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Of course, the cost of travel is equally astonishing. Aside from personal safety, the cost is only affordable for the richest people-you need to pay $ 750,000 for this trip to get one of them. Currently the expedition only has 3 seats open, and registration is on a first come, first served basis.

Picture from: CNN

Expeditions are officially launched in May this year.It will be half a year to go to the sea, and diving to the Mariana Trench is one of the scheduled projects. At first, the three participants will take the scientific pressure ship “Pressure Drop” as other “technical experts” and other scientists and scientists to the waters of the western North Pacific. The ship will carry a special manned submersible.

After the team is trimmed, the expedition will transfer to the submersible again and dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench at a depth of 10925 meters, which is currently the deepest ocean known to mankind.

Picture from: Enkey Magazine

According to the introduction, it takes 14 hours to complete a challenger’s abyss. The first 4 hours are dives, and the next 3-4 hours are used to explore the surrounding environment, to photograph the ecology of the bottom of the trench, and to retrieve rocks and biological samples with a robotic arm, and finally take another 4 hours to complete the ascent procedure.

This dive exploration will be carried out three times, and during the rest time without diving, “mission experts” can watch movies, fitness on board, and a special bar to relax.

At present, fewer than 4 people have successfully reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the world. To this end, Rob McCallum, founder of EYOS Expeditionspan class = “text-remarks” label = “Remarks”> (Rob McCallum) also joked:

There are fewer humans visiting 10,000 meters below the water than people on the moon.

According to the record, the first challenge to the Mariana Trench was the scientist Jacques Picard (Jacques Piccard) , he and Donald Wall Even (Don Walsh) piloted a submarine in 1960, successfully dived to 10916 meters for the first time, and stayed for 20 minutes, but after half a century No human has ever visited this area.

By 2012, well-known film director James Cameron (James Cameron) dived to Mariana by himself in a solo submersible The trench became the third person to reach the bottom of the trench and also set a new record for deep diving.

As for the last one, American explorer Victor Vescovo (Victor Vescovo) , he completed in 2019 The deepest deep-sea dive (about 10928 meters) , which is 16 meters deeper than that in 1960, and he is also the only one in the world People who visited the Challenger Abyss.

Interestingly, this time the event of recruiting the rich to the deep sea was also awarded by Viscovo’s own company “Kaladan (Caladan) “. The company’s naming was inspired by a water planet in the science-fiction novel Dune, showing his obsession with the unknown world.

Picture from: Oceanographic Magazine

According to the BBC report, Viskovo is also famous in the adventure circle: he was a climbing enthusiast first, he has climbed to the highest peaks of seven continents, and also to the North and South Pole, and has basically travelled the earth Most of the land is steep and steep.

Viscovo’s other identity is a former naval officer who retired as a financier. Now 53, he runs his own private equity firm and serves on the boards of 10 companies. Outdoor adventures are a part of Viskovo’s hobbies, and his job gives him a greater advantage in disposable funds.

In 2018, Veskovo became interested in deep-sea expeditions and set out the deepest exploration plans for the five oceans of the earth, all funded by Viskovo alone.

The deep dive used by Cameron can only accommodate one person. Picture from: NPR
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Originally, Viskovo thought that as long as he bought the submarine that James Cameron had taken before, he could accomplish this task, but later he found that the technology six years ago was too old, and additional upgrades required additional payment. money.

Finally, Veskovo decided to push back and design a deep-sea submersible that can accommodate two people, can see the outside through the window, and has a full mechanical arm.

The key is that it can be reused and can be continuously dived, rather than scrapped after one dive.

With this idea in mind, Viscovo approached Triton, a company specializing in submarines, for $ 37 million to build a diving chamber made of titanium. Wired reported at the time that experienced Triton designers took inspiration from the shape of rugby and bullet trains, forming the diving chamber into an oval shape, and the 9 cm thick titanium metal cabin allowed it to withstand 10,000 meters Great pressure under water depth.

According to scientists’ estimates, The pressure in the Mariana Trench is equivalent to pressing about 1.2 tons of something to a square centimeter .

In addition, there are two seats in the submersible, three viewing ports and a high-definition surround camera. People sitting inside can directly see the external situation.

Picture from: Wired

This submersible will also be used in this commercial expedition.In addition, Viskovo is not too concerned about safety. He said that as long as the participant’s weight reaches the standard (up to 99 kg) , they do n’t even Preparing for long-term physical training, you can directly ride the submersible after receiving relevant training.

But he also added, Whether you can spend dozens of hours in a sealed, narrow and dark spherical cockpit is the issue for participants to consider , after all, many people Feel panic and anxiety in this claustrophobic environment.

The first 300-meter dive is the most uncomfortable. You will feel like you are taking a high-speed descending elevator; after the 1,000-meter stage, the surroundings will start to darken, and Extremely quiet, you may lose your sense of direction, but you will not have the weightlessness of being in space.

Viskovo’s exploration of the deep sea has also been received by Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson (Richard Branson) < / span>. In fact, in 2011, Branson announced that he would design a single-person submarine with a carbon fiber material and an aircraft wing that would enter the deepest part of the five oceans of the earth.

This is what he sees as “the last major challenge for humanity.”

However, for technical reasons, Branson’s plan was terminated in 2014, and it has since inspired Viskovo’s desire to challenge. He believes that the difficulty of travelling to the depths of the five oceans lies between “a space trip to low-Earth orbit” and “landing on Mars”. Of course, he finally fulfilled his promise.

On the other hand, at present, humans have a very limited understanding of deep-sea regions, what kinds of organisms exist, and what they depend on to survive, and relevant experimental and research progress has been relatively small. Viskovo also hopes to use expeditions to test and verify the deepest areas possible, collect scientific samples, and expand human knowledge of the most extreme environments on the planet.

Humans have given names to almost every crater on the moon, but on the earth, in the depth of 6000 meters below the ocean, less than 20% of the area has obtained sufficiently accurate measurement data.

According to the data given by Outside, in 2018, NASA’s space exploration budget was US $ 4 billion; but in the same year, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received less than US $ 36.5 million in ocean exploration and research Fund.

It can be said that technical and financial constraints have indirectly limited the development of deep-sea research, and many experiments have only used some unmanned machines for operations.

But now, with the advancement of technology, more and more private companies are beginning to provide alternative adventure opportunities. When the wealthy adventurous people are used to ordinary places of interest, they are willing to spend millions or even It is the cost of ten million dollars. It is not difficult to even go to outer space to explore untouched natural scenery.

Maybe soon, the depths of the sea will be explored by us and eventually become part of the human world.

This article is from the WeChat public account: 爱 范 儿 (ID: ifanr) author: Moose