WEBVTT - How Did Sealab Work? 0:00:02.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain stuff, 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:10.360 laurin bubble bom here. Even though around seventy of our 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:12.600 planet is covered in salt water, we have a better 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:14.600 map of Mars than we do of the oceans that 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:18.720 sustain virtually every living thing on Earth. Sure, ocean exploration 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.200 is expensive and complicated, but so is space exploration, and 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:25.120 we do plenty of that. There was a time, though, 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.400 during the early years of space exploration, that aquanauts were 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:30.760 pushing the limits of how deep humans could dive under 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:33.040 the ocean and how long they could stay down there. 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.080 Sea Lab, a program launched by the U. S. Navy 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.760 in nineteen sixty four, was intended to figure out how 0:00:38.800 --> 0:00:41.680 to send divers down into the freezing, high pressure environments 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:43.959 of the deep sea for longer periods of time than 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.159 anyone had ever thought possible, and the program was a 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:51.800 big success until it wasn't anymore. It's always challenging to 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.200 get a human body free swimming at any great depth, 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:56.400 of the reason being that our bodies are not made 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.080 to withstand millions of gallons of water being piled on 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.640 top of us. Divers have to breathe pressurized air, which 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.399 contains inert gases nitrogen mainly, that dissolve into the bloodstream 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:08.920 and tissues, which works out great so long as the 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:11.800 weight of the entire ocean keeps them compressed. If a 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:13.880 diver wants to come up to the surface, they must 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.119 do it slowly in order to avoid the gases making 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.000 little bubbles in their blood, migrating to their joints and 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:22.800 causing decompression sickness sometimes called the bends, which is unspeakably 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.920 painful and sometimes fatal. In the early nineteen sixties, a 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:29.640 Navy physician named George Bond figured out how to let 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:31.880 people explore the ocean in a new way through a 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:36.280 technique called saturation diving. In his laboratory experiments, Bond was 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.920 able to saturate the blood with inert gases like helium 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.360 in such a way that divers could not only go deep, 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:44.039 they could stay down indefinitely so long as they had 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.679 the right set up and a shelter. Divers could become 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.760 acclimated to a habitat two hundred feet that's sixty below 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.680 the surface, and free dive even deeper from there. We 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.960 spoke with Ben Hellworth, the author of Sea Lab America's 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:59.000 Forgotten Quest to live and work on the ocean floor. 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:03.280 He described it this way. Dr Bond's breakthroughs were a 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.080 little bit like the diving equivalent of breaking the sound barrier. 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:08.600 It was a quantum leap in technology over what the 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:12.200 diving parameters had been for more than a century. Sea 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:14.880 Lab one, the first iteration of the Sea Lab experiment, 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:17.600 was housed in a steel tube fifty seven feet long 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.320 that's about seventeen meters that was lowered onto the ocean 0:02:20.320 --> 0:02:23.280 floor off the coast of Bermuda in July nineteen sixty 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:25.240 four at a depth of a hundred and ninety two 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.359 feet that's about fifty nine Four men successfully stayed submerged 0:02:29.400 --> 0:02:32.040 in this pod for eleven days, and the experiment went 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:34.120 so well that Sea Lab two was submerged off the 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:36.320 coast of California at a depth of two hundred and 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:38.720 five feet that's sixty two mems in August of the 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:42.320 next year. Sea Lab two had hot showers, a refrigerator, 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:45.320 and a dolphin named Tuffy trained to deliver supplies and 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.919 rescue aquanuts if necessary. After a thirty days stay in 0:02:49.000 --> 0:02:52.440 Sea Lab two, aquanut and astronauts Scott Carpenter spoke to 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:56.640 President Lyndon Johnson from his helium atmosphere decompression chamber, sounding 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:59.720 like a cartoon chipmunk. He might have sounded ridiculous, but 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:02.040 his three was made. He had survived a month at 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:04.440 a pressure of one and three p s I, which 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.720 is seven times that of Earth's atmosphere. President Johnson told Carpenter, 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:10.720 I want you to know that the nation is very 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.880 proud of you. Only a few years later, though, a 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.480 fatal accident on Sea Lab three, which was situated on 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:18.280 the sea floor off the coast of California at a 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.160 depth of six hundred feet that's a hundred and eighty 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.720 three meters, would shut the program down. Hellworth said most 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.160 people involved were aware that this was a dangerous operation. 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:29.560 They always knew. It had been Sea Lab one and 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:31.959 Sea Lab two had gone well with no major injuries. 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:35.080 After the tragedy on Sea Lab three, they all expected 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:37.360 to press on, but the Navy didn't see it that way, 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:39.800 so the program was canceled. It was still a low 0:03:39.800 --> 0:03:42.720 profile enough program that there wasn't a national uproar about 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:44.400 giving up the race to the bottom of the ocean 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:46.280 that you would expect if they had tried to cancel 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:49.040 the Space program two years earlier after the Apollo one 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.240 launch pad fire that killed three astronauts. I think everyone 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:54.920 expected the program to go on, but for various reasons, 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:58.400 it didn't. We still use the technical breakthroughs George Bond 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:01.400 pioneered with the Sea Lab program, mostly in the oil industry, 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.520 setting up oil platforms. Saturation divers can go to a 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.000 job site hundreds of feet below the surface and stay 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:09.440 down there for an entire eight hour shift. It's a 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:11.880 dangerous job, but it can pay around fourteen hundred dollars 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:14.560 a day. Most of us have those saturation divers to 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.880 thank for the fuel in our gas tanks. But George 0:04:17.880 --> 0:04:21.039 Bond's vision was not just industrial, it was military and 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:24.880 civilian and scientific. He solved the problem of going deeper 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.719 and staying longer. But after Sea Lab was canceled, it 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.280 turned out the industry is where the money was. Any 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:34.200 military application equipping military submarines to release saturation divers as 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.920 spies during the Cold War, for instance, would be highly 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:40.680 classified and therefore are hard to document. But there is 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:42.880 one place on Earth where a Sea Lab type facility 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:46.760 still exists for scientific research, the Aquarius Reef base south 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.120 of the Florida Keys, and it's been an operation for 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:52.400 over twenty years. Scientists can go down there sixty feet 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:55.080 that's eighteen meters below the surface and live anywhere from 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.400 a few days to a couple of weeks running experiments 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:01.799 on the reef. Hellworth said Dr Bond's vision was science related. 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:04.080 He thought we ought to have sea lab like bases 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.000 set up in the ocean wherever there might be something 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.479 of interest to study and observe. We should get to 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.040 know that environment better because there's value to spending time 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:13.200 in the ocean, just like there was value in Jane 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:15.159 Goodall's being able to sit and observe in the jungle. 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:17.599 Once you're down there and can stay a while, you 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.000 really don't know what you're going to see. That's how 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:28.000 we discover things. Today's episode was written by Jesceline Shields 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.080 and produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and How 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:32.040 Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:46.680 pressurized topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.