China Plans Massive Sea Lab 10,000 Feet Underwater In the South China Sea (bloomberg.com) 101
An anonymous reader writes: In an effort to hunt for materials, China is planning to build a manned deep-sea platform in the South China Sea. The lab may also serve for military purposes in the disputed waters as well. The lab would be located as much as 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) below sea level, according to a recent Science Ministry presentation viewed by Bloomberg. Bloomberg writes: "The project was mentioned in China's current five-year economic plan released in March and ranked number two on a list of the top 100 science and technology priorities." There are few public details specifying the timeline of the project, any blueprints, costs or where exactly it will be located. China's President Xi Jinping considers more than 80 percent of the waters its sovereign territory. The country has even created several artificial islands in the South China Sea covering 3,200 acres. Last year, the NYT posted a fascinated piece showing clear satellite imagery of the new islands being built.
If you're lookin for me (Score:5, Funny)
You better check under the sea
'cause that is where you'll find me
Underneath the
SeaLab
Underneath the water
Underneath the
SeaLab
At the bottom of the sea...
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You'll find that it's better! Down where it's wetter!! Un... um... erm...
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It'll be perfect if it's finished by 2021 and is run by a guy named Murphy!
Re: If you're lookin for me (Score:1)
Except for Pod 6. Those Pod 6 guys are a bunch of jerks.
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Have you seen Gus?
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I don't know about "recent", but you can see Google's latest here [google.com].
I may be mistaken (and please tell me if so) but that sure looks like a couple of dredge ships and floating pipes to build a new pile of dry land. Other Chinese-claimed islands [blogspot.com] show large piles of dirt and earth-moving equipment. One island [google.com] does not appear quite so dry [gmanews.tv] or quite so developed [telegraph.co.uk] in older pictures.
They learned rhetoric from us (Score:5, Insightful)
See, now America's attempts to keep them restrained in that area [nytimes.com] will be perceived as anti-science. Very, very clever...
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Nothing stops anyone from building a sea lab in the open ocean. This isn't like the fake constructed islands, which international laws of the sea do not recognize as granting either the 12 mile military or 200 mile economic (fishing) exclusion zones.
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Yes, but that is not how China will treat that lab. Their take over of the S. China Sea is only preparation for assaulting Taiwan with bad governance and the PLA. They figure it is not too dissimilar to when they discovered they owned Tibet because their ancestors use to go potty there several centuries ago. Their discovery of Taiwan is based on the grounds the Taiwanese are really Chinese, even the natives. They have not yet been able to get Taiwan to fork over their country to the Muppets in Beijing, so t
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Yes, but that is not how China will treat that lab. Their take over of the S. China Sea is only preparation for assaulting Taiwan with bad governance and the PLA. They figure it is not too dissimilar to when they discovered they owned Tibet because their ancestors use to go potty there several centuries ago. Their discovery of Taiwan is based on the grounds the Taiwanese are really Chinese, even the natives. They have not yet been able to get Taiwan to fork over their country to the Muppets in Beijing, so they'll have to do a Tibet on them. Preparations are already being made across the Taiwanese straits. The Muppets just have to wait long enough to remove the U.S.'s ability to fulfill their treat obligations to Taiwan. I give it another 10 years before China will take Taiwan and do for it what they are doing to Hong Kong.
I wish there was a multi-choice voting system to mark this post as insightful, funny and depressing.
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Now if only the US and the Middle East would stop fighting over who's prophet of a sky god has a bigger nut sack, there might be hope for humanity.
In case you somehow missed it, the Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same god. The Jews call him Yahweh, the Christians call him God, and the Muslims call him Allah, but they are all speaking of the same God.
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Now if only the US and the Middle East would stop fighting over who's prophet of a sky god has a bigger nut sack, there might be hope for humanity.
In case you somehow missed it, the Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same god. The Jews call him Yahweh, the Christians call him God, and the Muslims call him Allah, but they are all speaking of the same God.
Most of them, of course, worship the same god, His name is Lucre.
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First they came for the Vietnamese, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Vietnamese.
Then they came for the Filipino, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Filipino.
Then they came for the Malaysians, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Malaysian.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Poetry aside, there is a good reason to be concerned about territorial expansion, especially when it's projecting military power uncomfortably close to
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First they came for the Vietnamese, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Vietnamese. Then they came for the Filipino, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Filipino. Then they came for the Malaysians, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Malaysian. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Poetry aside, there is a good reason to be concerned about territorial expansion, especially when it's projecting military power uncomfortably close to neighbors. If it continues unchecked, then if or when a war does break out, the first fighting will be to capture that nearby territory in a powerful first strike. That eliminates potential allies for opponents, and concentrates the first counterattacks on liberating the conquered territory.
