September 25, 2020 • 38 mins
Are there really companies working on building underwater hotels? What considerations do you have to make to build an underwater structure? When will these hotels open?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. This time for a
classic episode. This episode originally published on October twenty one,
(00:25):
two thousand thirteen. It is called Sleeping Underwater, and it
is not a reference to the Godfather and Sleeping with
the Fishies. Honestly, I don't remember if I made that
reference in the episode or not. Let's listen in and
find out. I remember reading about these proposed underwater luxury hotels.
We're talking like five star hotels with all the amenities,
(00:50):
or or totally submerged in the case of one of them,
which those one I'm specifically thinking of the Poseidon we'll
talk about in a little bit later in the podcast. Yeah,
they started playing that in two thousand or two thousand one,
two one, I think, and it still doesn't exist. As
it turns out. When we started doing research for this,
we were like, oh, none of these really exist yet.
There are a few that you can stay in that
(01:12):
are real, right, They're not the super luxury hotels though, Well,
there's one that is a super luxury hotel that does
have an underwater restaurant. And then there's one that has
the underwater room because there's the Atlantis, but it's not
a completely submerged hotel the way the Poseidon is supposed
to be. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We are,
we are getting weight ahead of ourselves. Um let us
(01:34):
let us start. Well, Okay, what do you want to do?
You want to talk about the problems here. Yeah, let's
talk about the problems. Okay. So, Lauren, if I were
to tell you that you are going to go and
sleep with the fishes, you would probably think I was
going to put a hit on you, you know, Godfather style.
But if I were to say, no, no, no, I
mean that there's this hotel that's underwater where you can
(01:56):
fall asleep underwater and wake up to looking outside all
these gorgeous fish, you realize that there are some issues
you've got to work out too before anyone is comfortable
staying in that space. I would I would ask, how
am I going to breathe? I enjoy breathing. That's something
I do. Every top of the list is the breathing problem. Yeah,
As it turns out, I don't know if you guys
know this. We don't breathe water so well. We like
(02:19):
air that has a mixture of some pretty typical gases
that you find on our atmosphere. It's very convenient for us,
seeing as how this is where we live. But if
you go underwater, you know, if you get that challenge.
So you have to find a way of supplying breathable atmosphere.
You have to find a way of maintaining pressure. Uh.
And and to prevent front water pressure from breaking the
(02:40):
the the confines of your habitat, right and killing you,
because I could see above you can't breathe water, so yeah.
So and if you're deep enough, then the pressure alone
could kill you. Although for the habitats we're talking about,
you're in semi shallow water, shallow not to not like
you're waiting around in it. But we're talking maybe thirty
(03:02):
to fifty ft deep something along those lines, not you know,
a thousand meters below the surface of the ocean. Right.
This is partially because water exerts more pressure on us
than air at atmosphere pressure. Yeah, So the deeper you go,
the more pressure you feel, right, So, I don't know,
we talked before the podcast, you have not seen the Abyss. Right. So,
(03:23):
in the ABYSS, you have these characters who are going
on these deep, deep, deep ocean UH missions, and at
one point they start to experiment with a liquid oxygen.
The reason why they're using a liquid oxygen is because
if they were to go out in a diving suit
under the amount immense pressure that they would be under
as soon as they left the confines of their submersible, UH,
(03:47):
all that air would end up dissolving into their blood
and they die. So they they have come up with
this liquid stuff that would allow them to breathe. Well,
we don't really have the liquid stuff that we can
do like on the level that they did in that movie.
Right that there is research with liquid forms of I
do not have the name of it right in front
of me, but it's some kind of flora carbon actually,
(04:10):
which which is weird and interesting to me, but it's
it's a pressurized liquid ish gas and very strange. I
don't know how that would feel. Doesn't seem comfortable to
me personally, but right, so, so the problem when you
go deep enough, I mean, once you're getting down to
like three or ninety something like that, some of the
gases that you're breathing, especially nitrogen, are going to dissolve
into your blood and tissues, which is okay for a
(04:34):
short period of time, but it's very bad in the
long term and be when you go back up to
the surface. If you don't take steps to decompress, it
can turn back into nitrogen bubbles and forming in in
your tissue and blood and make you extremely sick. It's
called it's called the bends or a decompression sickness, right,
(04:55):
and it can be deadly. I mean, that's we're talking
serious stuff here, right, right. It sounded like when you
hear like always got the bends, you might get the
idea that, yeah, I just I guess did you did
you just eat something? Exactly? What's going on? Are you
a crazy straw? What happened? No, it's very serious stuff.
