Journey to Inner Space

From under the churning Pacific last week came the sound of a human voice: "Greetings, earth people." Far from a Jules Verne fantasy, it was the breezy salutation of one of the men of Sealab II, the U.S.'s capsule in inner space 205 ft. down on the ocean floor, one-half mile off the coast near La Jolla, Calif. The ten aquanauts on board, led there two weeks ago by Astronaut-turned-Aquanaut Scott Carpenter, were winding up the first part of a 45-day adventure that aims to discover man's capacity to live comfortably and work effectively at the lower depths.

A project of the U.S. Navy and the University of California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Sealab is the nation's most ambitious effort thus far to explore and eventually exploit the ocean's great store of food, oil and mineral resources. In Sealab I, which sub merged last year off Bermuda, four Navymen proved that they could stay down at 192 ft. for nine days. Now three teams of ten aquanauts each plan to stay underwater for 15 days at a stretch, with Carpenter remaining a whole month.

Sealab II will enable the U.S. partly to catch up with, and in several respects to exceed, the undersea exploits of France's Jacques-Yves Cousteau (TIME cover, March 28, 1960). He has stationed teams of divers at 80 ft. for one week. This week, in his third major project, six French divers in a spherical capsule will live for 15 days at 330 ft. in the sea off the Riviera resort at Cap Ferrat.

Papa Topside. Built at a cost of $850,000, Sealab II is a 12-ft. by 57-ft. steel cylinder that houses a well-equipped scientific and medical labo ratory, a compact galley and a dining area with bunks lining the walls. Standing by on the surface is a support barge linked to Sealab by an umbilical cable for power and communications. From the barge, Navy Captain George F. Bond, 50, whom the aquanauts call "Papa Topside," bosses the exercise, chats with them by intercom and observes them by closed-circuit television.

Topside keeps a careful watch over the aquanauts' condition. Each morning the doctor on board Sealab takes blood, saliva and urine samples, checks the aquanauts' heartbeats, brain waves and blood pressures. The aquanauts are tested for sight and hearing, strength and coordination. At night each man sits down to an Electrowriter to file a confidential report to the surface on how he feels and, as Bond says, "what stinks about the program."

Topsy-Turvy Life. Supplies are lowered to Sealab in a small, pressurized capsule--an aquatic dumbwaiter that brings in such goodies as chocolate cake and fresh meat to supplement the aquanauts' stock of freeze-dried food. The men can watch commercial TV but prefer to peer out the portholes at the fish looking in at them. During the flight of Gemini 5, Aquanaut Carpenter even chatted directly with Astronaut Gordon Cooper. In case of emergency, the men could get power and fresh water from a tube linking them to shore, and they could surface in a 14-ft. capsule anchored outside the Sealab.

In the pressurized, artificial atmosphere of the capsule, life can be trying and topsy-turvy. Matches will not burn and water boils only at temperatures above 300DEG. Fried foods are forbidden because of the greasy fumes. Fresh eggs can be dangerous: the toxic hydrogen sulfide given off by their yokes cannot be "scrubbed" out of the air with Sealab's purifying gear. The atmosphere has to be rigidly controlled. Because ordinary concentrations of oxygen become toxic when breathed under pressure for a long period (causing convulsions and pulmonary disease) and nitrogen has a narcotic effect, the aquanauts breathe a special mixture of gases: 4.3% oxygen, 18% nitrogen, and the rest helium. Even this mix is not perfect. Helium is so much lighter and less dense than nitrogen that the human voice resounds at a higher pitch than normal and words tumble out rapidly, producing a Donald Duck falsetto. To make themselves understood, the men must speak an octave lower and much slower than usual.

Deep Dangers. The aquanauts are doing more work than had been expected. They have set up an outdoor station to measure ocean currents, and are performing about 100 marine biology and oceanography experiments. Each morning at least two of them put on rubber "wet" suits, strap on Mark VI breathing apparatus and slip out through a hatch on the bottom of the capsule. (The hatches can be held open without flooding the Sealab because the pressure inside is equal to the pressure of the water outside.)

The sea's extreme cold limits trips in ordinary wet suits to two hours at most, and darkness and the dangers of the deep prevent the aquanauts from venturing beyond a 225-ft. perimeter. Neither do they swim more than 30 ft. up or down, lest they fall victim to the deep-sea diver's greatest fear--the bends. If a diver comes up too fast, gases that have dissolved in his bloodstream from breathing under pressure form bubbles that lead to dizziness, nausea or even death.

On the sorties outside, the aquanauts photograph the neighborhood, tag fish to record their movements, and collect marine samples. They are building concrete-block pyramids as fish homes, and will lay "sidewalks" with a gelatin mixture that is expected to harden into firm surface on the soft ocean floor. To experiment with underwater salvage, the Navy will sink an old fighter plane, have the aquanauts fill it with lightweight polyurethane foam, then see if the foam displaces enough water and is buoyant enough for the plane to float to the surface.

The aquanauts this week expect to get some help from a 7-ft., 270-lb. bottlenose porpoise named Tuffy. Trained by the Navy, Tuffy has been taught to come swimming at the sound of a buzzer. He will live in a pen near the support barge, carry messages and cables between the lab, its divers, and topside.

Blooming Health. As the first team prepared to leave the lab and be replaced by a second crew last week, the men were physically in top shape, except for minor ear infections that are common to divers who use hooded swim suits. Doctors reported that the men were in excellent psychological health. Sealab's Captain Bond was particularly impressed with the aquanauts' performance. "That's what this experiment is all about," he says, "to see what man can do underwater."

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