That's how it worked in previous wars, at least. In a long-range modern war between superpowers, territorial expansion primarily serves as yet another target. It's another place for satellites to watch, another suspicious building, and another place that might hide another missile. Once the big powers break out their big weapons, it won't matter whose sons or daughters are in uniform. What will matter is who can keep their weapons operational long enough to fire at the enemy, and I doubt very much that anyone will care about "dignity".
As I recall, the US hasn't exactly been tolerant of, say, a nation getting friendly with the Russians, if it happened to be a large island 1,000 miles off our shores.
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See, now America's attempts to keep them restrained in that area will be perceived as anti-science. Very, very clever...
Has that really been taken serious in the last few decades? China knows that they can do whatever they please, as long as they don't endanger the stability of the world order in the short term. It isn't just in the local area they are being clever - where we in the West have traditionally made ourselves somewhat unpopular in the Middle East, Africa anf South America, China are building up a rather better reputation amongst the locals. We can hardly justify criticizing what they do, which it the clever bit,
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Funny... when heard of this underwater sea lab, the first thing that I thought about was Octonauts.
So, who's going the be the Chinese equivalent of Captain Barnacle?
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I was thinking SeaQuest DSV (the first season, before it got all weird and messed up). And also SeaLab.
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I was thinking SeaQuest DSV (the first season, before it got all weird and messed up). And also SeaLab.
Isn't anybody going to mention Spongebob?
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So, who's going the be the Chinese equivalent of Captain Barnacle?
"It's me and my crew and we've come for a screw!" said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
"It's me myself and nobody else!" said Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
the rest is probably too dirty to post here.
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More details were requested, but ...
China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and the ministry did not reply to faxes seeking comment.
No word on whether Bloomberg tried their BBS or AOL chat room.
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Trump 2016
Japan and the Philippines should build one, too! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Japan and the Philippines should build one, to (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why not an underwater version of the international space station?"
Do you mean a multinational research station that China is excluded from for no particular reason? Uhh, no.
Re: Japan and the Philippines should build one, to (Score:4, Informative)
Do you mean a multinational research station that China is excluded from for no particular reason?
The obvious rebuttal is the well-known Chinese government penchant for stealing technology. That's the particular reason.
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A multinational research station where everyone keeps things for themselves?
Both the US and the USSR do keep some things to themselves such as military technologies that have been repurposed to support the ISS (communication systems [wikipedia.org] in particular). Also, it's hard to attract commercial interest in the ISS as a research platform, if they have to worry about ongoing Chinese espionage on the ISS itself.
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"The obvious rebuttal is the well-known Chinese government penchant for stealing technology. "
If it's tech that we're not using, then I say let the Chinese run with it.
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If I'm a cave man who figured out how to make fire, and the guy from the cave next watches and figures out my technique, I have not lost anything.
You lost any technological advantage you had from fire over that other caveman. If they're a member of your tribe, you'll probably come out ahead due to cooperation between you two. But if he's a member of a rival tribe, then you may die as a result.
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If they can build a habitable sphere that can withstand the 2ton/sq.in. at that depth, then more power to 'em. We have DSV that easily go that deep, but they're the size of a small car and carry the supplies to survive at most a day.
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These are international waters, open to exploration by ALL. This may just be a serious science project, but if it's not just that, the rest of the world needs to do the same. China is not perfect, but I would never, ever, EVER, trust the American government to do ANYTHING for purely altruistic purposes - even for their own people. They get away with too much, already!
FTFY
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The US should totally build one.
We cannot have a Sea Lab Gap!
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Undersea outposts were pretty thoroughly explored in the 1960s - at that time, there was no economically viable undersea pursuit worth pursuing.
In other words: when you go underwater and stay there for long periods, you're essentially burning money. Fine if you want to park nuclear missiles off other people's shores, but otherwise not worth the effort.
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These are international waters, open to exploration by ALL. This may just be a serious science project, but if it's not just that, the rest of the world needs to do the same. America is not perfect, but I would never, ever, EVER, trust the Chinese government to do ANYTHING for purely altruistic purposes - even for their own people. They get away with too much, already!
Well, welcome to the other side of the fence - I'm glad you could join us. That is what many have been saying about America for many years; now you can see things from the outside. Sorry, I shouldn't gloat, it's just such pleasant feeling, as I'm sure you know.
