Research for Oceania: The Underwater City—Part 2

*In my last blog post, I highlighted some of my research for Oceania: The Underwater City. It covered bathymetry, underwater submersibles and structures, ROVs, and the deep sea. If you missed it, you can read it here.

As I stated in my last post, NASA gave me some of the best information needed to make my novel as realistic as possible. In addition to the research I obtained from NASA’s website, I also looked into hydraulics, future predictions of global climate change, sea ice melt, how solar panels work, and even firsthand accounts of expeditions to the ocean floor. In this second research installment, I’ll be covering a bit of each, starting with how waste and water are treated.

Waste and Water Treatment

The best information I read about how to re-use water, air, and treat waste was from my research on the ISS. Any liquid added to the air from breathing, perspiration, or anything else is condensed and returned to the general water supply. And yes, it does include urine. On the ISS, urine, water from oral hygiene, hand washing, and humidity in the air are all used. Due to the fact that distilling seawater takes a lot of energy and doing so for millions of people could become a problem, I treated Oceania as a space station in the way that water should be recycled and never taken for granted. Just like on the ISS, the atmosphere of Oceania has to be regulated at a certain pressure, temperature, and humidity.

As far as waste treatment goes, the 2004 article I read on the NASA site I found stated that all the human waste was returned to Earth. Well, for Oceania that wouldn’t be possible and I had already come up with a bacteria that could not only eat the waste, but also give off energy in the process. However, I was excited to find out from the NASA article that a real such bacterium does exist, which I explained all about in my blog post on the 20^th of January. If you haven’t read it yet, you can read it here.

If you’re interested in reading more about waste and water treatment on the ISS, check out these links:

Water: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast02nov_1/

ISS Plumbing: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast03apr_2/

Waste: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/18may_wastenot/

Hydraulics

Not knowing much about hydraulics, but knowing that the city would have need of them, I looked into hydraulic systems. I found out that water is rarely used as hydraulic fluid because of corrosion and turbulence. Petroleum oil is used to power today’s hydraulic systems, which would not be possible for a green city in a world post-oil. Water would be a renewable source for the city and is more energy efficient than oil, so I wanted it to be used. I discovered an article about a lawn mower that students at Purdue University made. In order to work, the systems would have to be perfectly engineered for water. Although it seems unlikely to happen in the near future, I went with it.

If you’re interested in reading about the lawn mower or about hydraulics, you can check out the following two links:

Hydraulics: http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipment/hydraulic1.htm

Lawn mower: http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/010919.Krutz.mower.html

Sea Ice Melting and the Above World in 2276

After determining how the city of Oceania would work and run, I wanted to get a feel for the world that Allie would be coming from. I read various articles on the predictions of the effects of climate change in the next 200 plus years. I took anything and everything into account to build the world of the Land Dwellers. Of course, not every prediction was the same, so I paid attention to where they overlapped and even did some math to find the average change in temperature or sea level rises.

As for the new level of the oceans, I’d learned about the potential catastrophic rise in sea levels through a class I’d taken on Environmental Science and by reading National Geographic. I used their handy map in their September 2013 issue to find out where Allie could be from that would be near the ocean. For San Francisco, I found a map that showed what San Francisco would look like if all the ice caps melted. In the end, I decided to exaggerate the projections of ice melt by the year 2276. It’s highly unlikely that the sea levels will rise 100 feet in the next 260 years, but who knows what the future will hold.

If you’d like to see the world map if all the ice melted from National Geographic, you can click here:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map

Firsthand Accounts

Since I’ve never been one of the lucky few to go in a submersible to the bottom of the ocean floor, I wanted to read someone’s firsthand account. I’d seen the documentary Deepsea Challenge, and even though it was helpful, it still wasn’t good enough for my novel’s purpose. Although, if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it. Anyway, I found some articles in National Geographic from two people who’d traveled to the ocean floor in the 1950s. The two men were Jacques Cousteau and Georges S. Houot. The only problem was that both didn’t go as deep as the city. However, between the Deepsea Challenge documentary and the firsthand accounts from the ‘50s, I got an idea of what Allie might be feeling as she’s alone surrounded by blackness in the bathypelagic zone.

