Great Internet Access
The most surprising moments of James Cameron's trip to "hell and back:" Oceanfloor secrets
"Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge."
So tweeted acclaimed director and amateur deep sea diver James Cameron from the tiny compartment of sub at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the 6.8-mile-deep depression along the Mariana Trench.
Forget the impressive range of Internet connectivity it must have required to sign onto Twitter from more than 35,000 feet below the surface.
Think, instead, about the fact that the Challenger Deep is the deepest known point on earth, and was last explored more than 50 years ago.
After seven years of planning, the mission began on Sunday with a descent that lasted more than two hours and ended three hours into exploring, when a hydraulic fluid leak coated the window, obscuring Cameron's view of the dark ocean floor and rendering the sub machine's manipulator arm — used for gathering samples from the ocean floor — ineffective.
Cameron claims that the bottom of the trench "looks as bleak and barren as the moon," with no visible living creatures and zero activity to speak of. He described the trip as "a new spin on to hell and back."
Would you risk life and limb and millions of dollars for a mission like this one?