Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. This time for a
Speaker 1: classic episode. This episode originally published on October twenty one,
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. It is called Sleeping Underwater, and it
Speaker 1: is not a reference to the Godfather and Sleeping with
Speaker 1: the Fishies. Honestly, I don't remember if I made that
Speaker 1: reference in the episode or not. Let's listen in and
Speaker 1: find out. I remember reading about these proposed underwater luxury hotels.
Speaker 1: We're talking like five star hotels with all the amenities,
Speaker 1: or or totally submerged in the case of one of them,
Speaker 1: which those one I'm specifically thinking of the Poseidon we'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a little bit later in the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they started playing that in two thousand or two thousand one,
Speaker 1: two one, I think, and it still doesn't exist. As
Speaker 1: it turns out. When we started doing research for this,
Speaker 1: we were like, oh, none of these really exist yet.
Speaker 1: There are a few that you can stay in that
Speaker 1: are real, right, They're not the super luxury hotels though, Well,
Speaker 1: there's one that is a super luxury hotel that does
Speaker 1: have an underwater restaurant. And then there's one that has
Speaker 1: the underwater room because there's the Atlantis, but it's not
Speaker 1: a completely submerged hotel the way the Poseidon is supposed
Speaker 1: to be. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We are,
Speaker 1: we are getting weight ahead of ourselves. Um let us
Speaker 1: let us start. Well, Okay, what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: You want to talk about the problems here. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the problems. Okay. So, Lauren, if I were
Speaker 1: to tell you that you are going to go and
Speaker 1: sleep with the fishes, you would probably think I was
Speaker 1: going to put a hit on you, you know, Godfather style.
Speaker 1: But if I were to say, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: mean that there's this hotel that's underwater where you can
Speaker 1: fall asleep underwater and wake up to looking outside all
Speaker 1: these gorgeous fish, you realize that there are some issues
Speaker 1: you've got to work out too before anyone is comfortable
Speaker 1: staying in that space. I would I would ask, how
Speaker 1: am I going to breathe? I enjoy breathing. That's something
Speaker 1: I do. Every top of the list is the breathing problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: As it turns out, I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: know this. We don't breathe water so well. We like
Speaker 1: air that has a mixture of some pretty typical gases
Speaker 1: that you find on our atmosphere. It's very convenient for us,
Speaker 1: seeing as how this is where we live. But if
Speaker 1: you go underwater, you know, if you get that challenge.
Speaker 1: So you have to find a way of supplying breathable atmosphere.
Speaker 1: You have to find a way of maintaining pressure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and to prevent front water pressure from breaking the
Speaker 1: the the confines of your habitat, right and killing you,
Speaker 1: because I could see above you can't breathe water, so yeah.
Speaker 1: So and if you're deep enough, then the pressure alone
Speaker 1: could kill you. Although for the habitats we're talking about,
Speaker 1: you're in semi shallow water, shallow not to not like
Speaker 1: you're waiting around in it. But we're talking maybe thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty ft deep something along those lines, not you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand meters below the surface of the ocean. Right.
Speaker 1: This is partially because water exerts more pressure on us
Speaker 1: than air at atmosphere pressure. Yeah, So the deeper you go,
Speaker 1: the more pressure you feel, right, So, I don't know,
Speaker 1: we talked before the podcast, you have not seen the Abyss. Right. So,
Speaker 1: in the ABYSS, you have these characters who are going
Speaker 1: on these deep, deep, deep ocean UH missions, and at
Speaker 1: one point they start to experiment with a liquid oxygen.
Speaker 1: The reason why they're using a liquid oxygen is because
Speaker 1: if they were to go out in a diving suit
Speaker 1: under the amount immense pressure that they would be under
Speaker 1: as soon as they left the confines of their submersible, UH,
Speaker 1: all that air would end up dissolving into their blood
Speaker 1: and they die. So they they have come up with
Speaker 1: this liquid stuff that would allow them to breathe. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't really have the liquid stuff that we can
Speaker 1: do like on the level that they did in that movie.
Speaker 1: Right that there is research with liquid forms of I
Speaker 1: do not have the name of it right in front
Speaker 1: of me, but it's some kind of flora carbon actually,
Speaker 1: which which is weird and interesting to me, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a pressurized liquid ish gas and very strange. I
Speaker 1: don't know how that would feel. Doesn't seem comfortable to
Speaker 1: me personally, but right, so, so the problem when you
Speaker 1: go deep enough, I mean, once you're getting down to
Speaker 1: like three or ninety something like that, some of the
Speaker 1: gases that you're breathing, especially nitrogen, are going to dissolve
Speaker 1: into your blood and tissues, which is okay for a
Speaker 1: short period of time, but it's very bad in the
Speaker 1: long term and be when you go back up to
Speaker 1: the surface. If you don't take steps to decompress, it
Speaker 1: can turn back into nitrogen bubbles and forming in in
Speaker 1: your tissue and blood and make you extremely sick. It's
Speaker 1: called it's called the bends or a decompression sickness, right,
Speaker 1: and it can be deadly. I mean, that's we're talking
Speaker 1: serious stuff here, right, right. It sounded like when you
Speaker 1: hear like always got the bends, you might get the
Speaker 1: idea that, yeah, I just I guess did you did
Speaker 1: you just eat something? Exactly? What's going on? Are you
Speaker 1: a crazy straw? What happened? No, it's very serious stuff.
