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Amitai Etzioni says there are bigger priorities than a new push for manned exploration in space

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Many people dismiss space exploration as a luxury, but this attitude is not only wrong, it's dangerous .

Satellite technology has revolutionized our planet in almost every way. Weather satellites help us track developing hurricanes, allowing meteorologists to warn people days in advance. That saves thousands of lives. Communication satellites allow us instant access to information all over the world using radio, television, and phones. Some people credit in part the fall of the Soviet Union to ease of information access; the people in those countries saw what the rest of the world was doing, accelerating the process of reform. GPS satellites allow us to track ships, airplanes, and even people who may be lost or in need of help.

Reaching outward into space has helped us in other ways as well. A fleet of satellites (YOHKOH, SOHO and others) study the Sun so that we can better understand it. Huge solar eruptions can damage satellites and cause power blackouts (like in Quebec in 1989), and the Sun directly influences our environment. Understanding the Sun is a critical use of space technology.

Exploring the other planets helps us put the Earth in context. Why is Mars dry, cold, nearly airless, and dead? Why is Venus covered in thick clouds and suffering a runaway greenhouse effect? Why do hurricanes on Jupiter last for centuries? All these questions (and thousands more) help us understand our own planet, and allow us to see how humans are affecting it. Certainly understanding asteroids is important-- we need to learn how to move them in case one is heading our way; an asteroid impact could wipe out all humans on Earth, so our very future is tied to space travel.

There are simple technological reasons for space exploration as well. Some estimates say that for every dollar invested in the Apollo program, more than 20 have been returned. That's a huge payoff! Computer tech, communications, rocketry, and many other fields have benefited hugely from space exploration.

And there is one more reason. Humans strive to learn, to explore, to push boundaries, to see what's around the corner. This is in many ways a fundamental need, and space exploration is a fantastic manifestation of that. The Universe is huge, beautiful, mysterious, and, ultimately, knowable . Even if the other reasons were not there, this alone should be enough for us pursue our exploration.

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Many people dismiss space exploration as a luxury, but this attitude is not only wrong, it's dangerous . Satellite technology has revolutionized our planet in almost every way. Weather satellites help us track developing hurricanes, allowing meteorologists to warn people days in advance. That saves thousands of lives.

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DOGONews: Why NASA Scientists Are Heading Underwater

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DOGONews: Why NASA Scientists Are Heading Underwater

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Why NASA Scientists Are Heading Underwater

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Why NASA Scientists Are Heading Underwater has 300 reviews and 0 ratings. Reviewer ethan300 wrote: ”#TEAMOCEAN”

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Trash . . . . . In Space? has 563 reviews and 0 ratings. Reviewer shashplay wrote: "Thank you this is so helpful for my 5 grade research 😇"

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NASA's real-time portal for Mars exploration, featuring the latest news, images, and discoveries from the Red Planet.

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What Was the Apollo Program? (Grades 5-8) - NASA

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Apollo was the NASA program that resulted in American astronauts’ making a total of 11 spaceflights and walking on the moon.

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National Geographic: Fabien Cousteau Leads "Aquanauts" in Record-Breaking Undersea Expedition

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National Geographic: Fabien Cousteau Leads "Aquanauts" in Record-Breaking Undersea Expedition

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Fabien Cousteau is leading a team of scientists, educators, and filmmakers this month on the longest-ever expedition in a stationary habitat beneath the sea. The project, called Mission 31, aims to build awareness about the need to protect the ocean and honors a historic expedition 50 years ago by Cousteau's famous grandfather, explorer Jacques Cousteau.

Launched on June 1, Mission 31 is a 31-day, privately funded expedition at Florida International University's Medina Aquarius Reef Base.

The habitat lies 63 feet (19 meters) below the surface in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Windows look out on swimming fish and deep coral reefs. (See " Stunning Underwater Photos for World Ocean Day.")

The team is studying climate change, ocean acidification, plastics pollution, decline of biodiversity, and predator-prey relationships. Cousteau and his colleagues are also making a documentary film and have participated in more than 50 educational Skype sessions with schools, aquariums, and museums in the United States, Canada, Australia, Kenya, and the Czech Republic.

Guests who have dived to Aquarius for short visits with the Mission 31 team include National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sylvia Earle, Greg Stone of Conservation International, marine artist Wyland, actors Adrian Grenier and Ian Somerhalder, and retired NASA astronaut Clay Anderson.

"Jacques Cousteau was my hero, and I believe Fabien is following closely in his flippers," Wyland said in a statement. "Fabien is sharing the beauty of our undersea world with everyone and inviting artists, scientists, and all of us on this epic mission that will help us all have a better connection with our water world."

On June 11, Jacques Cousteau's birthday, Florida Governor Rick Scott called to wish the team well. The members also celebrated by wearing red caps, as Cousteau often did, and eating French pastries and "red cap" cookies.

Aquarius is the world's only underwater marine laboratory. It measures 43 by 20 by 16.5 feet (13 by 6 by 5 meters) and weighs approximately 81 tons. It has six bunk beds, hot water, a mini-kitchen, climate control, computers, and wireless Internet.

Fifty years ago, Jacques Cousteau led a 30-day expedition underwater aboard a habitat called Conshelf II in the Red Sea off Sudan. He and his team proved that "saturation diving," which means living and working at a pressure higher than on the surface, was possible for long periods. Mission 31 is 30 feet (9 meters) deeper than Conshelf II.

National Geographic spoke with Fabien Cousteau, as well as scientists Liz Magee and Grace Young, inside Aquarius via Skype. Magee is a research diver with Northeastern University; Young graduated in May from MIT with a degree in mechanical and ocean engineering, with a specialty in marine robotics.

What was the impact of Jacques Cousteau's Conshelf II expedition 50 years ago, and how did it inspire your current mission?