There is little doubt that this is a serious, scientific project, but no science is purely unpolitical; practising science in any form tends to influence your thinking and make you less tied up in things like national patriotism, religion etc - after
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They are collecting Manganese Nodules.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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On the other hand, developing the technology to work at those depths - perhaps for controlling robots at short range, possibly using ultrasonic links instead of optical fibre (because ultrasonics tangles less than tethe
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You might want to click the link, it was a joke.
Manganese nodules was the excuse the US government used to cover up the Glomar Explorer's real mission of recovering a soviet sub in the deep ocean.
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The fact that that operation was somewhere in the grey area between fraud, "back operations" and milking foreign (American) tax payers for every penny they're worth does nothing to deny the fact that manganese nodules exist (first discoveries were on the UK's Challenger expedition in the 1870s to 80s), that they do have interesting chemistry, that they do exist in interesting quantities (though patchy in both abundance and contents),
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I am with you on this. China is most definately trying to assert its dominance in the region. This has little to do with deep sea scientific research, therefore it is another Glomar Explorer, another attempt to cover up something clearly military/political in nature by stating it is for scientific research.
You know, if I lived in a country that conducted a lot of trade with a potentially hostile country with whom I shared an ocean borderline, I'd take their actions quite seriously. Which is exactly what I do - living on the Atlantic coast of Europe.
I fart in your general direction from Maryland. :P
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If anything is going to cause ww3, it's China militarizing and claiming ownership of the sea.
Tibetan Tunnels (Score:2)
As anyone who has studied the Truth about the World as revealed by Grand Master Terry Pratchett in Good Omens, where He reveals The Truth about the World, will know, the Tibetans have for millennia been digging tunnels all over the world. This is just another Sinister Plot to continue this, no doubt, by the Secret Masters in Shangri La, the very same people who are behind both the evil Chinese government, President Obama and Boris Johnson. It is time for the X-men to step in and rectify matters, one feels.
Re:Smells Fishy (Score:4, Insightful)
That's beyond the crush depth of most nuclear powered submarines.
That's because most nuclear powered submarines are specifically not designed to have to withstand the pressure from being 3,000m underwater. You can't launch a missile from that far down, they only really need to be hidden from things on the surface and in the air (and stay quiet for other subs). There are plenty of other types of submarines which do go that deep because that's part of their design goal.
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I will now make an over-simplification, but you'll see the point: all of the additional structural integrity that the missile would require (for example to st
Re: Smells Fishy (Score:2)
Being nuclear powered doesn't help with pressure resistance.
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4335 feet per square inch is an impressive compression ratio.
Seabed (Score:2)
Watch out! (Score:2)
The inevitable US response... (Score:2)
what year (Score:2)
will this Sealab be operational in 2020?
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and then in 2021 everyone goes insane and we get the first great Adult Swim cartoon series.
Re: what year (Score:2)
But was it as good as "Chopper Dave"?
"frequency of typhoons" (Score:2)
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I think earthquakes would be a danger. That much water pressure carrying a shock wave could be very destructive.
Personally I doubt they will ever build it, so it probably would not matter.
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Sovereignty (Score:2)
HA lol!
This has about as much to do with scientific research as [insert something funny here].
This is China. This is the South China Sea. This is about sovereignty. It is about establishing "use" and "continued presence" to extend national boarders or to strengthen their position in that regard. Which is ultimately about resources.
This happens all the time internationally, though I'll admit this is the first time I've seen it occur as a underwater sealab! It does have the bonus that once in place there is v
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HA lol!
This has about as much to do with scientific research as [insert something funny here].
This is China. This is the South China Sea. This is about sovereignty. It is about establishing "use" and "continued presence" to extend national boarders or to strengthen their position in that regard.
Please. This is about thumping ones chest and making claims that will never pan out to make themselves look bigger. China has made claims to aircraft carriers, supersonic stealth jets, their own space station, missions to the Moon and Mars. As far as I can tell, they are mostly bluster with an unoperational Soviet carrier that still has to be towed, a photoshopped stealth jet, and no missions to anywhere significant. I'm not going to claim that they aren't making technological headway, or that they aren't c
the question is: (Score:2)
Is this base gonna be more like Starfish [amazon.com] or
preparation for Seveneves [amazon.com] ?
That's ambitious (Score:1)
Just think about the engineering that'll have to go into something like that. I bet they'll make a lot of new discoveries. They'll also pay a price for it. Achievements like that don't come cheap, in money or men. One screwup at that depth and that's it.