Speaker 1: It's actually one of those things that divers have to consider.
Speaker 1: It's when if you've ever been diving, then you know
Speaker 1: all about this. If you've ever heard people talk about
Speaker 1: how you have to take dives in very gradual stages.
Speaker 1: You can't just swim straight down to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the ocean floor in a very deep area and then
Speaker 1: swim right back top. You have to you have to
Speaker 1: be much more careful or else you can suffer from it.
Speaker 1: And that's a huge part of your training when you
Speaker 1: go scoopid diving, right, and you have to occasionally go
Speaker 1: into something like a decompression chamber where the pressure inside
Speaker 1: the chamber is controlled so that it will allow you
Speaker 1: to get back to the surface pressure and then you
Speaker 1: can go outside and not not suffer from decompression sickness.
Speaker 1: So that's clearly one issue is you got to figure
Speaker 1: out not just the breathing, but also how do you
Speaker 1: do this in a way where people are not going
Speaker 1: to suffer decompression sickness as soon as they transfer from
Speaker 1: being underwater to being within the hotel environment or the
Speaker 1: habitat environment. Right. So and so there are two ways
Speaker 1: that you can pressurize an underwater cabin, and those are
Speaker 1: to the water pressure that's surrounding the habitat, in which
Speaker 1: case you're gonna want to use it in only very
Speaker 1: shallow situations and again have some kind of decompression process
Speaker 1: if if necessary, or to pressurize this container to the
Speaker 1: surface atmosphere using airlocks, right, and that would be like
Speaker 1: a submarine, a submarine is pressurized to the surface temperature,
Speaker 1: which is why when a submarine comes back up, it's
Speaker 1: not that you know, suddenly all the sailors on board
Speaker 1: have to go through a decompression chamber or else they'll
Speaker 1: all suffer from the bends. It's because that submarine itself
Speaker 1: is pressurized to the surface pressure. It's similar to what
Speaker 1: we see with airplanes, to the pressurized cabins and airplanes
Speaker 1: to maintain a certain within a certain parameter UH closeness
Speaker 1: to the surface pressure so that you don't have these
Speaker 1: problems that you would suffer otherwise. Now, all of what
Speaker 1: we know about this pressurization and the the gases that
Speaker 1: you can breathe when you're underwater started. The research really
Speaker 1: started in about the nineteen fifties. The principle of saturation diving,
Speaker 1: which is that prolonged exposure to UH to pressurized gases
Speaker 1: that's going to build up nitrogen in your system, was
Speaker 1: proposed by Captain George F. Bond, who is a U. S.
Speaker 1: Navy physician, and that's what really kicked off the ability
Speaker 1: for us to start doing research with with underwater habitats.
Speaker 1: And this was becoming important because of a little thing
Speaker 1: called the Cold War in the space race. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember that. I mean, also environmentalism was was on
Speaker 1: the rise, and people were becoming really interested in all
Speaker 1: of the life in oceans while to study that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was still I would say that that really got
Speaker 1: a lot of traction in the seventies, apart from one
Speaker 1: specific person who anyone who's familiar with marine biology knows
Speaker 1: the name, Jacques Cousto right, was certainly instrumental in six Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So his work in the sixties certainly went a far
Speaker 1: away to giving us a greater appreciation and understanding of
Speaker 1: underwater environments. And in fact, um he started looking into
Speaker 1: an underwater habitat right, Right, in nineteen sixty two, he
Speaker 1: started launching experiments in these pressurized underwater trips. Uh. He
Speaker 1: created the con Shelf one, which was a free standing
Speaker 1: structure down about thirty six ft under under the water,
Speaker 1: and and divers lived in it for about a week.
Speaker 1: So nineteen sixty two, that's pretty that's that's fairly impressive.