Cousteau: My grandfather was a pioneer in building underwater habitat. He and his team spent 30 days gathering scientific data, on both the ecosystems around their habitat and the physiological effects of working underwater. We are going one day longer than that expedition in a symbolic nod to honor them and to point the way toward future ocean exploration.

I grew up with a grandfather who was a visionary, a philosopher, and a wonderful storyteller. He was also very connected with young people. Being the oldest grandchild I got to live 30 years of my life with him. I've been on expeditions since a young age and have been immersed in that world.

Conshelf II has always been one of those legendary stories I kept in the back of my mind. When Sylvia Earle did her Mission Aquarius [in July 2012] to highlight the importance of ocean habitats, I realized I wanted to live the dream of becoming an aquanaut. And I realized what an amazing platform it is for education.

You are underwater in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and President Obama just announced plans for a huge new marine sanctuary around remote islands in the Pacific. How important are these protected areas?

Cousteau: Being a third-generation explorer, it brings me a lot of hope to see that the U.S. is leading by example. The Obama administration is protecting swaths of ocean that really need protecting. I look forward to seeing it come about and being enforced.

We desperately need protected areas around the world so we can rebuild the natural bank account that we all need.

Magee: If more people were exposed to the wonders of the sea, then everyone would be all for protecting it. That's why part of our mission is exposing people who don't normally think about the ocean to how vital it is to our livelihoods and our lives.

Young: I find it incredibly frightening that we have the technology to completely destroy the ocean in my lifetime, but marine protected areas are hope spots, as Sylvia Earle calls them.

Now that the mission is more than half over, what has it been like to live and work underwater for days at a time?

Cousteau: Today [June 19] is day 19 of the mission, which makes it officially the longest mission that has happened in the Aquarius habitat. We have another 13 days to go.

It's now been a few days since Liz and Grace joined us. They switched out with Andy [Shantz] and Adam [Zenone], two students from Florida International University. They've become surface dwellers again. We also have a team of 36 people at the surface, both scientists and support staff.

What have you learned about the physiological and psychological effects of living long-term underwater, at high pressure and without the sun?

Cousteau: We wear bands that monitor light and our activity, and we are doing a survey of how we sleep. We're working long days down here. At first we got up at 4:30 every morning and went to bed at 11. Now things have slowed down a little bit, and we're getting up at 6 but still going to bed around 11. We're studying the effects of being down here.

How did the decompression go for the first team-Adam and Andy-that left after the first part of the mission?

Cousteau: The decompression process takes about 18 and a half hours; it's lengthy. But living at saturation allows us to go diving as long as we want.

Magee: When we were getting ready to go down, we saw Adam and Andy come up. They said they were sad that it was over, but they were really excited to see the sun.

How does the saturation diving work?

Magee: After 24 hours of being down here, we are considered fully saturated, or fully nitrogen loaded. So we have more nitrogen dissolved in our blood [because of the pressure from the surrounding water].

That means we can stay out in the water diving for up to nine hours. It's such a unique opportunity, and one of the things I was most excited about, to be able to dive for so long.

Cousteau: When astronaut Clay Anderson came down here, he could only stay for 45 minutes. In that case it is just like a normal 60-foot (18-meter) dive. If he had stayed longer, he would have had to go through decompression.

Do you think we are any closer to realizing Jacques Cousteau's vision of underwater colonies?

Cousteau: Technologically speaking, we're absolutely capable of doing it at this point; it's a matter of funding and willpower. On the flip side of that coin, there is a lot of technology now that my grandfather had only dreamed of: for example, the ability to talk to you on the surface [through WiFi]. Underwater habitats are a fantastic tool for science and education, and they provide a unique perspective.

Young: I could see myself having an underwater vacation house, but I'd miss my friends and family too much to live underwater permanently.

You have pointed out that we have explored only about 5 percent of the ocean. Why is it important to keep exploring?

Cousteau: I think it's paramount to learn more about the ocean, not just for science, which is incredibly important, but also for ourselves. We need to learn more about the interconnectivity of the ocean. This is our life support system. Otherwise, we are just a little brown rock in space like all the others. There's no such thing as healthy people without a healthy ocean.

We're polluting what's left in ways that are starting to affect us. It's leading to increased rates of cancer and all sorts of other diseases. We're basically using the ocean as a garbage can.

Young: I'm concerned we might destroy ecosystems in the deep sea before we even know they existed. Now we have the technology to mine the seafloor, overfish, and destroy coral reefs by changing acidity.

Your team has been studying ocean acidification. How have you been doing that, and what have you learned?

Magee: There are beautiful giant sponges right outside the habitat. Some could be thousands of years old. Some call them redwoods of the reef. And we're setting up sensors inside them to measure such variables as oxygen and temperature, so we'll be able to understand what happens with rising acidity of the water and its impacts on the sponges. It will also help us better understand the activity of these sponges.

What else are you studying?

Magee: We are using sonar to study predators and prey. The sonar mounts to the top of your helmet so you can visualize it. And Grace brought a high-speed camera.

Young: The camera came out just five weeks ago, and we got one of the first models. We had a housing built for it, and we are using it for the first time underwater. Last night we looked at Christmas tree worms. We hope to better understand how the creature moves.

Magee: A grouper fish releases a pulse of sound to stun prey fish. We hope to capture that with the high-speed camera. It's so fast that you wouldn't hear it if you were diving right next to it. The only way we can hope to capture it is by spending hours in the water, and the only way we can do that is by saturation diving. The only way to do that is by a habitat, so Aquarius gives us the gift of time.

When retired astronaut Clay Anderson visited you at Aquarius earlier today, did he find the habitat similar to being in space?

Cousteau: NASA uses Aquarius as a training ground for space because the parameters are very similar to living in space. In 2003 Clay Anderson came down here to train. It's also thrilling to have an astronaut here to explain why it is so important for exploration in general.

