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Sixty toes beneath the floor of the Caribbean Sea, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau and industrial designer Yves Béhar are envisioning the world’s largest underwater analysis station and habitat.
The pair have unveiled Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus, a 4,000-square-foot modular lab that may sit beneath the water off the coast of Curaçao, offering a house to scientists and researchers from internationally learning the ocean — from the results of local weather change and new marine life to medicinal breakthroughs.
Designed as a two-story round construction grounded to the ocean ground on stilts, Proteus’ protruding pods comprise laboratories, private quarters, medical bays and a moon pool the place divers can entry the ocean ground. Powered by wind and photo voltaic power, and ocean thermal power conversion, the construction may also characteristic the primary underwater greenhouse for rising meals, in addition to a video manufacturing facility.
Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus Credit: Courtesy Proteus/Yves Béhar/Fuseproject
The Proteus is meant to be the underwater model of the International Space Station (ISS), the place authorities companies, scientists, and the personal sector can collaborate within the spirit of collective information, regardless of borders.
“Ocean exploration is 1,000 times more important than space exploration for — selfishly — our survival, for our trajectory into the future,” Cousteau mentioned over a video name, with Béhar. “It’s our life support system. It is the very reason why we exist in the first place.”
The newly unveiled design is the newest step for this bold undertaking. According to Cousteau, it should take three years till Proteus is put in, although the coronavirus pandemic has already delayed the undertaking.
Yves Behar (left) and Fabien Cousteau (proper) are main the Proteus undertaking. Credit: Fuseproject/Clare Vonderhaar
Left undiscovered
Though oceans cowl 71 p.c of the world’s floor, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that people have solely explored about 5 p.c and mapped lower than 20 p.c of the world’s seas.
Space exploration receives extra consideration and funding than its aquatic counterpart, which Cousteau hopes to treatment with Proteus — and finally a worldwide community of underwater analysis habitats. Facilities stationed in several oceans may warn of tsunamis and hurricanes, Cousteau mentioned. They may additionally pioneer bold new analysis into sustainability, power and robotics.
Underwater habitats permit scientists to carry out steady evening and day diving with out requiring hours of decompression between dives. Like astronauts in area, they will keep underwater for days or perhaps weeks at a time.
Currently, the one underwater habitat that exists is the 400-square-foot Aquarius, within the Florida Keys, which Costeau stayed in with a workforce of aquanauts for 31 days in 2014. Designed in 1986 and initially owned by the NOAA, in 2013 Florida International University saved Aquarius from being deserted after the NOAA misplaced authorities funding.
The Aquarius underwater analysis habitat within the Atlantic Ocean. Credit: Mark Conlin/VW PICS/UIG/Getty Images
Family custom
Cousteau comes from a household of well-known oceanographic explorers. He’s the son of filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau and grandson of Aqua-Lung co-creator Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The undertaking is a joint effort between the Fabien Cousteau Ocean Learning Center (FCOLC) and Béhar’s design agency Fuseproject, in addition to their companions, which embody Northeastern University, Rutgers University and the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity Foundation.
Despite his emphasis on ocean analysis, Cousteau mentioned he is “a big proponent of space exploration,” noting they’re related in nature. Both forms of missions require people to be in isolation in excessive, untenable situations. Because of that, Béhar’s design, which might home as much as 12 folks, focuses on wellness in addition to scientific and technological capabilities, together with recreation areas and home windows designed to let in as a lot gentle as potential.
“We’ve worked recently on a lot of small living environments. We’ve worked on robotic furniture for tiny apartments,” Béhar mentioned about Fuseproject. “So I think we had a good sense of how to design for comfort in constrained environments. That said, the underwater environment is completely different.”
“We wanted it to be new and different and inspiring and futuristic,” he continued. “So (we looked) at everything from science fiction to modular housing to Japanese pod (hotels).” The design can also be meant to echo ocean life, with its construction impressed by the form of coral polyps.
Béhar and his workforce additionally studied the underwater analysis habitats which have come earlier than Proteus, together with the Aquarius. All different forerunners have been short-term buildings constructed for single missions, like NASA’s experimental SEALAB I, II, and III from the 1960s.
“Those habitats were purpose built, they were small and they had great limitations,” Cousteau mentioned. “So we’re building off of…(a) foundation by all those amazing pioneers that came before us.”
Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus Credit: Courtesy Proteus/Yves Béhar/Fuseproject
Diving forward
While the undertaking at the moment has some backing from the personal sector, it’s at the moment in search of additional funding. Beyond backers, the station’s moist and dry labs may be leased to authorities companies, companies and educational establishments.
Part of the plan is to supply common visibility about what is going on on Proteus, together with stay streams and VR/AR content material. In this manner Cousteau hopes to interact a wider viewers.
“Imagine if you found something amazing — whether it be microcosmic like a pharmaceutical, or macrocosmic like the next greatest animal — if you could show it to classrooms and universities,” he mentioned.
“Our mission is to be able to translate complex science into something that the average person not only maybe will understand, but fall in love with.”
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