NASA's Underwater Training Facility

An anonymous reader writes "The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project (NEEMO) sends groups of NASA employees and contractors to live in the Aquarius underwater laboratory for up to three weeks to study human survival in preparation for future space exploration. NASA has used it since 2001 for a number of missions, usually lasting 10 to 14 days, with research conducted by astronauts and others NASA employees."

Deepwater Drilling Emergency Station

[Doc Ruby]

I'd like to see a lab like this support operations in deepwater commercial activities like exploration and drilling. When BP's Macondo well exploded on the Gulf floor last year, we all learned suddenly that BP and the oil industry was unprepared for what is an obvious risk in that business. NASA's research should give us much better remote vehicles for monitoring and taking control of undersea operations. Establish normal monitoring to reduce risk and stop catastrophes as they barely get started. Supply technology, techniques and qualified staff during a breakdown. And deliver forensics after a breakdown to assign liability and strategies for recovery.

The $4B+ the Federal government gifts the 5 biggest petrocorps each year would be better spent improving NASA's undersea research to benefit that industry and protect it all from its damages. And in fact that $4B+ should be paid for by the industry, using a small fraction of its current profits (and an even tinier fraction of its gross revenues). $4-8B spent on NASA's underwater research would give us the skills we need to colonize and exploit the seas sustainably, instead of the nearly blind, haphazard and disastrous way we're doing it now.

The oil corps have proven over and again they're never going to do disaster preparedness and mitigation on their own. NASA is as usual spending public money in one of the best investments of all time. The match in NASA filling that vacuum is compelling.

Re:Deepwater Drilling Emergency Station

[MrQuacker]

Wouldn't that duty fall under NOAA though? NASA only does this because water is a suitable analog for the vacuum of space. For actual hydrological research, NOAA would be the logical administration to conduct it.