Young: In my background in robotics, I think of the ocean and space as similar environments.

What do you do for fun underwater?

Magee: Yesterday was really fun for me. I made a dive over five hours, my longest ever. It's really fun just being in the water.

Young: We can watch movies, but we haven't much-we have too much fun looking out the window.

Cousteau: We have playing cards, but they haven't been opened. Most of the time we're just looking out the window. It's so fascinating. It's a unique experience.

Magee: The fish are just as intrigued with us as we are with them. Last night we had a grouper that was staring in at our window. She was checking us out.

Cousteau: It's also neat how many people are watching us online. We have a constant video stream. My mom saw me blow my nose, and she emailed to ask if I had a cold.

What have been the coolest things you've seen on the mission?

Cousteau: One evening [while diving] I was waiting for the cameraman, and I looked over at a post [outside the habitat]. All of a sudden, it started smoking. I thought it might be an electrical fire or something. But when I got closer, I realized there were about 30 Christmas tree worms on the post, and they had started spawning all at once, so it looked like smoke. I also saw a giant tarpon swimming around close enough to touch. A few days ago we saw a grouper strike a barracuda. I've never heard of that behavior before.

Young: What amazes me is I'll look at a patch that looks like empty sand, but the more you look the more you discover. I saw a piece of sea grass and then saw it walking. I thought I was hallucinating, and then I saw it was a tiny crab.

Any final thoughts?

Cousteau: For Mission 31 we have the goal of reaching 331 million people around the world, and hopefully we'll double that. We'll have a feature documentary, and we have many blog posts and information on our website. We've done many sessions with classrooms around the world.

We hope to continue the synergy that we're starting to see around ocean protection. It's critical so our children will be able to enjoy the ocean. When I first had the idea for the mission, I didn't know if we would pull it off, but my grandfather used to say only the crazy ideas succeed.

Young: It's been a splash.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Follow Brian Clark Howard on Twitter and Google+.

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Fabien Cousteau Leads "Aquanauts" in Record-Breaking Undersea Expedition | Innovators

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Fabien Cousteau is leading a team of scientists, educators, and filmmakers this month on the longest-ever expedition in a stationary habitat beneath the sea. The project, called Mission 31, aims to build awareness about the need to protect the ocean and honors a historic expedition 50 years ago by Cousteau's famous grandfather, explorer Jacques Cousteau.

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Scholastic Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers

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Explore Scholastic Teaching Tools for teaching resources, printables, book lists, and more. Enhance your classroom experience with expert advice!

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The inquisitive explorers pilot their tiny ship into an alien world never before seen by humans. Outside the ship's strong hull is a hostile environment. It is pitch dark, with crushing pressures and cold that would kill a human in seconds.

As they navigate with cameras, sensors, and special radar, the ship's powerful spotlights illuminate an awesome landscape. Huge clouds of scalding-hot water filled with poisonous chemicals billow from a volcano-like hole. Weird creatures live nearby. Among them are huge red tube worms that have no mouth, stomach, or intestines. There are also giant clams and blind shrimp.

The pilots use a robot arm to collect samples. Then they deploy a small robot vehicle from the mother ship to take close-up pictures and do other studies. Chances are they will discover life-forms never before seen on Earth.

These are not astronauts exploring a planet in deep space. Rather, they are underwater explorers who have traveled to Earth's last frontier: the deep sea. In some ways, we know more about the moon than we know about Earth's own oceans. The oceans or seas cover about 71 percent of Earth's surface. Yet the oceans have not been thoroughly explored. That is especially true of deeper parts of the ocean, which reach a depth of 36,198 feet (11,033 meters).

An Extreme Environment

Earth's oceans are not welcoming to visitors from the land. Underwater explorers face the same kinds of difficulties as astronauts in space. They must take along their own air supply and protect their bodies from dangerous pressures and temperatures. On Earth's surface, the weight of the atmosphere puts 14.7 pounds of pressure on every square inch of the human body. People are used to living at that pressure. In the water, pressure on each square inch of the body increases about a half pound for every foot of water. A diver 2,000 feet (610 meters) beneath the sea would experience pressure of more than 1,000 pounds over every square inch of the body. Such crushing pressure would instantly kill a person on land.

As depth increases, the water becomes colder. In deep water near the ocean floor, and surface water near the North and South Poles, water temperature is close to freezing. (The freezing point of seawater is about 28.4°F (-2°C) instead of the 32°F (0°C) freezing point of fresh water.) But water does not have to be that cold to harm humans. Even water at mild temperatures quickly drains heat away from the body. A human can survive only a few minutes in chilly 40 to 50°F (4 to 10°C) water.

Underwater explorers often have more trouble seeing in their world than astronauts do in space. Plenty of sunlight passes through ocean water near the surface. However, no light penetrates deeper than about 3,300 feet (1,000 meters). So the deep underwater world is pitch dark. Creatures living in those depths often use a process called bioluminescence to make their own light. Humans must bring along powerful spotlights. Even strong halogen lights are of little help in some areas of the ocean. When mud or silt covers the bottom, just touching the bottom with a hand can stir sediment that makes a diver almost blind. In other areas, currents sweep sand away from the shore, making vision difficult. Light reflects off the tiny particles, like snowflakes in a car's headlight, making spotlights useless.

The threat of attack by dangerous marine animals also makes underwater exploration difficult. A host of animals with both defensive and offensive weapons exist in the sea. Some, such as sharks, can easily kill a human. In shark-infested waters, researchers may carry shark repellents. Or they may work inside a metal cage lowered into the sea from their ship.

Scuba Diving

Diving is the oldest and most common way to explore the underwater world. But for thousands of years, divers' explorations were limited by how long they could hold their breath.

