I'm heading out to deploy the habitat in a nearby lake soon. While you wait, here's a video of last night's deep water test in the pool. 20 minutes at 8 feet deep, without a hitch!
Keep your eyes on this space. The mission will last an unprecedented five hours if all goes as planned, and it'll be two or three hours to encode and upload the video after that. But wow, it's finally happening right?
UPDATE: Left for the lake at 1:30pm
UPDATE: returned from deployment at 3:15.
UPDATE: Checked on the surface support station twice now. Air's flowing fine, battery is holding steady at 75%.
UPDATE: Retrieved habitat a little after 7pm. Currently preparing the video for upload.
UPDATE: Uploading video, should be done around 9:15pm EST.
Final update: Mission complete. Video uploaded, and included in a new post.
Excellent - It's amazing how serene he is the whole time, even on the descent! He's the Yuri Gagarin of the hamster world.
ReplyDeleteWhat else can we learn from this bold experiment? Other than that underwater habitats are COOL?
...That building an enclosure that will sustain a mammal isn't so difficult that an ordinary person can't do it. And that the principles involved scale up, so anyone with a surplus water storage tank, a gas powered generator and an air compressor could have a modest underwater home with a few months of welding and furnishing if they put their mind to it.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I hope to do someday. And maybe attract the funding to develop a mass-produced model.
For future habitats, you may wish to consider an array of white LEDS or perhaps red as it takes less energy to produce red light compared to any other color.
ReplyDeleteGodspeed, you majestic lord of the seas
ReplyDelete