Speaker 1: I mean, considering that, you know, you're you weren't going
Speaker 1: to have many Apollo astronauts going up until wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess about that time well, they're starting
Speaker 1: the training programs. Anyway, it wasn't until the late sixties
Speaker 1: that you really got them into going out into orbit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so you've got this this underwater habitat
Speaker 1: staying there for about a week, which that plays into
Speaker 1: our discussion on underwater hotels. That's you know, a typical
Speaker 1: vacation stays is a week long. So it's funny to
Speaker 1: think that scientific research here, specifically looking into marine environments
Speaker 1: of marine life, is somewhat of paving the way underwater,
Speaker 1: as it were, to underwater tourism and underwater hotels. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was another man named Edwin A. Link who was
Speaker 1: um who who was another oceanographer who was working in
Speaker 1: the same field at the time. One of his projects,
Speaker 1: called The Man in the Sea would in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four get adopted by the U. S. Navy and that
Speaker 1: would turn into the Sea Lab program that you guys
Speaker 1: might have heard of. Yeah, I remember that show on
Speaker 1: Cartoon Network. No, no different, different, different Sea Lab, although
Speaker 1: they did have at some point a trained dolphin that
Speaker 1: would run errands for them. Wow. Really, I I don't
Speaker 1: know what to say about that. That was That was
Speaker 1: Sea Lab two in nineteen sixty right, and so then
Speaker 1: you've also got uh, I mean Custo continued work of
Speaker 1: creating the conell three. Uh, there was the more sea labs,
Speaker 1: as I recall, So we have this development where we're
Speaker 1: learning more and more about how to create habitats that
Speaker 1: can safely house people for a certain length of time,
Speaker 1: increasingly long periods of time throughout throughout the sixties, we
Speaker 1: went from that first initial week two up to a
Speaker 1: month and more so right right there was Um, there's
Speaker 1: one in particular I want to talk about, but I
Speaker 1: want to I want to give you the opportunity to
Speaker 1: get through the sixties and seventies first before I jump
Speaker 1: into it, because I'm going to talk about the Noah one. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think, go go for it, alright, alright, So, so
Speaker 1: again sixties and seventies, we see more and more of
Speaker 1: the same sort of environments used for Are these habitats
Speaker 1: used for scientific research? Noah establishes one called Aquarius off
Speaker 1: the coast of Saint Croix, and Aquarius is one of
Speaker 1: the two underwater habitats that are still really actively used
Speaker 1: these days. Um. The other one is now called Jewels,
Speaker 1: but it's it's now privately owned. It's now privately owned
Speaker 1: and operated as an underwater hotel. But it didn't start
Speaker 1: off that way. He started, right, It started off as
Speaker 1: one of these research habitats, and and all of these
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about have been research habitats, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of based on ocean life, but also kind of
Speaker 1: based on exactly how can we do this crazy keeping
Speaker 1: people underwater? Right? Right? So the Jewels Undersea Lodge was
Speaker 1: named after, of course, Jules Willisberne and his leagues under
Speaker 1: the sea. Right, although this one is not twenty leagues
Speaker 1: under the sea, certainly not. It is less than that semifically.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's twenty one below the surface exactly.
Speaker 1: It is twenty one. The services the world's first underwater hotel.
Speaker 1: It was originally called La lupa research lab. Yes, it
Speaker 1: was rendered. It was created in the nineteen seventies and
Speaker 1: then renovated into a hotel in the nineteen right. And
Speaker 1: you it's it's scuba focus. It's really for scuba enthusiasts.
Speaker 1: I think you don't have to have Scooba certification to go,
Speaker 1: but they will make you take a training course just
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're dive down because you have
Speaker 1: to scuba dive into the hotel. That's the only way
Speaker 1: to get there. The way it works is that they
Speaker 1: have a wet room. That's that's called wet room because
Speaker 1: that's where you go to when you when you come
Speaker 1: into the hotel, and that's where you end up storing
Speaker 1: all your scuba gear. And the entrance is what's called
Speaker 1: a moon pool, which I just love how romantic and
Speaker 1: lovely that name is, which is really a hole cutting
Speaker 1: the floor. It's much nicer than hole cutting the floors.
Speaker 1: Names go and uh and right. It's it's compressed, I think,
Speaker 1: to the to the water around you. So you shouldn't
Speaker 1: stay in there very very long. And the idea is
Speaker 1: that you you swim underneath the structure, you come up
Speaker 1: through the moon pool, you pull yourself out, kind of
Speaker 1: like pulling yourself out of a swimming pool, and then
Speaker 1: you are inside the hotel and uh, you know again,
Speaker 1: it's it's that that water pressure specifically, because if you
Speaker 1: were at serve this pressure, then you have to worry
Speaker 1: about decompression. Uh. If you can then take off all
Speaker 1: your gear, take a hot shower, and then move into
Speaker 1: one of the other two rooms inside the Jewels. UH
Speaker 1: motel is what I've seen it referred to by other
Speaker 1: underwater hotel companies. Uh it is. If you want to
Speaker 1: know some statistics. It's fifty ft long, which is about
Speaker 1: fifteen meters. It's twenty ft wide that's six meters, and
Speaker 1: eleven ft tall, which about three point four meters. It was.
Speaker 1: It's off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys,
Speaker 1: made famous, of course by the Beach Boys in their
Speaker 1: song Anyway, so that you uh, you know, like you said, Lauren,
Speaker 1: you have to get there by diving. Whether or not
Speaker 1: you're certified doesn't matter. They can put you through that course,
Speaker 1: but you have to get there by diving. They don't
Speaker 1: have some other means of getting you there. I think
Speaker 1: that originally they had let guests go down breathing through
Speaker 1: a tube a pipe that was piping oxygen down like
Speaker 1: snoop diving, which is a combination snorkeling and scuba, right,
Speaker 1: But due to safety concerns they moved it to a
Speaker 1: full exactly. That sounds like that was a good idea
Speaker 1: moving it um it's uh, you know, once you get
Speaker 1: in there, you've got some interesting amenities. They have windows
Speaker 1: that look out their forty two inches in diameter or
Speaker 1: um uh, it's the way wait, I wrote down how
Speaker 1: many how many centimeters? A hundred seven centimeters? I'm looking
Speaker 1: out for you guys. I just I can't make the
Speaker 1: conversion in my head yet. I'm not that good. Um.