Today, underwater explorers can dive deeper and work longer by employing an aqualung, or self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA). Scuba divers carry their own supply of air for breathing in tanks strapped to their backs. One tank gives the diver enough air to stay underwater for more than an hour. That is because the air is compressed. This means the air is forced into the tank under pressure like the air in a tire. A tank of compressed air can hold hundreds of times more air than a tank that is not pressurized.

Scuba gear also includes a valve that reduces the air pressure so that the diver can inhale it comfortably. Divers breathe through their mouths. They inhale air through a mouthpiece connected to a tube running from the air tank. A face mask is worn to keep water out of the eyes and nose. Divers working in cool water usually wear a heavy rubber suit. It slows the loss of body heat, allowing them to stay in the water longer.

Straightening Out the Bends

Diving with compressed air lets people dive deeper and stay down longer than ever before. Along with the benefits of deeper, longer dives come new dangers. Sponge divers and pearl fishermen had always feared the terrible pains of decompression sickness. The condition was given another name, divers' bends, because the pain sometimes made divers bend and twist their bodies in agony.

The bends occurred when divers did not wait long enough between deep dives. With scuba diving, it also can happen when divers surface too fast from a deep dive. Divers get the bends from the compressed air they breathe.

Oxygen and nitrogen are the main gases in air. When breathing on Earth's surface, a person absorbs the oxygen, and breathes out the nitrogen. Breathing while the lungs are under pressure from water is a different story. The pressure forces nitrogen gas to dissolve in body fluids, just as carbon dioxide dissolves in soda pop. As long as the person stays at the same pressure, nitrogen is harmless. If the pressure drops quickly-due, for example, to ascending to the surface rapidly-tiny bubbles of nitrogen form in the body. The same fast pressure drop occurs after opening soda pop, allowing carbon dioxide bubbles to form. In the body, the nitrogen bubbles stretch or break tissues and block the flow of blood through tiny blood vessels. Divers with the bends may have painful and achy joints, itching skin, trouble breathing, and partial or total paralysis. Sometimes the bends can be fatal.

Fortunately, the bends can be avoided by allowing the nitrogen to leave a diver's blood without bubbling. Usually the diver rises slowly to the surface, about 30 feet (9 meters) per minute. With each decrease of 30 feet (9 meters) in depth, less water presses on the body. If necessary, the diver can stop at certain depths to allow even more nitrogen to leave the blood without bubbling. If a diver stayed at 300 feet (91 meters) for only an hour, it would take more than 7 hours to reach the surface safely. Breathing pure oxygen-or a mixture of helium and oxygen, which limits the amount of nitrogen-allows divers to shorten decompression time.

Preventing Narcosis

Breathing compressed air at great depths also presents another danger, called nitrogen narcosis. It makes divers lose the ability to think clearly. The diver might suddenly feel dizzy and silly. Breathing a mixture of air with more oxygen and less nitrogen usually can prevent narcosis.

Submersibles

Even with special gear, scuba divers can only explore the ocean to a depth of about 700 feet (213 meters). And the water pressure at that depth makes diving very difficult and dangerous. It is much safer and easier to explore the deep underwater world from inside a diving vessel, or underwater ship. A ship can be pressurized and heated so that people feel comfortable at great depths.

Submarines are the largest diving vessels. They are used mainly as warships and not for exploration. Explorers and researchers use smaller vessels called submersibles. Submersibles have extremely strong hulls to withstand great pressure deep below the surface. They can go to greater depths than submarines and stay there longer than scuba divers. Modern submersibles are versatile, packed with equipment, and more mobile than earlier vehicles. They are attached to a support ship by a long cable. But they are self-propelled, meaning they can move under their own power.

Alvin is one of the best-known and most widely used research vessels. Its three crew members can take photographs and use a manipulator arm to get samples from the seabed. It can reach depths of 13,124 feet (4,000 meters). Its equipment includes video cameras, powerful lights, and two robot arms for taking samples. Alvin makes 150 to 200 dives each year.

Another type of submersible is called a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). It does not need a crew. Rather, ROV's carry cameras and other instruments to navigate through the water on their own. Scientists usually control the ROV from a research ship or shore station. Some ROV's have robot arms and other devices to recover materials from the ocean depths.

Jason is a famous ROV. Its controllers can put different kinds of equipment on it to get images and other data about the deep ocean. The information can be used to make three-dimensional maps of the seafloor that are accurate to within a few inches. Jason has a small tethered (attached) ROV of its own called Medea, which is used to take photographs. Jason has been used to explore ancient shipwrecks. In addition, it has been deployed to study the geology and biology of the deep-sea world.

Space Stations in the Deep

A permanent space station, where astronauts stay for weeks or months at a time, may be an important step to understanding space. In the same way, underwater laboratories, or habitats, give scientists a chance to study the deep-sea world for long periods. Instead of being limited to an hour or so of scuba diving or a few hours in a submersible, "aquanauts" can do research for days or weeks in an underwater laboratory.

Aquarius is an underwater laboratory dedicated to marine science. It is anchored 63 feet (19 meters) deep in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. It is operated by Florida International University. The lab is a cylinder about the size of a small train engine. It holds six people at a time. Aquarius enables scientists to spend up to nine hours each day working on the seafloor at depths of up to 120 feet (37 meters). They do not have to worry about decompressing after each swim. Instead, they just go back inside Aquarius, where the pressure keeps nitrogen safely dissolved in their blood and body fluids. Scientists use Aquarius to study coral reefs, ocean currents, the effects of increased ultraviolet light on marine life, and other issues.

