An Anonymous Investor Is Spending Millions to Make Underwater Homes

[rgmerk]

Somebody watched Octonauts as a kid...

More seriously, this seems like an elaborate troll of space settlement enthusiasts. It's far simpler and less demanding than long-term settlement in space...and you still look at it and go "WTF would anyone want to do that? Wouldn't it just be easier to send robots down"?

[ANewFormation]

Haha. People just have different drives. I'm definitely a space enthusiast, but also see this as an awesome idea.

In the grand scheme of things I think humans will colonize all environments, and starting to master water would open up immense amounts of land, so to speak.

[Rhapso]

For me, asteroid belt settlement seems the most useful/reasonable. The motivation is simply that there is so much space for expansion. Space colonization is really just about humans keeping access to exponential population growth. Antarctic and deep sea settlement don't make sense because they offer relatively limited growth potential in comparison. They do make sense as practice/training for the next few thousand years of the average human condition.

[baranul]

The argument of "just go send a robot", seems antithetical to life. The point of underwater settlements, looks to be an accomplishment for mankind, stretching the boundaries of what's possible. It's not that robots can't be used, but maybe more like how far can humans go.

[bb88]

Or that one Futurama episode, "I, roommate"

https://theinfosphere.org/I,_Roommate

[shmerl]

Or may be played Bioshock or Aquanox.

[bruce511]

There's been a spate of underwater-living articles lately, and there's no doubt the ocean is an area ripe for research.

But to be clear, these facilities require surface support - they are not self-sustaining. Which is perfectly fine (the ISS is not self sustainable either.)

So this isn't "humanity moving into the sea", it's "humanity learning more about the sea". Which is certainly a worthwhile goal.

[analog31]

At the very least they need somewhere for bike storage. And none of us are self sustaining. Humanity needs the Haber-Bosch process and a thousand other things to sustain ourselves at the present moment.

[baranul]

Good points made. When looking at this, it occurred to me that It could have another goal, which is surviving a nuclear war or some other land based catastrophe. Definitely they are no where near to that being possible at the moment, but give it another 20 years, maybe this will be among someone's or an organization's calculations.

[hiatus]

> But to be clear, these facilities require surface support - they are not self-sustaining. Which is perfectly fine (the ISS is not self sustainable either.)

Who made any claims of self-sustaining? And in any case, the water cycle means land and sea are intertwined—life on land is not self-sustaining as much as life at sea is not.

[computerthings]

Or it might be just another variant of the various bunker building efforts to ride out the coming upheavals.

[teleforce]

>anonymous private investor, has begun work to create a ‘permanent human settlement’ under the sea

This sound so preposterous as work to create ‘permanent human settlement’ in Mars.

But if given a choice which one to support with my money with zero probability of any returns, I will much rather supporting sea settlement than Mars.

[delichon]

Do you have so little faith in humans' capacity to make Earth uninhabitable? There's no value to you in putting a few eggs in another basket?

[hwj]

If these are going to be separate jurisdictions it's probably not as naive as it sounds.

[beretguy]

Makes me think about all these underwater horror games: Soma, bioshock, subnautica...

[rpcope1]

So does this mean we get Sealab 2021 in real life soon?

[cycrutchfield]

If you’re looking for me, you better check under the sea…

[UnreachableCode]

Maybe it’s James Cameron?

[tazeg95]

Already done in France in 1962 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9continent_III

[pimlottc]

That’s covered in the article. There’s even a photo.

[wkat4242]

Bioshock: Reality confirmed!

[woleium]

My money is on Gabe Newall