King of the World to Challenge Neptune for Lord of the Sea!
Posted by Justin on February 29th, 2012
In one corner we have serial entrepreneur, self-admitted wife swapper and daredevil explorer Richard Branson. In the other, the man who leap frogged his own film as the high grossing in box office history, James Cameron.
Their shared mission, to make it to Challenger Deep. The lowest point in the Mariana Trench. Deeper into the ocean than Mount Everest is tall.
Only once has a manned vessel briefly touched the sea bed. But the 1960 exploration only lasted 15 minutes before beginning the ascent back to the surface.
Now, two of the world’s most visible men are ready to return to the bottom of the ocean.
And it looks like Cameron is going to win. Which is freaking awesome.
Not like, kind of cool. Amazing. To use a cliche, it’s so awesome if we saw it in a movie, we’d think it was too cliche. That’s how awesome this is.
What’s more, he’s going to go it alone. In a one man submersible. Since the 1960 mission kicked up such a silt storm it brought visibility down to zero, if successful, he will become the first person to see the Challenger Deep.
Allow me to rephrase that, the director of Terminator 2 will likely become the only person in the entire history of humanity to see this. Hundreds of people have seen our Earth from space. Challenger Deep? The guy who directed Aquaman on Entourage.
I cannot put into words how happy this makes me. It’s the triumph of creativity and will. The world is better for James Cameron being in it.
He plans to spend six hours on the floor, collecting samples before coming back to the surface. Also, he is equipping several 3D cameras for the adventure the footage for which he hopes to burn on national television while he laughs in our faces turn into a feature film.
Awesome.
[CNN]
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March 1st, 2012 at 12:32 am
This is pretty amazing. I want to know what kind of tech they’re using. In the documentary about the last attempt, the shell still cracked, so it’ll be interesting to see what they use to reinforce the vessel.
And then Cameron can yell “I’m king of the underworld!”
March 5th, 2012 at 11:05 am
It’s moments like this that remind us why we have the 1%ers. Moments where two insanely rich people make an insane bet because they can, then the entire human race benifits. What has the 99% ever done for science?