Living in Aquarius

The scientists living in Aquarius stay for 10 to 14 days at a time. The air-conditioned habitat includes six bunks, a shower and toilet, instant hot water, a microwave, trash compactor, a refrigerator, and computers. Best of all for scientists is the instant communication available with shore through wireless connections. A control center is about 9 miles (14 kilometers) away on shore. It monitors the habitat 24 hours a day. Cameras in the habitat send pictures to the control center every 15 seconds. Scientists have even conducted live television interviews from beneath the sea.

A day on Aquarius begins in the morning after breakfast. The scientists put on diving gear and gather measuring instruments, notebooks with plastic "paper," cameras, and other equipment. They leave Aquarius and swim to their work areas. Some may be checking on the health of a coral reef. Others may be studying ancient fossil reefs to understand how coral grew before human activities began polluting the oceans. Whenever the scientists are tired or hungry, they return to the lab for a break. Because their bodies are already saturated with nitrogen, they can dive for long periods without having to worry about decompression.

When the time comes to return to the surface, the scientists pack up their notes and personal belongings and get ready for a 17-hour decompression. Aquarius stays on the bottom, but the pressure inside the habitat is slowly adjusted to match surface pressure. Then the scientists swim to the surface as if they had been underwater for only 10 minutes, not 10 days.

Deep-Sea Life

The deep ocean is home to strange-looking creatures. Their bodies are adapted to life in the dark at crushing pressures. Some have no eyes because there is nothing to see in the pitch darkness. Others have huge eyes to gather the faintest light rays. Some deep-sea animals have their own "spotlights." Their body surfaces have light-producing organs called photophores. The flashes of light are used to confuse predators or to illuminate an area to find prey. Certain fish have evolved internal structures called swim bladders. These are gas-filled bags that keep their insides at the same pressure as the outside environment.

Some of the most interesting deep-sea creatures are those living near underwater hot springs, called hydrothermal vents, on the seafloor. In 1979 vents were discovered on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean near the Galápagos Islands by a team of American scientists, led by Robert Ballard, exploring in the research vessel Alvin. The water around the vents was hot enough to melt the plastic on Alvin's sensors! Even so, the explorers found a rich variety of life living nearby.

Very hot water rich in dissolved minerals pours out of the vents from underneath the ocean floor. The hot water cools quickly, and the minerals drop in the water and settle around the vent opening. This gradually forms chimney-like towers that can reach a height of 3 1/ miles (6 kilometers). Blind crabs, giant clams, and bright red tube worms living in darkness depend on the hot water for survival in their dark, deep world. Bacteria around the vents use chemicals in the water to make energy and grow. They do this just as plants in shallow water use sunlight for photosynthesis. Other creatures around the hydrothermal vents rely on the bacteria for food.

History

Underwater exploration began hundreds of thousands of years ago. The first underwater explorers were probably looking for food. Men and women waded into the water to catch fish. Wading led to swimming. Swimmers learned to hold their breath and dive. Archaeologists know that people in villages along the Mediterranean Sea practiced breath-holding diving more than 6,500 years ago. Diving gave people the ability to explore at greater depths. Divers went as deep as 80 feet (24 kilometers) to the seafloor to cut oysters from the rocks where they grew. They also dove deep to bring back natural sponges, which grew on the bottom. Sometimes they searched for treasure on sunken ships. Even the best divers, however, could stay underwater for only four minutes or so.

Then, more than 2,000 years ago, Mediterranean peoples discovered a way to stay down longer. They brought down an extra supply of air in balloon-like bladders. A bladder was made by sewing together the leathery skin of a sheep, goat, or pig, leaving an opening like the neck of a balloon. Divers waterproofed the bladder with oil, attached a heavy rock to help it sink, and dove in. They could take breaths of air whenever needed and extend their time underwater. These divers had invented the first scuba device.

Diving bells have been used for hundreds of years. A diving bell is usually made of metal or metal and wood and has an opening at the bottom. After the bell is lowered into the water, air is released into the opening, pushing the water out. The first documented diving bell was built in 1535 in Italy. However, there is a legend that Alexander the Great (who died about 300 B.C.) dove in a glass bell. A diving bell lets a person walk around on the bottom as long as the bell is suspended over the body. Explorers using a diving bell could stay in the water longer but still had trouble moving around.

In the early 1800's, inventors made another big advance. They developed watertight diving suits with heavy copper helmets. These suits gave people more freedom underwater. The helmet had a strong glass window and was attached to a hose that brought compressed air to the diver from the surface. Sometimes the hoses broke or got tangled, and the diver could not get to the surface. Sometimes a diver stayed in deep water too long and got sick with the bends. In the early 1900's, Scottish scientist J. S. Haldane developed tables showing how long a diver could safely remain at different depths.

Most of the first undersea vehicles were designed for war. As early as the Revolutionary War (1775-81), inventors were experimenting with submarines to be used against enemy vessels. It was not until much later that scientific investigators began to design submersibles for the purpose of exploring the deep sea.

In 1930, two of these investigators, Americans William Beebe and Otis Barton, entered the deep ocean in a craft called a bathysphere, which they had designed. The bathysphere was a hollow ball made of heavy iron. A ship carried it out to sea, then lowered it into the water at the end of a strong cable. The bathysphere could withstand great pressure. It carried its own oxygen supply. It had a searchlight and very strong, thick windows through which scientists could view the unknown water world. The bathysphere could go down only to the end of its cable. This was little more than 3,000 feet (914 meters).

After World War II (1939-45) a Swiss scientist, Auguste Piccard, invented a type of undersea vessel called a bathyscaphe. The bathyscaphe could move about freely without a cable. In this vessel, the Trieste, Piccard explored some of the deepest parts of the ocean. In 1960 he went down to 35,800 feet (10,910 meters) in the Mariana Trench, a canyon on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. The Trieste sank because it was weighted to be heavier than the water around it. It did not need a cable because it was attached to a tank filled with gasoline. Gasoline is less dense than water, so the tank helped the Trieste come back to the surface when its weights were released.

