garda lake dive... good for them.

But calling it a scientific endeavour, or to think there will be any relative gain for the diving community is a step too far I think. Nobody is gaining anything from an individuals dive to these depths. They are so out of scope that the practical benefit is not there and there is also not a very reliable way to register and gain data from it, because the sampling size is much too small.

But like I said... tickling balls... go for it!
 
I am a huge fan of the Mercury and Apollo astronauts, NASA, and JFK because the people involved and the time period is certainly romantic. But even a "Hold my beer" redneck moment could have an interesting back story full of personal, political, and societal drama and involve parties other than the guy who decides, "I'll show 'em."

The experience isn't a cheap 24 hours of adventure, but I highly recommend spending enough time in Jules' Undersea Lodge to become an official aquanaut by satisfying both the definition and the intent of the title if you are a NASA fan.

First, it's legit. Stays are still logged as missions as part of the habitat's ongoing overall mission. Ian Koblick was a Tektite 1 & 2 aquanaut who designed the La Chalupa underwater habitat for its missions off Puerto Rico in the early 1970s refitted the habitat and marketed it as an underwater hotel. It's not. As a hotel, it serves no purpose whatsoever. When staying at Howard Johnson's in Key Largo, you are free to just leave your room and go about your business like any hotel guest. You are definitely locked into the Jules' experience not far removed from being locked into a space mission - with the exception that if you really wanted to you could just swim up, flip mission control the bird, and go get your own pizza.

What Jules' does do is fulfill the dream of men like Jacques Cousteau and Ian Koblick to have the average Joe and Jane reside underwater. The reality of that dream, however, would require way too much support and maintenance to make a subsea version of "The Jetsons" or "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" possible. The reason the habitat is located in a lagoon and not on the reef like Aquarius is the cost to operate.

When we think of an "aquanaut," we think of well-educated and trained scientists like Sylvia Earle. NASA has used and continues to use both Aquarius and Jules' for various things such as team-building and crew studies. For the reef environment (or the environment in Emerald Lagoon), many of us here in SB have far better training and experience on OC and CCR scuba than most scientific and NASA divers. Watching video of NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab makes me cringe because any decent doubles instructor will lose his or her mind over the position of the tank bands on their cylinders alone. Sure, a NASA aquanaut/astronaut might have advanced degrees from top schools like M.I.T., but couldn't pass a GUE-F course, PSAI Cavern course, or CCR course taught by someone like Superlyte27 without putting in the blood, sweat, and tears to actually be a decent diver.

Of course, the habitat is open to even people who can pass a PADI Discover Scuba course, and one doesn't need to be an IANTD Cave CCR diver to venture into history. Yes, you'll be part of history. I want to return for a 3rd mission and spend 3 days inside enjoying a unique R&R by reading as much of the logbook as I can between excursion dives. The log is an amazing journal of a "George Washington Slept Here" cross-section of famous astronauts, divers, politicians, artists, musicians, celebrities, people we know in the industry, and unknowns whose only mark on history will be well-written thoughts included in the pages of the most unique guest registry on or under the surface of the planet.

You'll be able to hang out in your favorite jeans or sweats, watch TV, listen to music, talk to friends from the seafloor, and make excursion dives. If you are down there, please call the Westwinds Motel in Clayton, NY, so Astronaut Doug Hurley's mother (the owner) can talk to a diver underwater as she did her son in space for a dual experience. I mean to do that, but might not get there anytime soon. Before the landline phone was installed, I used the same phone used by aquanauts to talk to astronauts in the ISS to call my mom. Our crew (my cave diver/scuba instructor girlfriend and I) also received the first wrong number call answered underwater after a landline was installed. A woman was looking for Hector Gonzalez and thought my girlfriend was lying when pressing her for information on Mr. Gonzalez only to be told she was talking to two divers 30 feet below the surface.

The experience might connect the adult in you with the kid in you. I used to teach courses in the Emerald Lagoon at Key Largo Undersea Park and was able to pop up inside to check out the habitat's wet room with students quite often. I didn't think there would be much to a night's stay other than boredom. But, when Jen Hellman and I did Missions #4005 and #4109 it was as fun for me as combining DEMA with the Living Seas with cave diving.

If you reach 24 hours or more, you will be an aquanaut and the closest thing to an astronaut you might ever get. Some might scoff because you didn't graduate from FSU with a marine biology degree and find the funding for some study you dreamed up just to get a chance to be an aquanaut in Aquarius, but the Cousteaus and the Koblicks of the world wanted *you* to be experiencing life underwater and not just have Innerspace be the playground of scientists.
 
Questions about v.deep (say 400m/1300ft) saturation diving...
  1. One assumes this has been done and the divers returned safely?
  2. Are all saturation dives done with open circuit?
  3. Rebreathers are not used in saturation diving?
  4. Do they collect exhaust gas for recovery/recycling?

(I changed bullets in this quote to numbers)
  1. Comex set the world record for an open sea saturation dive in 1988 at depth of 534m/1,752 ft on Hydrogen-Oxygen. 400m/1,300' is not common but also not rare. The great majority of routine sat work today is in the 50-245m/165-800' range.
  2. Virtually all saturation diving is done with a surface-based closed circuit recycling system. The supply side is unchanged but the diver's hat has a demand exhaust regulator. The exhaust goes back to the bell through a hose in the umbilical where a water separator and negative-biased back pressure regulator is inline before heading to the surface through the bell's umbilical. Moisture and CO2 are scrubbed, Oxygen is added, and boosters compress it into tube-trailer size cylinders.
  3. There are a few used for bailouts when deeper but they aren't too popular due to delicate hoses and complexity. One company tried to switch to eCCR for the working gas but was not successful. The US Navy has used various CCRs in clandestine sat operations.
  4. See #2
 

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