Could underwater habitats being developed right now be adapted for future moon colonies?

Question

Underwater habitats have a few things in common with space habitats i guess, but i wonder how much the common traits out weight the uncommon traits when it comes to being adapted for use in space.

Answer 1

A friend of mine once stayed at the Jule's Verne underwater hotel and he said that it felt like he was in a luxury decompression chamber, maybe the newer underwater habitats are testing environmental systems that could be used on the international space station or even on the shuttle.

Answer 2

Good question. I believe that living for extended periods at the pressures necessary to provide a positive outward load on the underwater structure does bad things to our bodies. It also uses a whole lot of compressed gas (not air) that has to be the correct mixture. Therefore, I think that the underwater environment would have to be designed to be near atmospheric pressure, like a submarine. This would drive several differences that I can think of:

1. The structural design of an underwater pressure vessel that is subject to huge external hydrostatic pressures that are striving to collapse and buckle the structure is much more challenging than the design of a space habitat, where the structure is being forced outward and stiffened by a mere 14 psi.

2. Structures in space have to be designed with minimum weight. This generally means using minimum thicknesses of a lot of specialized materials like titanium, composites, etc. in order to avoid wasting fuel to get them up there. Underwater structures can be heavy steel, since they can be carried out on a container ship and dropped overboard.

3. Temperature control is a significant challenge in space, where all areas in the sun get really hot and all areas in the shade get really cold. Big problem. Underwater, the temperature is cool, but it's also uniform.

4. Water provides natural protection against high energy radiation, particles and micrometeorites that must be considered in a space habitat.

Answer 3

Absolutely. In fact, researchers in this area have been working closely with space scientists and NASA since the 1970s for that exact reason--I think NASA even funds some of th eresearch.

Answer 4

This is training for the moon,astronauts train in the water to simulate weightlessness......

Answer 5

Yes they could be doing that for just those purposes.