DoubleD wrote:

MiracleSleeper wrote:

I will remember this every time I face my own problems: Jim Fucking Cameron is diving where no man has gone before, fuck my problems, that's nothing!

When you have billions of dollars, it really isn't a big deal at all. As I said, Cameron is one of my favorite directors, but I'm not going to pretend he's a saint.

SilverHeart wrote:Question is though, once he gets down there...what is he going to film? There's not gonna be any natural light that deep, and at that pressure and depth, odds are there won't be any visible life down there.

Normally all would be pitch-black at the bottom, but the sub will illuminate the ocean with an eight-foot (two-meter) panel of LED lights. Cameron will likely be able to see for about 100 feet (30 meters), but clouds of sediment could obscure his view. His eyes will go from his virtual viewport, which gathers wide-field video of the ocean depths, to smaller screens, which display what other cameras are seeing and give him sonar and other data. On his command, a hydraulic manipulator arm will emerge from the bottom of the sub and unfold. The pilot can control the arm with a joystick as its metal claw plucks rocks and/or suctions up small animals from the seafloor and deposits them in a box of samples for the scientists eagerly waiting at the surface on the Mermaid Sapphire.

“I’ve always dreamed of diving to the deepest place in the oceans. For me it went from a boyhood fantasy to a real quest, like climbing Everest, as I learned more about deep-ocean exploration and became an explorer myself in real life. This quest was not driven by the need to set records, but by the same force that drives all science and exploration … curiosity. So little is known about these deep places that I knew I would see things no human has ever seen. There is currently no submersible on Earth capable of diving to the ‘full ocean depth’ of 36,000 feet. The only way to make my dream a reality was to build a new vehicle unlike any in current existence. Our success during seven prior expeditions building and operating our own deep-ocean vehicles, cameras, and lighting systems gave me confidence that such a vehicle could be built, and not just with the vast resources of government programs, but also with a small entrepreneurial team. It took more than seven years to design and build the vehicle, and it is still a work in progress. Every dive teaches us more, and we are continuing to improve the sub and its systems daily, as we move through our sea trials.” —James Cameron