September 13, 2025 • 6 mins
In the 1960s, advances in technology allowed brave aquanauts to explore deeper into the ocean than ever before, but the project was shut down. Learn how Sealab worked -- and how that technology is still used today -- in this classic episode of BrainStuff.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here with a classic episode from our archives.
This one dives into the amazing scientific research that allowed
the creation of the underwater Sea Lab project in the
nineteen sixties and how that technology is still used today.
(00:25):
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. Even though around
seventy percent of our planet is covered in saltwater, we
have a better map of Mars than we do of
the oceans that sustain virtually every living thing on Earth. Sure,
ocean exploration is expensive and complicated, but so is space exploration,
and we do plenty of that. There was a time, though,
during the early years of space exploration, that aquanauts were
(00:47):
pushing the limits of how deep humans could dive under
the ocean and how long they could stay down there.
Sea Lab, a program launched by the US Navy in
nineteen sixty four, was intended to figure out how to
send divers down into the freezing, high the pressure environments
of the deep sea for longer periods of time than
anyone had ever thought possible, and the program was a
big success until it wasn't anymore. It's always challenging to
(01:11):
get a human body free swimming at any great depth,
of the reason being that our bodies are not made
to a stand millions of gallons of water being piled
on top of us. Divers have to breathe pressurized air,
which contains inert gases nitrogen mainly the dissolve into the
bloodstream and tissues, which works out great so long as
the weight of the entire ocean keeps them compressed. If
a diver wants to come up to the surface, they
(01:32):
must do it slowly in order to avoid the gases
making little bubbles in their blood, migrating to their joints
and causing decompression sickness sometimes called the bends, which is
unspeakably painful and sometimes fatal. In the early nineteen sixties,
a Navy physician named George Bond figured out how to
let people explore the ocean in a new way through
a technique called saturation diving. In his laboratory experiments, Bond
(01:55):
was able to saturate the blood with inert gases like
helium in such a way that divers could not only
go deep, they could stay down indefinitely, so long as
they had the right setup and a shelter, divers could
become acclimated to a habitat two hundred feet that's sixty
meters below the surface and free dive even deeper from there.
We spoke with Ben Helworth, the author of Sea Lab,
(02:15):
America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean floor.
He described it this way, Doctor Bond's breakthroughs were a
little bit like the diving equivalent of breaking the sound barrier.
It was a quantum leap in technology over what the
diving parameters had been for more than a century. Sea
Lab one, the first iteration of the Sea Lab experiment,
was housed in a steel tube fifty seven feet long
(02:36):
that's about seventeen meters that was lowered onto the ocean
floor off the coast of Bermuda in July nineteen sixty
four at a depth of one hundred and ninety two
feet that's about fifty nine meters. Four men successfully stayed
submerged in this pod for eleven days, and the experiment
went so well that Sea Lab two was submerged off
the coast of California at a depth of two hundred
and five feet that's sixty two meters in August of
(02:57):
the next year, Sea Lab two had hot showers, a refrigerator,
and a dolphin named Tuffy trained to deliver supplies and
rescue aquanauts if necessary. After a thirty days stay in
Sea Lab two, aquanaut and astronauts Scott Carpenter spoke to
President Lyndon Johnson from his helium atmosphere decompression chamber. Sounding
like a cartoon chipmunk. He might have sounded ridiculous, but
(03:19):
history was made. He had survived a month at a
pressure of one hundred and three psi, which is seven
times that of Earth's atmosphere. President Johnson told Carpenter, I
want you to know that the nation is very proud
of you. Only a few years later, though, a fatal
accident on Sea Lab three, which was situated on the
seafloor off the coast of California at a depth of
six hundred feet that's one hundred and eighty three meters,
(03:40):
would shut the program down. Hellworth said most people involved
were aware that this was a dangerous operation. They always
knew it had been Sea Lab one and Sea Lab
two had gone well with no major injuries. After the
tragedy on Sea Lab three, they all expected to press on,
but the Navy didn't see it that way, so the
program was canceled. It was still a low profile enough
programme that there wasn't a national uproar about giving up
(04:02):
the race to the bottom of the ocean that you
would expect if they had tried to cancel the space
program two years earlier after the Apollo one launch pad
fire that killed three astronauts. I think everyone expected the
program to go on, but for various reasons, it didn't.