Speaker 1: Other amenities include things like air conditioning and an entertainment center.
Speaker 1: The picture I saw was was an old uh caval
Speaker 1: ray tube television showing I think it was the Abyss
Speaker 1: actually on pause. Um, but anyway, it's the You also
Speaker 1: can have meals delivered down there, including from the tower
Speaker 1: of Pizza Um restaurant. I know because I actually looked
Speaker 1: into this to see. You know, I was curious to
Speaker 1: see how much it was. Did you see how much
Speaker 1: it costs to stay there? I did not, or if
Speaker 1: I did, I did not make a noteworka. So it's really,
Speaker 1: you know, when you think about it, you're staying underneath
Speaker 1: the ocean. So first of all, when we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about these other underwater hotels in the moment, we're
Speaker 1: talking about super luxurious experiences. At least that's the idea,
Speaker 1: and so they tend to be pretty pricey, with one
Speaker 1: in particular really breaking the bank on a per night's stay.
Speaker 1: But the Jewels Undersea Lodge, if it's if it's a
Speaker 1: party of two, it's a d dollars per night. So
Speaker 1: that's a party of two. That's expensive. But you're talking
Speaker 1: about being underwater as a unique experience right now, right,
Speaker 1: So uh, if it's three to but it gets lower
Speaker 1: per person if you add more people. So if you
Speaker 1: have three to four people staying there, it ends up
Speaker 1: being three fifty dollars per person instead of four hundred
Speaker 1: per prison. If you have five to six people staying there,
Speaker 1: it's three hundred dollars per person. However, you are then
Speaker 1: staying with five to six people in a tin can. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, not all of us, everybody, Lauren, So you
Speaker 1: know we can get along some of us with lots
Speaker 1: of people in an enclosed space. This open floor plan
Speaker 1: that we have in our office is really keyed up
Speaker 1: us on our anxiety levels and aggression levels have gone
Speaker 1: out the charts. I have to say, I'm pretty cranky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is only the first day, Lauren. We've got lots
Speaker 1: more of these to look forward to Succa. You have
Speaker 1: to deal with me. There's some behind the scenes stuff
Speaker 1: from how stuff works right there for you guys. So anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: not not so expensive. Comparatively speaking, it is very expensive
Speaker 1: our hotel room, but for a hotel room underwater, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, not so expensive. Um so that's That's
Speaker 1: kind of the first one I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: because it was a direct descendant. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: one of these underwater research habitats. Okay, it's Jonathan from.
Speaker 1: If I could tell Jonathan from anything, it would be
Speaker 1: you know, prepare for the worst. But hey, let's just
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we'll be right back with
Speaker 1: this classic episode. All right, So now we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about some other underwater hotels. There is one other one
Speaker 1: that we can talk about that's actually running. It's working.
Speaker 1: You can go and you can book a room there
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, or the room there. There's only one.
Speaker 1: There's only the one. This is called the utter In.
Speaker 1: It is in Sweden on Lake something or other. I
Speaker 1: can't pronounce it. I'm not even gonna try, Like Millaren,
Speaker 1: Let's let's say that is that is the English looking
Speaker 1: pronunciation of that name, which is probably completely incorrect because,
Speaker 1: as we have previously learned in the pan episode, Sweden.
Speaker 1: Be crazy. Yeah, we we are. Our mouths don't make
Speaker 1: those sounds utter in obviously that that means otter. In
Speaker 1: it's is otter. So it's about otters. It was created
Speaker 1: as an art project in the year two thousand by
Speaker 1: Mikhail Genberg. And okay, so so it's got it's got
Speaker 1: an above above surface part in a below surface part
Speaker 1: above above ground above sir, as I keep wanting to
Speaker 1: say ground, there's it's kind of like a red shed
Speaker 1: with a deck around it. Yeah, it looks like it
Speaker 1: looks like it's got a little floating dock that's got
Speaker 1: nothing but a little tiny red shack on it. So
Speaker 1: if you were looking at it just from the surface,
Speaker 1: you think that is the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It's just floating out there on the lake. And what's
Speaker 1: that very small barriage which with a very small wood
Speaker 1: shed on it. Um it does have you know, a
Speaker 1: little bit of a deck for sun chairs or something.
Speaker 1: You can fit a good few sun chairs out there.
Speaker 1: And then there's a tube leading below the surface. You
Speaker 1: can go down a ladder through this tube into what
Speaker 1: I believe is a single room. It does not look
Speaker 1: terribly roomy, no, I think it's a room. It has
Speaker 1: two beds and a few picture windows that will let
Speaker 1: you look out into the lake. As of as it
Speaker 1: listed for UM, I think a thousand, seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for seven nights. Okay, so I'm not bad.