If you’re interested in reading the articles from the 1950s, you’d have to get access to National Geographic’s digital archives or have The Complete National Geographic on your computer. The one with Jacques Cousteau is in the July 1954 issue, pages 66-79. There were two from Georges S. Houot that I read and they were in the same issue as the Jacques Cousteau one (pages 80-86) and in the May 1958 issue, pages 714-731.

Solar Panels and Additional Research

Another topic that I researched included how solar panels work. In the end, it wound up being a lot of information useless for my purposes, but now I know a lot about solar panels that I didn’t know before! The same goes for how materials are recycled. I looked into what could and couldn’t be recycled as well as what it takes to recycle materials. Most of it didn’t make it into the novel, but I’m more knowledgeable for it. At the least, they helped me to describe a few of the scenes with Dylan and Allie in the city.

In addition to all of the above, I even researched small things that I’m sure most of you never even considered such as the time of the attack on Fort Sumter and the phase of the moon in the sky that early morning, the exact pressure at both 10,500ft (the depth of the apex of Oceania’s dome) and 12,000ft (the base of the city). I used paintings of the signing of the Declaration of Independence to describe the scene and images of the real Declaration of Independence itself to describe how the title was written. There are more topics I researched, but it would take longer than it took you to read the book to describe them.

Conclusion

During my research, I considered the issues that currently impede ocean colonization and realistically tried to reason what could be invented by 2276. To make Oceania as believable as possible, I came up with inventions to fill the holes in our current knowledge. Some of them may exist someday, others may not. In the end, I came up with several of my own inventions to compensate for the gaps in technology. All in all, I spent weeks’ worth of research and I loved every moment of it. There are so many amazing things to discover and learn about in our world. So, if you have the time and the desire, look up some of the research links mentioned above. Every bit of it is fascinating (at least to me anyway).

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you have any comments, you can leave them here on my blog or email me directly at elizataye@gmail.com.

Research for Oceania The Underwater City—Part 1

*In my last post, I indicated that I’d be sharing some of my research with you. So, I’m going to condense some of my weeks of research into small bites for you. When writing this blog post, I realized it was going to be a lot longer than my other ones so this one will be split in half and released over two posts instead of one. So don’t worry, this isn’t everything.

Originally, when I concocted the story for Oceania: The Underwater City, I thought it would be an easy novel to write. It was going to be a book about the ocean, something I love and know a good deal about. Easy enough, right? No! I wound up spending a lot of time researching anything and everything that I could about ocean living. What I did know only helped me find more topics on which to research. After a while, I got so engrossed in the research that I found myself with less time actually writing the novel. Eventually, I decided to forget researching for a while, write the entire book and then finish my research and add in what was necessary. Big mistake. Not only did I later wind up spending weeks researching everything I needed to find out, but I wound up re-writing over half of the book. I don’t regret it, though; the novel is much better overall for it.

Conditions in the Deep Sea and Bathymetry

Before my research, I already knew that the two biggest issues that the deep sea posed for the city were the crushing pressure and the lack of oxygen at depth. Instead of focusing on the issues of the deep sea, I spent more time researching the bathymetry—or the ocean floor—off the coast of California’s continental shelf.

In the novel, I wanted Allie to be the first “Land Dweller” to discover Oceania since its creation, which meant that it needed to be deep enough to evade notice for over a hundred years. After looking at a map of the bathymetry off the coast of California, I realized that there were many locations deeper than 3,000 to 4,000m (about 9,843 to 13,123ft). Afterward, I changed my original idea of having Oceania at a depth of 7,000ft to 12,000ft, which brought up another complication—the depth of the city. The pressure change between the two depths is from 212.46 to 363.85atm (3,122.26 to 5,347.08psi), which lead me to my next research task of determining what could house the city.

Underwater Submersibles and the Material Used for the City’s Dome

Initially, I wanted to use a real material that could have constructed the dome of Oceania. When searching for materials that the outer dome of the city could be constructed of that would be durable enough to resist over 5,000psi worth of pressure, I examined underwater submersibles like Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). The first ROV I looked at was one of the oldest still in use today—Alvin. It’s been in use since 1964 and can dive to a depth of 4,500m (14,764 ft). Its outer hull is made up of titanium, which allows it to stay at depth for 10 hours. The cost per day to use Alvin is $30,000 USD!