We still use the technical breakthroughs George Bond pioneered with
the Sea Lab program, mostly in the oil industry, setting
up oil platforms. Saturation divers can go to a job
(04:24):
site hundreds of feet below the surface and stay down
there for an entire eight hour shift. It's a dangerous job,
but it can pay around fourteen hundred dollars a day.
Most of us have those saturation divers to thank for
the fuel in our gas tanks. But George Bond's vision
was not just industrial, it was military and civilian and scientific.
He solved the problem of going deeper and staying longer.
(04:45):
But after Sea Lab was canceled, it turned out the
industry is where the money was. Any military application equipping
military submarines to release saturation divers as spies during the
Cold War, for instance, would be highly classified and therefore
are hard to document. But there is one place on
Earth where sea lab type facility still exists for scientific research,
the Aquarius Reef Base south of the Florida Keys, and
(05:07):
it's been in operation for over twenty years. Scientists can
go down there sixty feet that's eighteen meters below the
surface and live anywhere from a few days to a
couple of weeks running experiments on the reef. Hellworth said
doctor Bond's vision was science related. He thought we ought
to have sea lab like bases set up in the
ocean wherever there might be something of interest to study
and observe. We should get to know that environment better
(05:28):
because there's value to spending time in the ocean, just
like there was value in Jane Goodall's being able to
sit and observe in the jungle. Once you're down there
and can stay a while, you really don't know what
you're going to see. That's how we discover things. Today's
episode is based on the article Where Have all the
Aquaauts Gone? The Story of Sea Lab on HowStuffWorks? Dot
(05:50):
com written by Jesslynshields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts wyaheart Radio, visit the
airheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogel bomb here with a classic episode from our archives.
This one dives into the amazing scientific research that allowed
the creation of the underwater Sea Lab project in the
nineteen sixties and how that technology is still used today.
(00:25):
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb here. Even though around
seventy percent of our planet is covered in saltwater, we
have a better map of Mars than we do of
the oceans that sustain virtually every living thing on Earth. Sure,
ocean exploration is expensive and complicated, but so is space exploration,
and we do plenty of that. There was a time, though,
during the early years of space exploration, that aquanauts were
(00:47):
pushing the limits of how deep humans could dive under
the ocean and how long they could stay down there.
Sea Lab, a program launched by the US Navy in
nineteen sixty four, was intended to figure out how to
send divers down into the freezing, high the pressure environments
of the deep sea for longer periods of time than
anyone had ever thought possible, and the program was a
big success until it wasn't anymore. It's always challenging to
(01:11):
get a human body free swimming at any great depth,
of the reason being that our bodies are not made
to a stand millions of gallons of water being piled
on top of us. Divers have to breathe pressurized air,
which contains inert gases nitrogen mainly the dissolve into the
bloodstream and tissues, which works out great so long as
the weight of the entire ocean keeps them compressed. If
a diver wants to come up to the surface, they
(01:32):
must do it slowly in order to avoid the gases
making little bubbles in their blood, migrating to their joints
and causing decompression sickness sometimes called the bends, which is
unspeakably painful and sometimes fatal. In the early nineteen sixties,
a Navy physician named George Bond figured out how to
let people explore the ocean in a new way through
a technique called saturation diving. In his laboratory experiments, Bond
(01:55):
was able to saturate the blood with inert gases like
helium in such a way that divers could not only
go deep, they could stay down indefinitely, so long as
they had the right setup and a shelter, divers could
become acclimated to a habitat two hundred feet that's sixty
meters below the surface and free dive even deeper from there.
