Somebody watched Octonauts as a kid...

More seriously, this seems like an elaborate troll of space settlement enthusiasts. It's far simpler and less demanding than long-term settlement in space...and you still look at it and go "WTF would anyone want to do that? Wouldn't it just be easier to send robots down"?

Haha. People just have different drives. I'm definitely a space enthusiast, but also see this as an awesome idea.

In the grand scheme of things I think humans will colonize all environments, and starting to master water would open up immense amounts of land, so to speak.

Submerged habitats are very unlikely to be a thing. Though humans have lived ON water for a long time in large numbers. There are many people living in boats and barges, veritable citys in south asia, and other areas. Submerged structures will suffer from hugely expensive engineering and construction costs, and you dont have to go very deep at all, before the pressure differential is greater than in space. Salt, corrosion, maintenance, wildly complicated and expensive.Air handling will be very loud, and prone to failures, water and waste, will also be extra complicated, leaks will be profoundly unpleasant.If we are talking about high end resort or theme hotels, then , whatever. On the other hand Mega floating and semi submerged structures can be built from any and all materials, and the engineering is strait forward. Still there is a vast amount of barren and waste land ,that can be utilised at much less effort, so none of it makes sense, except situationaly.... Singapor, and such.

For me, asteroid belt settlement seems the most useful/reasonable. The motivation is simply that there is so much space for expansion. Space colonization is really just about humans keeping access to exponential population growth. Antarctic and deep sea settlement don't make sense because they offer relatively limited growth potential in comparison. They do make sense as practice/training for the next few thousand years of the average human condition.

The argument of "just go send a robot", seems antithetical to life. The point of underwater settlements, looks to be an accomplishment for mankind, stretching the boundaries of what's possible. It's not that robots can't be used, but maybe more like how far can humans go.

Or that one Futurama episode, "I, roommate"

https://theinfosphere.org/I,_Roommate

"Sure, it ain't one of them la-de-da above-ground places,

but if you like dank... forget about it."

Or may be played Bioshock or Aquanox.

Would you kindly come settle in Rapture?

There's been a spate of underwater-living articles lately, and there's no doubt the ocean is an area ripe for research.

But to be clear, these facilities require surface support - they are not self-sustaining. Which is perfectly fine (the ISS is not self sustainable either.)

So this isn't "humanity moving into the sea", it's "humanity learning more about the sea". Which is certainly a worthwhile goal.

At the very least they need somewhere for bike storage. And none of us are self sustaining. Humanity needs the Haber-Bosch process and a thousand other things to sustain ourselves at the present moment.

But what colour the bike shed?

> But what colour the bike shed?

You can choose between 2 colors: light and dark. See answers.microsoft.com for details. /s

Good points made. When looking at this, it occurred to me that It could have another goal, which is surviving a nuclear war or some other land based catastrophe. Definitely they are no where near to that being possible at the moment, but give it another 20 years, maybe this will be among someone's or an organization's calculations.

We are so far away from living independently underwater that I'd say we're hundreds of years away, if it's possible at all.

Energy production. Food, water, air. Resources. Mining. Industry. The harsh environment (salt water, fouling et al.) Even "gravity" (as in, if you drop something underwater, some of it goes up ...)

> But to be clear, these facilities require surface support - they are not self-sustaining. Which is perfectly fine (the ISS is not self sustainable either.)

Who made any claims of self-sustaining? And in any case, the water cycle means land and sea are intertwined—life on land is not self-sustaining as much as life at sea is not.

>> Who made any claims of self-sustaining?

No one in the article. But it has come up in the comments of previous articles (and I see in this thread as well.)

Life on land is self sustaining. Not in the "we don't need oceans" sense, but in the "we don't need people living in the oceans" sense. Conversely to live in the ocean we (currently) must have people living on land.

land is a pretty broad stroke though, and there are obviously specific areas of land that aren't self-sustaining, so it depends on how you want to slice it. So if these end up being only slightly more self-sustaining as, say McMurdo base in Antarctica, it doesn't seem like a showstopper for habitation.

Las Vegas, for that matter, cannot possibly exist in the environment where it was built without constant support from habitable places.

Or it might be just another variant of the various bunker building efforts to ride out the coming upheavals.

>anonymous private investor, has begun work to create a ‘permanent human settlement’ under the sea

This sound so preposterous as work to create ‘permanent human settlement’ in Mars.

But if given a choice which one to support with my money with zero probability of any returns, I will much rather supporting sea settlement than Mars.

Do you have so little faith in humans' capacity to make Earth uninhabitable? There's no value to you in putting a few eggs in another basket?

How would humans make Earth less habitable than Mars?

Exactly. Maybe we'll muck up the climate here a bit and have to spend some resources to get it back on track, but Earth will never be less hospitable than Mars.

And we are probably hundreds of years away from being able to have a self-sufficient colony on Mars.

The only reason to attempt to settle Mars is because it represents the fattest international government contract that has ever existed - and I suspect that has always been the primary motivation for the Mars hucksters.

If these are going to be separate jurisdictions it's probably not as naive as it sounds.

Makes me think about all these underwater horror games: Soma, bioshock, subnautica...

So does this mean we get Sealab 2021 in real life soon?

If you’re looking for me, you better check under the sea…

Maybe it’s James Cameron?

That’s covered in the article. There’s even a photo.

Bioshock: Reality confirmed!

My money is on Gabe Newall