In 1943, French naval officer Jacques-Yves Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan perfected the aqualung, a portable breathing device. It had been invented ten years earlier by another French naval officer, Yves Le Prieur. The aqualung enabled divers to move about freely underwater and greatly popularized diving beginning in the 1950's.

In the 1960's and 1970's, Cousteau and others experimented with living and working underwater. This paved the way for the creation of underwater laboratories such as Aquarius.

The Future

Exploring the deep ocean may become even more important in the future. Scientists think that marine plants and animals may be a new source of drugs to treat human diseases. Marine organisms also may provide materials that can be used in industry. And the deep, cold ocean floors may prove helpful in slowing down global warming. Researchers believe it may be possible to collect carbon dioxide-the main gas that causes global warming-and pump it deep into the ocean. There it would become a solid, ice-like material.

Doing so will require more underwater explorers with better equipment for studying their hostile environment. In 2000, scientists and engineers began work on Jason II. It was the first in a new generation of ROV's that will dive deeper, have better instruments, and gather more useful data than previous ROV's. Jason II will be able to dive to 21,320 feet (6,500 meters) and communicate information back to shore via the Internet.

Recent research has focused on creating AUV's, or autonomous underwater vehicles. ("Autonomous" means independent.) These vehicles work on their own. They are programmed to follow a certain route and collect particular types of information before returning to home base. AUV's have a big advantage over ROV's because they do not need constant attention from scientists.

Cheryl Ward
Florida State University

How to cite this article:

MLA (Modern Language Association) style:

Ward, Cheryl. "Underwater Exploration." . Scholastic Grolier Online, go.scholastic.com/content/schgo/D/article/a20/302/a203024
0-h.html. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

Chicago Manual of Style:

Ward, Cheryl. "Underwater Exploration." . Scholastic Grolier Online. https://go.scholastic.com/content/schgo/D/article/a20/302/a203024
0-h.html (accessed January 11, 2022).

APA (American Psychological Association) style:

Ward, C. (2022). Underwater Exploration. . Retrieved January 11, 2022, from Scholastic Grolier Online. https://go.scholastic.com/content/schgo/D/article/a20/302/a203024
0-h.html

SOURCE: The New Book of Knowledge

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The inquisitive explorers pilot their tiny ship into an alien world never before seen by humans. Outside the ship's strong hull is a hostile environment. It is pitch dark, with crushing pressures and cold that would kill a human in seconds. As they navigate with cameras, sensors, and special radar, the ship's powerful spotlights illuminate an awesome landscape.

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Science News for Students: The Solar System's Biggest Junkyard

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Science News for Students: The Solar System's Biggest Junkyard

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Each white dot represents an individual piece of tracked orbital debris. This image shows the Low Earth Orbit, which is the region from the Earth's surface to 1,240 miles and contains the most space junk.

NASA Johnson Space Center

On a clear night, you can look in the sky and see the moon and stars. You might even see the blinking light of a working satellite as it flies past, on its way around the Earth.

And, even though you cannot see it, you are also looking at the largest junkyard in the solar system.

Higher than the highest clouds but much closer than the moon, the bulk of the junkyard stretches from the Earth's surface to 20,000 miles overhead. There are tens of millions of pieces of rubbish there. Some of the pieces are rocks and dust from passing comets, but most of them are manmade and called "orbital debris" (pronounced duh-BREE).

There are some unusual things up there, like a camera that floated away from astronaut Sunita "Suni" Williams in December 2006. Other astronauts have lost tools like wrenches and screwdrivers. In 1965 astronaut Ed White even lost a spare glove. Most of the junk, however, comes from large satellites and rockets that fell apart after they stopped working.

Together, all the space junk would weigh about 11 million pounds on Earth, or more than 3,000 cars. The largest piece is a part of a rocket about the size of a minivan. The smallest piece would fit on your pinkie fingernail with room to spare.

"It's like a classic environmental problem, like water pollution or air pollution," says Nicholas Johnson. Johnson is the Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. His job is to keep track of the orbiting garbage.

The junkyard is a serious problem for the future of spaceflight.

"You've got multimillion satellites in orbit all the time, and manned space flights," says Joe Gambrell, who helps keep track of both working and broken-down satellites. His main tool is the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, which is part of the U.S. military. Gambrell works at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. "If you don't track debris, you risk some kind of collision," he adds.

In 2007, the space junkyard grew by more than 100,000 pieces. That's more than any other year since people started launching satellites into space. The problem of space junk is not going away, and scientists are watching closely.

Danger in Orbit

A "satellite" is any object that orbits another object, held close by gravity. The moon is a satellite of the Earth, and the Earth is a satellite of the sun. These are natural satellites. Manmade satellites, which are built on Earth and launched into space, are used for communications, scientific studies and military applications.

In the last 50 years, human beings have launched thousands of artificial satellites into space. When a satellite stops working, it usually falls back toward the Earth and burns up in the atmosphere. Satellites at high altitudes, however, sometimes remain in Earth's orbit.

Later, they may fall apart or explode into thousands of smaller pieces. The higher the satellite, the longer it stays in orbit, and the more likely it is to break apart. The pieces may stay in orbit for years, decades or even centuries.

At the NASA Ames Research Center, scientists simulate what would happen were a tiny piece of space junk to hit a spacecraft.

NASA

Space junk races around the Earth at breakneck speeds. Most pieces fly through space at more than 20 times the speed that sound travels on Earth. Going that fast, even the smallest pieces mean big trouble for spacecraft. For example, a tiny marble in orbit around the Earth can have as much energy as a bowling ball going 500 miles per hour, or a car going 30 miles per hour.

A tiny fleck of paint struck and cracked one window of the space shuttle Challenger while it was in space in 1983. The shuttle returned to Earth safely from that mission.