Speaker 1: It's actually cheaper than the Jewels one if you're looking
Speaker 1: to stay for a week, uh if you. But however,
Speaker 1: you're pretty much left up on your own here. You
Speaker 1: can opt in to getting food delivered to you for
Speaker 1: an extra charge. Where I think, I think it's row
Speaker 1: about distance to them. Yeah, they give you an inflatable
Speaker 1: canoe where you can you can row back to shore
Speaker 1: so that you can go and get things like food
Speaker 1: or entertainment. It is. It is pretty impressively creepy looking. Actually,
Speaker 1: I have to say I was looking at some pictures
Speaker 1: of the interior and the lake is a very living lake,
Speaker 1: and so it's a little bit briny. It's kind of
Speaker 1: grayish and greenish, lots of allergae, lots of fish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets very dark at night, and I'm sort of
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with that. Yeah, the idea that you, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: not getting any starlight or moonlight down there. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was the same sort of thing with the Jewels one, right,
Speaker 1: like the Jewels Hotel that if you ever see pictures
Speaker 1: of it, you see these big round windows since looking
Speaker 1: onto very green water, you know, and it's it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not the kind of don't think about those
Speaker 1: Caribbean beaches or the ones and you see in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: whereas that crystal blue water, it's not like that. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the those are the two that you could actually book
Speaker 1: a room at right now and go and stay in
Speaker 1: right now, the Jewels and the other. But therefore, for
Speaker 1: a room underwater, there are a couple other hotels that
Speaker 1: do have portions something underwater, like the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. Specifically,
Speaker 1: there are two Atlantis resorts. There's one in Dubai and
Speaker 1: there's one in the Bahamas. If you ever look at
Speaker 1: this thing, it looks like two giant wings and the
Speaker 1: center of it um has sort of an outline that
Speaker 1: looks like an Arabesque tower with a sort of a
Speaker 1: bridging kind of section on the very top. That will
Speaker 1: come in into play in just a second, because I've
Speaker 1: got a tangent that I have to talk about. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it has two suits, the Poseidon and the Neptune. Very clever.
Speaker 1: The Posidona Neptune suites are multi floor suites and part
Speaker 1: of it is above the level of a lagoon that
Speaker 1: it looks out over, but the bottom floor is actually
Speaker 1: under the surface of the water line and has windows
Speaker 1: look out into the lagoon. So according to one picture,
Speaker 1: although I couldn't find any confirmation on the actual Atlanti site,
Speaker 1: it was one of those pictures where I wondered if
Speaker 1: it was a an artist rendition or if it was
Speaker 1: actually this was really taken inside the suite, and one
Speaker 1: of them that showed a bedroom where the entire bedroom
Speaker 1: was submerged in the lagoon, so you you are looking
Speaker 1: out like when you look up from your bed, you're
Speaker 1: looking at the aquarium essentially, or in the inside the lagoon,
Speaker 1: so you're looking at all the sea life swimming around you.
Speaker 1: None of the pictures I saw on the actual site
Speaker 1: reflected that specific setup, so I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: really how it turned out. That might have been one
Speaker 1: of those things like and what it really looks like
Speaker 1: is no, you've got a window that looks out into
Speaker 1: the lagoon, which still is gorgeous but it's not the
Speaker 1: same effect obviously. Um. Anyway, these two swe eats are
Speaker 1: a little a little expensive. If you want to stay
Speaker 1: at either the Poseidon or the Neptune Sweet in the
Speaker 1: Atlantis Resort in Dubai for one night, that'll set you
Speaker 1: back eight thousand eight for one night's stay. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not the most expensive sweet in the hotel I and
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not by far the most expensive sweet
Speaker 1: in Dubai. The most expensive sweet in the Atlantis Resort
Speaker 1: and Dubai is Remember why I said I had that
Speaker 1: bridging kind of section that's at the very top of
Speaker 1: that Arabesque tower. Well that that bridging section is actually
Speaker 1: a suite. It's called the Royal Bridge Suite. And one
Speaker 1: night's stay will set you back about thirty seven thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars for one night. So that's a good
Speaker 1: salary right there for one night's stay. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: much like many people's yearly y. Yeah, to stay for
Speaker 1: one night. Anyway. Clearly there's a section of the world
Speaker 1: that lives in a a front bracket than I do. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's still pretty interesting, but it's not the same thing
Speaker 1: as the submerged hotel idea that we were promised no,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's there's also a restaurant that you can
Speaker 1: go to in a Hilton Hotel out in Maldives, Maldives Islands. Yes. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the Conrad mal Dives, Rangali Island. It's it's owned
Speaker 1: again by the by the Hilton Hotel chain. Um. The
Speaker 1: hotel itself is spread over two islands connected by a bridge.
Speaker 1: Most of it is top side, but it does have
Speaker 1: this this undersea restaurant that's available. Um. It's only has
Speaker 1: fourteen chairs, but you can also rent it out for
Speaker 1: events for an undisclosed amount of money. Undisclosed huge amount
Speaker 1: of money meaning huge. The pictures of this are very
Speaker 1: similar to what I was talking about about that bedroom
Speaker 1: where it's the you know, because the the ceiling itself
Speaker 1: is also made out of a crylic. It's this arc.