If you want to read more about the Alvin ROV, you can click on the link below:

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/subs/alvin/alvin.html

Mir I and Mir II were other deep sea submersibles that I researched. They have the ability to take three people down to a maximum depth of 6,096m (20,000ft). They each weigh 18.6 tons and have a hull that’s 5cm (2in) thick made up of a combination of nickel and steel. The other two submersibles I researched were the Hercules and Deep Discover (aka D2). Like Alvin, the Hercules is made up of titanium, but it can only dive to 4,000m (13,123ft), which is still deeper than the city of Oceania. However, all of these ROVs had one thing in common—they can’t stay under the water forever. None of their hull materials were strong enough to withstand the pressure that Oceania’s dome would need. After researching for a while longer, I realized that nothing even remotely real exists as of this time (unless there’s a secret project that hasn’t been released to the public yet). So, I left it up to the scientists and engineers of the future to figure out.

If you want to read more about Alvin, Mir I and II, D2, or Hercules, you can click the links below.

Alvin: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/subs/alvin/alvin.html

Mir I and II: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/subs/mir/mir.html

Deep Discover (D2): http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/subs/deep-discoverer/deep-discoverer.html

Hercules: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/subs/hercules/hercules.html

Underwater Submersibles

Why didn’t I use submarines as a source of information? Well, I did. They were very helpful for explaining how air and water generation could work underwater and what sort of materials can withstand ocean pressure for an extended amount of time. The problem with submarines was that they don’t dive far enough for the harsh effects of the deep sea to be comparative to Oceania. Another issue was that many of our US submarines use nuclear power to run. I wanted Oceania to be an entirely green city and radioactive waste would be a nightmare for it. Regardless, the research I gained from submarines was useful.

In fact, the most useful piece of information from my research on submarines was how to use seawater to obtain both air and water. Submarines obtain oxygen via oxygen generators and/or the electrolysis of water. Of course, when human beings breathe, we exhale CO₂ in addition to humid air. Thus, CO₂ scrubbers would be needed. Like in a submarine, a mixture of sodium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide (aka soda lime) is used in Oceania to “scrub” the air free of carbon dioxide. Dehumidifiers are also used in submarines to get rid of excess water in the air. The result is a basin of water that can be used for other things. Submarines also helped me understand how seawater can be used to obtain freshwater water by using a distillation apparatus, which heats the seawater to vapor (thus removing the salts) and then cooling it. The end result is salt-free clean freshwater. This was useful in finding alternative ways of gaining water in Oceania in addition to recycling water already within the city.

For more information on how submarines work, you can check out:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/engines-equipment/submarine2.htm

Underwater Structures

During my weeks of research, I looked up everything I could. The hardest thing to find information on turned out to be living underneath the sea itself. There is one full-time underwater habitation called Aquarius, which is a laboratory in Florida owned by Florida International University. Unfortunately, it’s only at a depth of 18.2m (60ft), which is 0.5% of the depth that Oceania sits at. Still, it gave me a lot of useful information on the problems with living underwater.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can see for yourself at http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/technology/diving/aquarius/aquarius.html

Researching Aquarius was a great starting point because it helped me think of additional research topics. The more I dug for information on substances that could be used to build Oceania and support it, the more I realized there just wasn’t enough information out there on it. So, what did I do? I looked into the ISS (International Space Station). It was through NASA’s research that I found the most informative material on living in extreme conditions.

But space and the ocean are two completely different environments, you say. True, but they present many of the same problems. In both environments, humans can die without proper planning and preparation. Oxygen is a crucial necessity and presents a problem in both locations. Pressure is different than it is at sea level. Whereas there is no gravity in space, in the ocean, the pressure at 12,000ft is immense. Life support systems must be entirely self-sufficient—outside help is too far away. Everything must have a use and waste must be minimal. I could go on and on, but there are many similarities. From NASA, I learned how the ISS runs, how to recycle materials, how to keep the air and water recycled from being contaminated, and what kinds of inventions Oceania would need to function. I will be highlighting that research in the next section. So, stay tuned for the next blog post on the 17^th of February.

In the next installment of my research sharing blog posts, I’ll be going over the topics of waste, air, and water treatment, firsthand accounts of deep sea exploration and more.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post and if you have any comments, you can leave them here on my blog or email me directly at elizataye@gmail.com.