Friday, September 4, 2015

Work nears completion on Lloyd Godson's newest undersea habitat.

You may or may not know Lloyd Godson as the guy behind Biosub 1 and 2. The first, a simple steel box weighed down by concrete blocks, submerged 15 feet deep in a flooded quarry. The second a much slicker looking but still rectilinear enclosure, this time with windows, submerged 12 feet deep in Legoland Aquarium for two weeks. 

This time he's gone with a much more attractive, sort of geodesic looking egg with windows spiraling up the hull from two points like a double helix. Although it has legs for transport purposes it will in fact dangle from a floating surface platform (where the air compressor will be) by cables, much like a diving bell. 

I've spoken with Lloyd about his plans for the habitat. He assures me it will not simply be torn apart for scrap like nearly every habitat before it, rather he's made arrangements for it to find other uses after his one month underwater mission in it has completed. No such plans were made for prior habitats, which is why so few remain in existence. 

The conditions inside are certainly austere, but there's room for a cot, a marine toilet, a microwave and mini fridge, and other basic amenities. I expect the experience will be quite like caravan camping. This is about the best I could hope to one day build for myself, even this much living space will cost tens of thousands at least. 

One of the neat things I could do with a micro habitat like this one would be to carry out Hampture at a much greater depth than otherwise possible. You see, the air sent down to the habitat at a moon pool depth of 21 feet could then be sent from inside the habitat, using the standard aquarium air compressors I use, out via tubing through the moon pool to Hampture. 

Because the air those aquarium compressors recieve is pre-compressed, the fact that Hampture would be at ~25 feet or so makes no difference, it just has to be less than 8 feet deeper than the moon pool of the habitat. I could then use the habitat as dry space within which to surface individual modules of hampture for cleaning and resupply without having to bring them to the actual surface. 


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