Speaker 1: There's an arch all the way through the dining room
Speaker 1: where you're surrounded on both sides and above it's like
Speaker 1: a seventy degree so you're you're you're looking around underwater,
Speaker 1: and it looks very much to me like the there's
Speaker 1: a tunnel in the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta that
Speaker 1: is a very similar view. Or um, maybe if you
Speaker 1: guys have seen a really terrific BioShock causplay of a
Speaker 1: big daddy and little sister, it took place in this
Speaker 1: in the Georgia Mark. You've seen the documentary Jaws three,
Speaker 1: which takes place in Sea World and they walk through
Speaker 1: some of the Sea World tunnel. Same sort of thing,
Speaker 1: except you know, wider. Uh So that kind of brings
Speaker 1: us to some of the ones that have been proposed
Speaker 1: but as far as we can tell, have yet to
Speaker 1: be built in some cases, have yet to have any
Speaker 1: work done on them whatsoever. In most cases have yet
Speaker 1: to have any work done on them. And that that
Speaker 1: I think we should probably go ahead and just start
Speaker 1: with the Poseidon because that was the one that that
Speaker 1: I first heard of and was so impressed by and
Speaker 1: could not wait to hear. But it was originally supposed
Speaker 1: to open in two thousand eight nine, I think, okay,
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Uh, as far as I know, no
Speaker 1: work has really been done on the the like they
Speaker 1: haven't installed any of the actual units. Now, the Poseiton
Speaker 1: approach was really kind of a cool idea, and it
Speaker 1: may still be a cool idea like as in it
Speaker 1: may still be built. But the ideas that they would
Speaker 1: have an underwater corridor that was the connecting UH like
Speaker 1: like permanently fixed corridor underwater, and then the suits would
Speaker 1: be connected to it, but detachable and surfaceable in case
Speaker 1: of either emergency or repair. Right. So so each suite
Speaker 1: could be built completely separately. They're neutrally buoyant, so you
Speaker 1: can move them fairly easily through the water either up
Speaker 1: or down. You bring them down to the right level
Speaker 1: you connected to the corridors. The corridor has a sealed door,
Speaker 1: and so does the suite, so that air lock exactly
Speaker 1: you can therefore use. You can pressurize it to surface pressure. Right.
Speaker 1: And so the ideas that you could be UH trans
Speaker 1: spported by submersible down to the corridor. You get out
Speaker 1: of the submersible into the corridor, you go to your room.
Speaker 1: The entire time you are under surface pressure. You never
Speaker 1: have that decompression issue, um, and you have this gorgeous
Speaker 1: view where you can control the privacy of your room
Speaker 1: through l C d UH screens. So you could actually
Speaker 1: make them opaque or transparent and then either you know,
Speaker 1: look at just a little section of the water or say,
Speaker 1: you know, modesty be darned. I'm going to turn all
Speaker 1: of the walls into windows for right now. And uh,
Speaker 1: just you know, any divers are swimming by are just
Speaker 1: gonna have to They're just gonna have to live with
Speaker 1: the way I hang out of my hotel room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. That would be some four inch thick plexiglass
Speaker 1: windows that it's planning on using in twenty four underwater speed. Specifically,
Speaker 1: I've heard UM construction was supposed to be in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's still in the works as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, it has not started again. They're
Speaker 1: they're gonna lead it over to Fiji when it's done, hypothetically,
Speaker 1: and it was announced in that they're scouting for a
Speaker 1: second location that they have so much interest that they
Speaker 1: want to build too. However, also that the same year
Speaker 1: a Swiss firm called Strategic Hotel Consulting estimated that the
Speaker 1: cost of one suite, building one suite, not staying there
Speaker 1: just building it would be eleven point four million dollars
Speaker 1: for one suite, So that could end up being a
Speaker 1: huge issue. If that actually is an accurate estimation, then
Speaker 1: that could really cause problems with them building this and
Speaker 1: you know, affording to build a full hotel. So we're
Speaker 1: still waiting to find out if that's in fact going
Speaker 1: to happen. Um. There's some other cool ideas that are
Speaker 1: part of this hotel there they talked about. Each room
Speaker 1: would also have underwater lights, so you could light up
Speaker 1: the scene around you at night and see the fishies
Speaker 1: swim around the night. Also, they would have push button
Speaker 1: fish feeders, so if you want to feed the fish
Speaker 1: eies and and or attract more fishies around your window,
Speaker 1: you push a button and it shoots food out. And Okay,
Speaker 1: this sounds gorgeous and wonderful, and the cynic in me
Speaker 1: is saying that it is going to be awful for
Speaker 1: the local ecosystem. You might see a lot of obese
Speaker 1: fish like I just yet, I've never seen a flounder
Speaker 1: around before. Really delicate balance. There's there's certainly some things
Speaker 1: that you've got to take into consideration. Althowiy I supposed
Speaker 1: just the mere you know, anchoring of a giant corridor
Speaker 1: in twenty four submersible rooms underwater, we're probably screw stuff up.