NASA Johnson Space Center

In 1983, a small gouge appeared in one window of the space shuttle Challenger while it was in space. When the shuttle returned to Earth and scientists analyzed the window, they found that the crack was caused by a tiny, orbiting fleck of paint. If the shuttle had been struck by a larger piece of junk, the astronauts may have been in danger.

Many other satellites and space shuttles have also shown damage from tiny pieces of trash. When the space shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth last August, its radiator panels had small holes from space garbage. Last year, two satellites had to be redirected to avoid collisions with big pieces of junk.

The U.S. Space Surveillance Network and NASA work together to keep track of the largest pieces. When the shuttle is in orbit, for example, their attention is on nearby junk that may get in the way. If there is even a small chance of a collision, then the shuttle changes direction.

Watching the garbage

About 17,000 pieces of garbage are larger than 4 inches, which is slightly smaller than a softball. The Space Surveillance Network keeps a list of all these pieces, using dozens of telescopes and antennas on Earth and in space to watch them. Because all the pieces are in motion all the time, keeping track is difficult (but not impossible).

Monitoring the space junk is a problem of energy and motion. To keep track of the junk, the scientists have to know two things: where the garbage is now, and where it is going to be in the future.

This antenna, located in the Mojave Desert, California, can use radio to detect tiny pieces of junk, if they're not too high.

NASA Johnson Space Center

To find out where a piece is now, scientists use telescopes and high-powered antennas to watch it fly through space. Every day, scientists must make sure each piece is where they expect to find it. A "lost piece" could mean serious danger for a working satellite or space shuttle.

To find out where the piece is going, scientists measure its speed and direction as it crosses the sky. Some of the pieces move in an almost perfect circle around the Earth. Other pieces move in elliptical orbits, which means they are sometimes closer to Earth and sometimes farther as they fly. The measurement of direction is complicated because junk can move north or south, east or west, and up or down.

By knowing the location, speed and direction of each big piece of junk, the scientists can predict where all the pieces will go. (Similarly, in baseball, an outfielder has to predict where a pop fly will land, if she wants to catch it. In soccer, a goalie has to predict where a ball will go, so he can block it.)

"We're always looking about four days into the future, tracking objects which might come close," says Johnson.

There are tens of millions of pieces smaller than softballs. Because there are so many small pieces, "We can't [keep track] of them all," Johnson says. Instead of watching each piece individually, scientists use telescopes and antennas to watch one patch of sky and count the number of pieces that pass overhead. With that small measurement, they can use a computer program to get a good idea of what the whole sky looks like.

Keeping track of all the junk is necessary to ensure that astronauts and working satellites can be safe. Like other environmental problems, space junk will get worse without careful monitoring and attention. In the future, pieces of junk will probably hit each other, making even more trash.

The more garbage that remains in orbit, the greater the risk to space flights. What can be done about the problem of space junk? The large pieces of junk cannot be brought back to Earth, Johnson says, because the technology is too expensive. Instead, he says, we should try to stop adding new garbage. For example, engineers are changing the way they build spacecraft.

"How you build your satellite can minimize debris," Gambrell says.

A solution will require international cooperation. Last year, the United Nations General Assembly approved guidelines for how to reduce the risk of space junk. Johnson says that spacefaring countries came together because "the environment was getting worse every year."

If countries work together to control the amount of trash we send into space, Johnson says, we can keep the problem under control. In the future, perhaps we can even clean up the mess.

"In time, either technology or economics will allow us to go out and [improve] the environment," he says.

Stephen Ornes lives in Nashville, Tenn., and his family has two rabbits, six chickens and a cat. He has written for Science News Explores since 2008 on topics including lightning, feral pigs, big bubbles and space junk.

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Each white dot represents an individual piece of tracked orbital debris. This image shows the Low Earth Orbit, which is the region from the Earth's surface to 1,240 miles and contains the most space junk. NASA Johnson Space Center On a clear night, you can look in the sky and see the moon and stars.

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Science News for Students: Wanted: Garbage Collectors in Space 

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Science News for Students: Wanted: Garbage Collectors in Space 

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Stephen Ornes lives in Nashville, Tenn., and his family has two rabbits, six chickens and a cat. He has written for Science News Explores since 2008 on topics including lightning, feral pigs, big bubbles and space junk.

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Every messy kid gets told to clean up his or her room. City governments send out trucks and crews to clean up roads and parks. Now, scientists say if we want

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Smithsonian Magazine: The Real Reasons We Explore Space

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Smithsonian Magazine: The Real Reasons We Explore Space

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I am convinced that if NASA were to disappear tomorrow, if we never put up another Hubble Space Telescope, never put another human being in space, people in this country would be profoundly distraught. Americans would feel that we had lost something that matters, that our best days were behind us, and they would feel themselves somehow diminished. Yet I think most would be unable to say why.

There are many good reasons to continue to explore space, which most Americans have undoubtedly heard. Some have been debated in public policy circles and evaluated on the basis of financial investment. In announcing his commitment to send the country back to the moon and, later, on to Mars, President Bush quite correctly said that we do it for purposes of scientific discovery, economic benefit, and national security. I've given speeches on each of those topics, and these reasons can be clearly shown to be true. And presidential science advisor Jack Marburger has said that questions about space exploration come down to whether we want to bring the solar system within mankind's sphere of economic influence. I think that is extraordinarily well put.

But these are not reasons that would make Americans miss our space program. They are merely the reasons we are most comfortable discussing. I think of them as "acceptable reasons" because they can be logically defended. When we contemplate committing large sums of money to a project, we tend to dismiss reasons that are emotional or value-driven or can't be captured on a spreadsheet. But in space exploration those are the reasons-what I think of as "real reasons"-that are the most important.

