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Title: The First New Subsea Habitat In 40 Years Is About To Launch

Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/11/08/0...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Vanguard
feels and smells like a new RV. It has long, gray banquettes that convert
into bunks, a microwave cleverly hidden under a counter, a functional steel
sink with a French press and crockery above. A weird little toilet hides
behind a curtain. But some clues hint that you can't just fire up Vanguard's
engine and roll off the lot. The least subtle is its door, a massive disc of
steel complete with a wheel that spins to lock. Once it is sealed and moved
to its permanent home beneath the waves of the Florida Keys National Marine
Sanctuary early next year, Vanguard will be the world's first new subsea
habitat in nearly four decades. Teams of four scientists will live and work
on the seabed for a week at a time, entering and leaving the habitat as scuba
divers. Their missions could include reef restoration, species surveys,
underwater archaeology, or even astronaut training. One of Vanguard's
modules, unappetizingly named the "wet porch," has a permanent opening in the
floor (a.k.a. a "moon pool" that doesn't flood because Vanguard's air
pressure is matched to the water around it.It is this pressurization that
makes the habitat so useful. Scuba divers working at its maximum operational
depth of 50 meters would typically need to make a lengthy stop on their way
back to the surface to avoid decompression sickness. This painful and
potentially fatal condition, better known as the bends, develops if divers
surface too quickly. A traditional 50-meter dive gives scuba divers only a
handful of minutes on the seafloor, and they can make only a couple of such
dives a day. With Vanguard's atmosphere at the same pressure as the water,
its aquanauts need to decompress only once, at the end of their stay. They
can potentially dive for many hours every day. That could unlock all kinds of
new science and exploration.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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