Florida university to take over operations of undersea lab Aquarius, Star News
“A lack of federal support and local funding has forced the University of North Carolina Wilmington to stop operations at Aquarius, the world’s only permanent undersea laboratory – a loss that will take away a key component of the school’s marine science program, a school official said. “Aquarius is unique. It’s the only asset like this in the world,” Aquarius director Tom Potts said of the facility in the Florida Keys. “UNCW does lose a little of what makes it unique by losing this program.” But the program is not completely lost. It will soon be operated by Miami-based Florida International University.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

9 replies on “No More NEEMO?”

  1. While NEEMO has certainly provided a certain element of adventure to NASA human space flight operations research and training, it’s never been completely clear to me what it provides NASA with that could not have been provided far more economically by, say, a trailer sitting next to a neutral buoyancy tank. To the extent that neutral buoyancy isn’t an issue, many such human isolation tests have already been run. While the NEEMO logs are fun to peruse, I’ve never been that impressed with the publication output of NEEMO in peer-reviewed professional science and engineering journals. I can imagine that NEEMO might offer considerable value to marine science, but that’s not what NASA does. While UNCW had to reach out to NASA for funding support because North Carolina legislators were never convinced why they should be supporting Florida marine science, FIU will have a much easier time getting state funds.

    1. Being in a potentially hazardous environment – with complicated operational issues – causes you to do things – consciously and subconsciously in a way that you would not be inclined do in a simple tank in the building next to your office. You can’t just float out the hatch and return to the surface. I speak from experience having participated in 3 expeditions to Devon Island (two were for a month) and a month at Everest Base Camp. “Being there” is part of the point to the planetary analogs.

      1. Thanks. That’s a valid perspective I hadn’t heard before. But if hazards and complicated operational issues are the magic ingredients here, then I find it surprising that these couldn’t have been more economically attached to a trailer and a neutral buoyancy tank than by putting the trailer sixty feet under salt water in the open ocean. I wonder how much a neutral buoyancy tank at Devon Island would have cost, or maybe at Chicago South Side. 

        Also, let me correct myself. NEEMO doesn’t offer anything at all to marine science. NEEMO is a NASA program. The hab, Aquarius, is what does potentially offer a lot to marine science.

        1. You are missing the point.  Totally.  It is obvious that you have never been on an expedition or tried to do complex science and engineering in a hazardous environment. It is actually being in an environment that can harm or kill you more than is the case back home that drives your actions and is more representative of what a space mission is like than some simulator where you know the guys outside can pull you out fast if you make a mistake. It doesn’t really matter what you do in NEEMO – rather how you do it – and how you adapt to the ever present risks and complexities. No one from NASA has ever claimed that they are making advances in marine science in NEEMO.

          1. I don’t think I’m missing the point. If the point was your point, I thought it was a very good one. I was just wondering why the complexity and hazards of this operation were qualities that were necessarily unique to this undersea environment. You didn’t address that question.

            Also, I never said that NEEMO claimed they were making advances in
            marine science. I was correcting myself in suggesting that the hab
            Aquarius might well do so.

            Please don’t fling assertions about expeditions I’ve never been on, or claim that I’ve never done complex science and engineering in hazardous environments. Or the case “back home” that drives my actions. “Back home”? Those comments are uncalled for. We don’t need them. This is your blog, and you can say what you want, but if you have an position to take, or an argument to make, then I suggest you just do so.

          3. The point of being deep underwater is that you become “compressed”.

            When you’re Scuba diving, gasses get compressed into your blood and tissues, and these gasses must be released slowly  to avoid getting decompression illness (the bends).
            Because the Aquarius crew lives at increased pressure during the expedition, they can get almost unlimited dive time without risking injury from decompression.
            However, they also get extremely “loaded” with compressed gas, and it takes the better part of a day to de-compress them at the end of the expedition.  
            Thus, they cannot quickly come up the surface, even for an emergency, which necessitates handling the situation with much more caution. This makes a good analog for spaceflight.
            I believe Keith’s point is there is no replacement for being in an isolated, harsh environment where an unequipped person cannot survive, and where you cannot quickly leave, even in an extreme emergency.  
            There’s a whole new level when calling “time out” is absolutely not an option, and you just can’t simulate that.

          4. Was anyone actually running a simulation of any kind of activity during the NEEMO exercises? I never heard of any simulated experiments being performed, or that the NASA people were responsible for maintaining the habitat or its systems. I suspect there would have been liability issues if they had been responsible for this. Its one thing if you are diving to the underwater habitat and then hanging around there – maybe performing bed rest studies, its another if it is a simulated spaceflight environment with simulated space activities.  Is complex science and engineering being done? 
            How hazardous an environment is this? There are underwater hotels available. Nightly rates are $1000-2000. Typical depth if 50-75 feet. In anyone of them, if the glass breaks you’ll probably drown. 

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