Speaker 1: There's probably an environmental impact there. Yeah, there's also uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just made of a crylic obviously,
Speaker 1: it's also made of steel that steals about an inch thick.
Speaker 1: It's about twenty five millions. For you guys out there
Speaker 1: who don't follow the imperial system like I do. We
Speaker 1: have a little bit more to talk about as far
Speaker 1: is sleeping underwater goes, But first let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: Then we've got a couple of other hotels we can
Speaker 1: talk about. I mean, there's more stuff we'd say about
Speaker 1: the sign, but the biggest thing is that we're still
Speaker 1: waiting on the poseidon. We don't really have that much information. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: China has plans to build one into the cliff side
Speaker 1: of an abandoned rock quarry in Shanghai. Heard this is
Speaker 1: the Shimal Wonderland, and it would have two submerged floors.
Speaker 1: The rock quarries is partially flooded and so so two
Speaker 1: submerged floors, and then uh, you know, down there they
Speaker 1: would have a sports complex, spa swimming pool, restaurant and
Speaker 1: some guest rooms, and then top side there would be
Speaker 1: some rock climbing, bungee jumping, that kind of extreme sports
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It was planning on opening, which looks
Speaker 1: unlikely as of right. Now. But CNN reports that there
Speaker 1: are reports of initial construction having I did um, which
Speaker 1: is about as vague as I think it deserves to be. Well,
Speaker 1: there's another one. Um, did you hear about the Hydropolis
Speaker 1: underwater Hotel and Resort. I didn't, but that's a really
Speaker 1: terrific word. So this one was proposed back in two
Speaker 1: thousand six, again in Dubai. Dubai is going to pop
Speaker 1: up a lot here, yeah, um, So this one was
Speaker 1: proposed back in two thousand and six. The projected cost
Speaker 1: at that time was either, depending upon the source, you read,
Speaker 1: three million dollars or three million pounds. That's a big difference.
Speaker 1: That is a really huge difference. Unfortunately, half the sources
Speaker 1: I looked at said one and the other half the
Speaker 1: sources said the other. And I think it all depended
Speaker 1: on whether or not the person was writing in the
Speaker 1: US or in the UK. So I do not know
Speaker 1: which one of those figures is correct. I would imagine
Speaker 1: that both of them are way low yea from what
Speaker 1: it would actually cost. I also do want to take
Speaker 1: this opportunity to say that a lot of our research
Speaker 1: about these hotels has come from um, perhaps less reputable
Speaker 1: sources than when we would usually use just because all
Speaker 1: of these are technically fictional, right, Yeah, they're just kind
Speaker 1: of idea is Yeah. In fact, if you ever do
Speaker 1: a search for underwater hotels, you're gonna come across all
Speaker 1: these top ten lists or seven lists or whatever travel blogs,
Speaker 1: and most of them are talking about like these hotels
Speaker 1: are either in operation right now, are going to open
Speaker 1: it really soon. But that does not appear to be
Speaker 1: the case. It looks more like these are great ideas
Speaker 1: that mayhaps are before their time. Um. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: Hydropolis was supposed to open years ago and it has
Speaker 1: not opened yet. If in fact, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, there's been no construction performed at all, or
Speaker 1: even plans for construction, like actual concrete plans to build something.
Speaker 1: It's just been in the discussion stage. But originally the
Speaker 1: ideas that it's supposed to have a land station, so
Speaker 1: you would enter this hotel through the land station. Then
Speaker 1: there's a connecting tunnel from the land station to the
Speaker 1: main hotel, and then the suites of the hotel are
Speaker 1: all underwater. Uh, and that was supposed to be two
Speaker 1: hundred twenty suites. This hotel is, if it were built,
Speaker 1: would be enormous to be two sixty hectars, which is
Speaker 1: about the size of Hyde Park in London. Yeah, big
Speaker 1: one night's stay was projected to be at a measly
Speaker 1: five thousand five now pocket change. Yeah, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: that number has probably gone up as the hotel has
Speaker 1: failed to be built. But I would imagine that number
Speaker 1: is even higher now due to inflation if nothing else.
Speaker 1: But then we've got another another Dubai one right, the
Speaker 1: water discus, right, and this is being designed by Deep
Speaker 1: Ocean Technology, which has plans to launch several of these
Speaker 1: suckers around the world, including one over in Maldives. Um
Speaker 1: And yeah, this this plan is for twenty one rooms
Speaker 1: under the surface, plus a lobby and in a Scooba
Speaker 1: training pool. Useful. This one actually looks like imagine two frisbees.
Speaker 1: One of them is above the water and one of
Speaker 1: them below the water, and they're connected by a tube,
Speaker 1: and the tube actually has inside of it an elevator
Speaker 1: and stairs, and then there's a few kind of outlying
Speaker 1: disc ufo kind of looking things coming coming off of
Speaker 1: it as well. Occasionally they kidnapped cows for no reason.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, you know, happens. UH. Supposedly, the
Speaker 1: latest estimate I read was that it would be finished
Speaker 1: if everything goes as planned, by March two thousand fifteen.