We spoke with Ben Helworth, the author of Sea Lab,
(02:15):
America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean floor.
He described it this way, Doctor Bond's breakthroughs were a
little bit like the diving equivalent of breaking the sound barrier.
It was a quantum leap in technology over what the
diving parameters had been for more than a century. Sea
Lab one, the first iteration of the Sea Lab experiment,
was housed in a steel tube fifty seven feet long
(02:36):
that's about seventeen meters that was lowered onto the ocean
floor off the coast of Bermuda in July nineteen sixty
four at a depth of one hundred and ninety two
feet that's about fifty nine meters. Four men successfully stayed
submerged in this pod for eleven days, and the experiment
went so well that Sea Lab two was submerged off
the coast of California at a depth of two hundred
and five feet that's sixty two meters in August of
(02:57):
the next year, Sea Lab two had hot showers, a refrigerator,
and a dolphin named Tuffy trained to deliver supplies and
rescue aquanauts if necessary. After a thirty days stay in
Sea Lab two, aquanaut and astronauts Scott Carpenter spoke to
President Lyndon Johnson from his helium atmosphere decompression chamber. Sounding
like a cartoon chipmunk. He might have sounded ridiculous, but
(03:19):
history was made. He had survived a month at a
pressure of one hundred and three psi, which is seven
times that of Earth's atmosphere. President Johnson told Carpenter, I
want you to know that the nation is very proud
of you. Only a few years later, though, a fatal
accident on Sea Lab three, which was situated on the
seafloor off the coast of California at a depth of
six hundred feet that's one hundred and eighty three meters,
(03:40):
would shut the program down. Hellworth said most people involved
were aware that this was a dangerous operation. They always
knew it had been Sea Lab one and Sea Lab
two had gone well with no major injuries. After the
tragedy on Sea Lab three, they all expected to press on,
but the Navy didn't see it that way, so the
program was canceled. It was still a low profile enough
programme that there wasn't a national uproar about giving up
(04:02):
the race to the bottom of the ocean that you
would expect if they had tried to cancel the space
program two years earlier after the Apollo one launch pad
fire that killed three astronauts. I think everyone expected the
program to go on, but for various reasons, it didn't.
We still use the technical breakthroughs George Bond pioneered with
the Sea Lab program, mostly in the oil industry, setting
up oil platforms. Saturation divers can go to a job
(04:24):
site hundreds of feet below the surface and stay down
there for an entire eight hour shift. It's a dangerous job,
but it can pay around fourteen hundred dollars a day.
Most of us have those saturation divers to thank for
the fuel in our gas tanks. But George Bond's vision
was not just industrial, it was military and civilian and scientific.
He solved the problem of going deeper and staying longer.
(04:45):
But after Sea Lab was canceled, it turned out the
industry is where the money was. Any military application equipping
military submarines to release saturation divers as spies during the
Cold War, for instance, would be highly classified and therefore
are hard to document. But there is one place on
Earth where sea lab type facility still exists for scientific research,
the Aquarius Reef Base south of the Florida Keys, and
(05:07):
it's been in operation for over twenty years. Scientists can
go down there sixty feet that's eighteen meters below the
surface and live anywhere from a few days to a
couple of weeks running experiments on the reef. Hellworth said
doctor Bond's vision was science related. He thought we ought
to have sea lab like bases set up in the
ocean wherever there might be something of interest to study
and observe. We should get to know that environment better
(05:28):
because there's value to spending time in the ocean, just
like there was value in Jane Goodall's being able to
sit and observe in the jungle. Once you're down there
and can stay a while, you really don't know what
you're going to see. That's how we discover things. Today's
episode is based on the article Where Have all the
Aquaauts Gone? The Story of Sea Lab on HowStuffWorks? Dot
(05:50):
com written by Jesslynshields. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts wyaheart Radio, visit the
airheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
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Lauren Vogelbaum
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