m 



they should have endurance and should be 

 able to mate with manned habitats or other 

 submci-sibles. They should be 'independent of 

 surface support and have sufficient instru- 

 mentation to make their missions useful. We 

 are not without promising avenues of ap- 

 proach to these problems. Some of these are 

 discussed in the sections that follow. 



Man-in-the-Sea Techniques 



In a consideration of the need for global 

 exploration and monitoring, the use of 

 manned habitats and diver transport systems 

 must be mentioned. Recently, small proto- 

 type manned habitats have been developed 

 and put into operation. Their success gives 

 immediate promise to a dream. Scientists 

 soon can work routinely to 600 feet. Gas- 

 breathing divers have been exposed to 

 depths in excess of 1,000 feet with complete 

 success, and operations to 2,000 feet appear to 

 be a reasonable projection of future capa- 

 bility. 



Even at shallow depths, diver-investiga- 

 tors can be largely free of surface weather 

 effects. Towed, transported, or self-propelled 

 habitats or sealabs can be taken to any place 

 in the oceans using a surface or submerged 

 route. At the desired location, they can be 

 stationed on the bottom or suspended in the 

 water column to provide an instrumented 

 laboratory capability. If saturation diving 

 techniques are used, there is no presently 

 known physiological limit to their length of 

 stay. The sealab gives the scientist deeper 

 access and removes most weather contin- 

 gencies. 



Habitats allow investigators to enter and 

 return from the environment they wish to 

 study. While using such pioneer equipment, 

 these inve.stigators can anticipate early and 

 extensive improvements to their working con- 

 ditions. Personnel in sealabs today must be 

 skilled divers able to cope with a variety of 



sometimes hostile conditions whenever they 

 venture outside. In aviation terms, they are 

 working at an "open-cockpit" stage of devel- 

 opment. In time it should be possible to have 

 more control over the environment immedi- 

 ately outside the habitat, for example, by pro- 

 viding low, spacious undersea tents, possibly 

 insulated to contain warm and filtered fresh 

 water. While restricting freedom of move- 

 ment to some extent, such facilities could be 

 occupied in the same sense that Antarctic 

 snow tunnels are manned, providing corri- 

 dors and chambers that protect, house, and 

 store instruments and equipment. Insulation 

 from the environment will tend to free the 

 trained divers, decompression technicians, 

 and medical physiologists to supervise the 

 operation of whole systems and to train the 

 nondiver scientists and technicians to work 

 within these systems. 



One-atmosphere habitats with occasional or 

 no access to the open environment also should 

 be considered, ranging from surface to bot- 

 tom and subbottom facilities. The liighly suc- 

 cessful design of the U.S. Navy's FLIP 

 allows a siirface craft to be towed to a site, to 

 lie upended, and to remain on station with 

 facilities both above and well below the sur- 

 face. Variations on this surface platform 

 should be encouraged, as many possibilities 

 for utilization can be envisioned. Similarly, 

 2,000-foot and 20,000-foot one-atmosphere 

 habitats should be developed for long-term 

 routine occupancy by nondiver personnel. 



An imaginative proposal, Project Rocksite, 

 is being considered by the IT.S. Navy. This 

 project calls for drilling tunnels into the sea- 

 bed, combining the existing capability of 

 forming mine tunnels and shafts beneath the 

 sea floor with a new technology' for mating 

 submersibles to a seafloor shaft entrance, thus 

 providing a completely independent sub- 

 seafloor installation. 



