Deep Thoughts

Commander Scott Carpenter is a man of extremes. He has orbited the earth three times as an astronaut, and last week he returned from living a record 30 days beneath the sea as an aquanaut. After surfacing from the Navy's Sealab II off the coast of Southern California, the versatile Carpenter made the inevitable comparison. "The sea" he said, "is a more hostile environment than space." He could also proudly report that the men of Sealab II stood up surprisingly well under the unusual stresses of the deep; they proved that man can live and work in safety as he seeks out the sea's riches.

The aquanauts' first steps into the inky black 205 ft. down were terrifying. They found that they could get lost only 20 ft. from the capsule. At 50DEG F., the water felt breathtakingly cold despite their special rubber suits. Gradually, Sealab crews grew more confident; they were soon taking only 30 minutes to perform tasks that had taken them three days at the start.

"Ello" for "Aul." Now as a third and final team finishes the 45-day exercise in underwater living, the aquanauts are busy with the last of 47 scheduled experiments. They are setting up mining equipment and collecting biological samples, examining the gas in fish bladders, and squirting clam juice into the water to see what species of marine life it attracts. As one of their most spectacular tasks, they are trying to salvage a submerged fighter plane by filling it with polyurethane foam and floating it to the surface.

The problems of living beneath the sea were varied and puzzling. All the men suffered frequent headaches, occasional absentmindedness, and the strange experience of waking at night perspiring even while feeling bone-chilling cold. Often they noticed a cloudy inability to reason quickly that became known as "the Sealab effect." In the helium-filled atmosphere of the capsule, sounds took some weird twists, and it was often hard to tell which direction a voice was coming from. Consonants got lost in the thin air. Paul became "aul" and Jell-O "ello.' "Every time someone opened his mouth," said Carpenter, "the rest of us were in hysterics."

Families in the Future. As a result of their experience, the aquanauts brought back recommendations for changes in future Sealab equipment. They found that the staging area, a 4-ft. by 6-ft. section where the divers change their suits, was too small. The ladder was not designed with flipper-feet in mind. And the refrigerator was too small. Otherwise, the aquanauts are ready and anxious to return to the depths. "It's in the state of the art now to build an underwater home for a family," says Carpenter. And the Carpenter family, he allows, wouldn't mind moving in for a while.

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