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Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor
Sealab America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor Author:Ben Hellwarth The underwater Right Stuff : the story of how the U.S. Navy program tried to develop the marine equivalent of the space station?and why the Navy pulled the plug. While NASA was trying to put a man on the moon, the U.S. Navy was trying to develop an underwater version of the space station, a habitat from which divers could work for extended perio... more »ds to aid in undersea exploration and the recovery of submarines and aircraft. The U.S. Navy Sealab program has never received the attention it deserved, in part because it operated in the shadow of the space race. Yet, the Sealab program inspired explorers like Jacques Cousteau and led a revolution in deep-sea diving that broke age-old depth barriers and proved the potential for extended work deep underwater. Today, divers on commercial oil rigs as well as Navy divers who engage in classified missions use techniques and equipment pioneered in Sealab. Ben Hellwarth has interviewed surviving members of the three Sealab experiments in addition to conducting archival research to tell this first comprehensive story about the Sealab program and the key people behind it, from its inception to its demise.« less