The conquest of the oceans: Unterseetechnologie (UST)
"From birth, man carries that weight of gravity on his shoulders.
He is bolted to Earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is
free, buoyed by water he can fly in any direction –up, down, sideways.
Underwater, man becomes an archangel."
Admiral Jacques-Yves Cousteau.
Fantastic images of life underwater have captured the imaginations of
millions since the days when the French writer Jules Verne introduced the world
to Captain Nemo in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," but in the first
decades of the XXI century the development of a series of technologies known
collectively as UST (Unterseetechnologie: submarine technology), allowed
Mankind to dedicate all efforts to the conquest of the inner space -with all
its vast possibilities- to the point of practically abandon the explorations of
outer space.
The first sea habitats were developed in Japan by the Imperial Navy,
considering that such technology would be crucial to the Empire's defence
systems: IJA personnel lived beneath the surface for periods of 15 and 30 days,
and unlike sailors aboard submarines, who lived for months under water, they
freely went in and out of their underwater vehicles to dive and do underwater experiments.
Berührungstein
But it were the efforts of Karl Heinlein, a nuclear submarine scientist
for the Hochseeflotte, who from his position as chief of the Tiefuntertauchensystems
Projekt (Deep Submergence Systems Project) in the 2010s, utilized the
latest discoveries in highly damped composite materials, specially varieties of
a polymer-composite material known as Berührungstein (BS), to construct
advanced submarine structures. The process involved a cure-in-place,
thermoplastic matrix manufacturing method, that did not require processing with
an oven or autoclave. The first facilities built with BS included deep water
basins, water tunnels, manoeuvring and seakeeping basins, and deep ocean
pressure tanks.
Even when the Hochseeflotte did not pay enough attention to Heinlein’s
work (by then it was more interested in R&D of electrochemical power
sources and magnetostrictive materials); the apparition of the carbon nanofibers in Deon International’s
laboratories added new impetus to the nascent UST. The combination of new
varieties of BS and carbon nanotubes created a new generation of composite
material, allowing the construction of high-pressure resistant materials with
the strength in tension similar to diamond, and a mere fraction of the
thickness of previous materials.
The original project, a new aquarium for the city of
A galleria with glazed roof is the main entrance for the entire complex,
bustles till late at night with barbecue corners, a floating theatre, movable
shops, a parking lot shared with a multipurpose event space, restaurants,
museum shop, multipurpose hall, an IMAX theatre, a community centre, halls and
seminar rooms, and an interactive Prologue occupying the edge of the aquarium
(with an exhibition about the beginning of the universe and the relation
between the earth and the life).
The main space within the aquarium, called Ocean Atrium, is the most
significant feature of the Shinonahama complex, with its capability to provide
an ample view of the border fauna of the
The next step in the conquest of the oceans was the apparition of the
“underwater cities” as they were commonly known. These “underwater cities” in
reality were mere extensions of the coastal cities of the previous century, which
continued to grow well into the XXI century due to several socio-economical
reasons. With the UST already proven by the ubiquitous Shinonahama-like
structures, first airports, then resort hotels, later artificial islands,
offshore living space, marine aquaculture, hydroponic farming and floating
automation ships appeared: the cities advanced towards the sea along the continental
shelf.
Generally the new sections of the cities were prefabricated segments
towed to the construction site and anchored to the ocean floor. These
structures easily accommodate millions of people and relieve the over
population of land based cities. The most dramatic example of this was Hong
Kong: one of the most heavily populated cities of the Chaodai Federation, by
2030 it had triplicate its original size, and five years later, its total area
was ten times its original size, including the portion of the cities under the
sea level.
The romantic ideas about “undersea cities” so popular in the previous century
never materialized. The reason? The oceans of the Earth are much more inhospitable
to humans than outer space: the physical pressures on the human body, the
corrosiveness of the environment, and the high costs of permanent habitats
beneath the surface, conspired to limit the dream to aquatic extensions of the
coastal cities, and in the more wealthy countries, floating platforms for life,
business and research.