When Charles Lindbergh was asked why he crossed the Atlantic, he never once answered that he wanted to win the $25,000 that New York City hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered for the first nonstop aircraft flight between New York and Paris. Burt Rutan and his backer, Paul Allen, certainly didn't develop a private spacecraft to win the Ansari X-Prize for the $10 million in prize money. They spent twice as much as they made. Sergei Korolev and the team that launched Sputnik were not tasked by their government to be the first to launch an artificial satellite; they had to fight for the honor and the resources to do it.

I think we all know why people strive to accomplish such things. They do so for reasons that are intuitive and compelling to all of us but that are not necessarily logical. They're exactly the opposite of acceptable reasons, which are eminently logical but neither intuitive nor emotionally compelling.

First, most of us want to be, both as individuals and as societies, the first or the best in some activity. We want to stand out. This behavior is rooted in our genes. We are today the descendants of people who survived by outperforming others. Without question that drive can be carried to an unhealthy extreme; we've all seen more wars than we like. But just because the trait can be taken too far doesn't mean that we can do without it completely.

A second reason is curiosity. Who among us has not had the urge to know what's over the next hill? What child has not been drawn to explore beyond the familiar streets of the neighborhood?

Finally, we humans have, since the earliest civilizations, built monuments. We want to leave something behind to show the next generation, or the generations after that, what we did with our time here. This is the impulse behind cathedrals and pyramids, art galleries and museums.

Cathedral builders would understand what I mean by real reasons. The monuments they erected to the awe and mystery of their God required a far greater percentage of their gross domestic product than we will ever put into the space business, but we look back across 600 or 800 years of time, and we are still awed by what the builders accomplished. Those buildings, therefore, also stand as monuments to the builders.

The return the cathedral builders made on their investment could not have been summarized in a cost/benefit analysis. They began to develop civil engineering, the core discipline for any society if it wishes to have anything more than thatched huts. They gained societal advantages that were probably even more important than learning how to build walls and roofs. For example, they learned to embrace deferred gratification, not just on an individual level, where it is a crucial element of maturity, but on a societal level, where it is equally vital. The people who started the cathedrals didn't live to finish them. The society as a whole had to be dedicated to the completion of those projects. We owe Western civilization as we know it today to that kind of thinking: the ability to have a constancy of purpose across years and decades.

It is my contention that the products of our space program are today's cathedrals. The space program satisfies the desire to compete, but in a safe and productive manner, rather than in a harmful one. It speaks abundantly to our sense of human curiosity, of wonder and awe at the unknown. Who can watch people assembling the greatest engineering project in the history of mankind-the International Space Station-and not wonder at the ability of people to conceive and to execute the project? And it also addresses our need for leaving something for future generations.

Of course the space program also addresses the acceptable reasons, and in the end this is imperative. Societies will not succeed in the long run if they place their resources and their efforts in enterprises that, for whatever reason, don't provide concrete value. But I believe that projects done for the real reasons that motivate humans also serve the acceptable reasons. In that sense, the value of space exploration really is in its spinoffs, as many have argued. But it's not in spinoffs like Teflon and Tang and Velcro, as the public is so often told-and which in fact did not come from the space program. And it's not in spinoffs in the form of better heart monitors or cheaper prices for liquid oxygen for hospitals, although the space program's huge demand for liquid oxygen spurred fundamental improvements in the production and handling of this volatile substance. The real spinoffs are, just as they were for cathedral builders, more fundamental.

Anyone who wants to build spacecraft, who wants to be a subcontractor, or who even wants to supply bolts and screws to the space industry must work to a higher level of precision than human beings had to do before the space industry came along. And that standard has influenced our entire industrial base, and therefore our economy.

As for national security, what is the value to the United States of being involved in enterprises which lift up human hearts everywhere? What is the value to the United States of being a leader in such efforts, in projects in which every technologically capable nation wants to take part? The greatest strategy for national security, more effective than having better guns and bombs than everyone else, is being a nation that does the kinds of things that make others want to do them with us.

What do you have to do, how do you have to behave, to do space projects? You have to value hard work. You have to live by excellence, or die from the lack of it. You have to understand and practice both leadership and followership. You have to build partnerships; leaders need partners and allies, as well as followers.

You have to accept the challenge of the unknown, knowing that you might fail, and to do so not without fear but with mastery of fear and a determination to go anyway. You have to defer gratification because we work on things that not all of us will live to see-and we know it.

We now believe that 95 percent of the universe consists of dark energy or dark matter, terms for things that we as yet know nothing about. Is it even conceivable that one day we won't learn to harness them? As cavemen learned to harness fire, as people two centuries ago learned to harness electricity, we will learn to harness these new things. It was just a few years ago that we confirmed the existence of dark matter, and we would not have done so without the space program. What is the value of knowledge like that? I cannot begin to guess. A thousand years from now there will be human beings who don't have to guess; they will know, and they will know we gave this to them.

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Ambition, curiosity, and a reason the NASA Administrator admits has nothing to do with economic benefit.

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Washington Post: Living Under Sea: Japanese Visionaries Unveil Underwater City Plan

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Washington Post: Living Under Sea: Japanese Visionaries Unveil Underwater City Plan

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Living under sea: Japanese visionaries unveil underwater city plan

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Illustration of the whole complex, from the sphere just beneath water’s surface to the research station beneath the seabed. ( Shimizu ...

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YouTube: Help Save our Oceans! A Groundbreaking Undersea Expedition with Fabien Cousteau

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YouTube: Help Save our Oceans! A Groundbreaking Undersea Expedition with Fabien Cousteau

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YouTube: Nat Geo Kids: Ocean Explorer: Katy Croff Bell

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YouTube: Nat Geo Kids: Ocean Explorer: Katy Croff Bell

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YouTube: Space Trash: The Next Big Pickle

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YouTube: Space Trash: The Next Big Pickle