Speaker 1: So we still have a couple of years to go
Speaker 1: before this thing gets built. If it gets built, keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that we have the Poseidon and the Hydropolis,
Speaker 1: both that predate the announcement of this hotel that still
Speaker 1: have not been built. H this one. That underwater portion
Speaker 1: would also be serviceable, like like those room pods from
Speaker 1: from the Poseidon and UH, and those top side portions
Speaker 1: that the kind of outlying UFO things that I was
Speaker 1: talking about can be released and used its flotation for
Speaker 1: the rest of the hotel in case of emergency, which
Speaker 1: is important. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you have
Speaker 1: an earthquake or something, or tsunami or some other issue
Speaker 1: when you're right next to the ocean um. Then there's
Speaker 1: also there's one that I saw where I found mentions
Speaker 1: of it across the web except for anything that actually
Speaker 1: said it existed. There were a lot of blogs that
Speaker 1: said this is going to be an amazing underwater hotel,
Speaker 1: and then when I tried to actually find any real
Speaker 1: information about it, it would just fade away. But it's
Speaker 1: called Reef World and it's supposed to be a floating
Speaker 1: hotel that's along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and
Speaker 1: it would have eight underwater suites UH that you could
Speaker 1: stay in, so the suits themselves are submerged underwater. The
Speaker 1: rest of the hotel is sort of floating on the
Speaker 1: surface and even had like a helipad in the illustration
Speaker 1: I saw where a helicopter could land. Ah, but it
Speaker 1: was all artist concept drawings that I could see. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find any actual information about whether or not construction
Speaker 1: ever started. There is a reef World UH project in Australia,
Speaker 1: but that refers to these pontoon boats that you can
Speaker 1: go out to two snor Cole and to explore the
Speaker 1: Great Barrier Reef, and there are a couple where you
Speaker 1: can do an overnight stay as part of a package.
Speaker 1: But it's not it's about Yeah, it's a boat. It's
Speaker 1: not designed as a hotel. It's a boat. It does
Speaker 1: have it does a underwater viewing area's kind of like
Speaker 1: a like a glass bottom boat. But it's not a submersible,
Speaker 1: so it's and it's not it's clearly not the same
Speaker 1: thing as what all these blogs were saying, or if
Speaker 1: it is the same thing, they scaled down big time
Speaker 1: because they went from this massive floating hotel with a
Speaker 1: helipad to a pontoon boat that I would say is
Speaker 1: a step down into the water, you know, And anything
Speaker 1: without a helipad is obviously yeah, I don't, I don't
Speaker 1: stay and I won't stay in a holiday and unless
Speaker 1: it's got a helipad, that's such as the life of
Speaker 1: a podcasting, right, you know, I live in a helipad.
Speaker 1: That was a terrible joke. That was bad even for me.
Speaker 1: I feel almost ashamed. If I could feel shame, I
Speaker 1: would feel it right now. Well, you know that's getting
Speaker 1: Do you have any other underwater hotels you wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about? I do not. That was everything on me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there. Occasionally you'll see other jested underwater hotels, but
Speaker 1: most of the cases it's not really an underwater hotel.
Speaker 1: And again, the ones I'm really interested in are these
Speaker 1: ideas that the submerged, the totally submerged hotel, where you
Speaker 1: you aren't just looking out into an aquarium or a lagoon,
Speaker 1: you really are under the ocean. I think that's really
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. I would be willing to try it. Lauren,
Speaker 1: you said the Dead's doesn't really appeal to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of quicked out by open water. I'm not
Speaker 1: really okay with it. I really like breathing, and I
Speaker 1: really like walking on solid stuff. It's a they don't
Speaker 1: They don't inject you into the ocean. Are purpose not
Speaker 1: on purpose, and accidents can happen. You give that champagne
Speaker 1: bottle in there and the cork explodes with just a
Speaker 1: little more force than you were expecting. The next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, and acrylic panel pops in. That would be
Speaker 1: an issue. I'm I'm sure, I'm sure that they if
Speaker 1: you know that the safety issues are why they do
Speaker 1: not exist right now, and that if they were created
Speaker 1: that they would be very safe. I would certainly like
Speaker 1: to go check one out and maybe leave afterwards. Maybe
Speaker 1: not stay. I'm not sure if I could sleep right right. So,
Speaker 1: while I do still want to do the tech stuff,
Speaker 1: travels around looking at cool things. Idea that we have,
Speaker 1: um the underwater hotel, we may just may just breeze through,
Speaker 1: maybe have like a five star meal. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: be fine with justifive star there and then we'll go
Speaker 1: stay at the holiday and with the helipad that works,
Speaker 1: I can. I can deal with that. And that wraps
Speaker 1: up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: topics we should tackle on tech Stuff, let me know.
Speaker 1: Send me a message on Twitter. The handle is tech
Speaker 1: stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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