For that reasons, most of the underwater exploration was executed, not
with human habitats at the greatest depths of the oceans, but with robots. The
first robot was simple mechanism able to photograph and recollect biological
and mineral samples, but the ultimate evolution of the UST appeared when the conjunction
between the composite materials technology and the apparition of the first
(non-sentient) artificial intelligences (AI) made possible the construction of
submarine robots able of travelling to the oceanic floor and extract minerals
and organically samples, marine archaeology became as common as archaeology on
land, etc. Even when it was technically feasiible not only to extract the
nodules but also to process them in the oceanic floor, the cost of such
technology was prohibitive.
Aquaculture: by the early 2030s the farming of
freshwater and marine species, known as aquaculture, had become one of the
world's fifth largest primary industries, and the introduction of the latest
UST allowed many nations to reduce the degree of over-exploitation of several commercial
species: about 500 species of fish, 100 species of crustacean, 130 species of
molluscs and a few echinoderm species became exploited in aquaculture farms,
specially in the coastal nations. The utilization of UST for the development of
new farms in a sustainable fashion helped to reduce, and in many cases
eliminate, the declines of commercial species due to over fishing, because
aquaculture did not face the same problems as wild fisheries in terms of
natural limits to the volume of production, and its main growth limit is the
availability of suitable sites for aquaculture operations. This applies to both
intensive pond aquaculture on land, and cage aquaculture in natural waterways.
Aquaculture also allowed the production of juveniles of over exploited species,
to be used for restocking, and reduced (or eliminated) pressures on wild stock.
Marine biotechnology: one of the
industries derivated from aquaculture is the marine biotechnology, which uses
biological material from the sea to produce goods and services. It usually
involves the extraction -from aquatic plants and animals- of chemicals
(biologically-active compounds or pharmaceuticals), the cloning of proteins of
marine origin, the analysis of marine toxins and anti-venoms, the development
of industrial adhesives, the development of diagnostic probes for marine
pathogens, and the engineering of marine organisms to enhance their biological
characteristics. However, one of the main problems which have arisen from
marine biotechnology is the access and ownership of intellectual property
rights for genetic material. Is well known the dispute between Japan and the
Macronesian Alliance for the genetic code of the algae Dunaliella salina
(world’s main source of natural beta-carotene); and the “corporate war” between
SBT (a division of the U.S. defence contractor General Dynamics) and Deon
International for the patents of several new species of prawns, abalone, and
oysters specifically designed to digest contaminants and toxins in the water.
Mining: until the development of the UST
and AI, seabed mining was a largely undeveloped industry with large potential:
once the technical problems were overcome, such as high water pressure and
recovery of the ores, sea mining had become the second major global industry,
after computer software. Some low value materials such as gravels and limestone
have been dredged, and extraction of gravel and sand occurs close to urban
areas with few or no land based resources of this type. But the real bonanza of
undersea mining lies in the extraction of minerals such as metals and -to a
lesser extent- gemstones.
The polymetallic nodules on the ocean floor are still considered to be
the main modern source of much needed metals as world demand increases and the
availability of land sources diminishes. The potato-shaped, largely porous
nodules, are found in abundance carpeting the sea floor of the oceans. These
nodules are of much economic importance because, besides manganese and iron,
they contain nickel, copper, cobalt, lead, molybdenum, cadmium, vanadium,
titanium, and traces of other rare metals, considered to be of strategic
importance. The nodules are found mostly at depths ranging from 3500m to 6000m.
Besides the polymetallic nodules and other sources of valuable minerals,
recent advances in drilling technology have enabled the small offshore oil and
natural gas industry to move into deeper and deeper waters to explore for,
develop and produce the vast biochemical and petrochemical reserves found on
the outer continental shelf OCS at water depths exceeding 300 meters. Mining of
seafloor minerals has altered the mineral ores markets: today the Macronesian
Alliance, the
Alternative energy: since the
development of the first OTEC generation facilities in the Japanese prefecture of Nanyo Gunto, the
technological feasibility and pricing became more favourable, while the
availability and desirability of other energy sources diminished. Besides OTEC,
tidal energy schemes have been exploited since the 2020s.