It's actually one of those things that divers have to consider.
(05:15):
It's when if you've ever been diving, then you know
all about this. If you've ever heard people talk about
how you have to take dives in very gradual stages.
You can't just swim straight down to the bottom of
the ocean floor in a very deep area and then
swim right back top. You have to you have to
be much more careful or else you can suffer from it.
(05:36):
And that's a huge part of your training when you
go scoopid diving, right, and you have to occasionally go
into something like a decompression chamber where the pressure inside
the chamber is controlled so that it will allow you
to get back to the surface pressure and then you
can go outside and not not suffer from decompression sickness.
So that's clearly one issue is you got to figure
(05:57):
out not just the breathing, but also how do you
do this in a way where people are not going
to suffer decompression sickness as soon as they transfer from
being underwater to being within the hotel environment or the
habitat environment. Right. So and so there are two ways
that you can pressurize an underwater cabin, and those are
to the water pressure that's surrounding the habitat, in which
(06:19):
case you're gonna want to use it in only very
shallow situations and again have some kind of decompression process
if if necessary, or to pressurize this container to the
surface atmosphere using airlocks, right, and that would be like
a submarine, a submarine is pressurized to the surface temperature,
which is why when a submarine comes back up, it's
not that you know, suddenly all the sailors on board
(06:41):
have to go through a decompression chamber or else they'll
all suffer from the bends. It's because that submarine itself
is pressurized to the surface pressure. It's similar to what
we see with airplanes, to the pressurized cabins and airplanes
to maintain a certain within a certain parameter UH closeness
to the surface pressure so that you don't have these
problems that you would suffer otherwise. Now, all of what
(07:03):
we know about this pressurization and the the gases that
you can breathe when you're underwater started. The research really
started in about the nineteen fifties. The principle of saturation diving,
which is that prolonged exposure to UH to pressurized gases
that's going to build up nitrogen in your system, was
proposed by Captain George F. Bond, who is a U. S.
(07:25):
Navy physician, and that's what really kicked off the ability
for us to start doing research with with underwater habitats.
And this was becoming important because of a little thing
called the Cold War in the space race. Oh yeah,
I remember that. I mean, also environmentalism was was on
the rise, and people were becoming really interested in all
(07:46):
of the life in oceans while to study that. Yeah,
that was still I would say that that really got
a lot of traction in the seventies, apart from one
specific person who anyone who's familiar with marine biology knows
the name, Jacques Cousto right, was certainly instrumental in six Yeah. Yeah,
(08:07):
So his work in the sixties certainly went a far
away to giving us a greater appreciation and understanding of
underwater environments. And in fact, um he started looking into
an underwater habitat right, Right, in nineteen sixty two, he
started launching experiments in these pressurized underwater trips. Uh. He
(08:29):
created the con Shelf one, which was a free standing
structure down about thirty six ft under under the water,
and and divers lived in it for about a week.
So nineteen sixty two, that's pretty that's that's fairly impressive.
I mean, considering that, you know, you're you weren't going
to have many Apollo astronauts going up until wait, wait,
I guess, I guess about that time well, they're starting
(08:50):
the training programs. Anyway, it wasn't until the late sixties
that you really got them into going out into orbit.
But yeah, so so you've got this this underwater habitat
staying there for about a week, which that plays into
our discussion on underwater hotels. That's you know, a typical
vacation stays is a week long. So it's funny to
think that scientific research here, specifically looking into marine environments
(09:15):
of marine life, is somewhat of paving the way underwater,
as it were, to underwater tourism and underwater hotels. Absolutely. Yeah.
There was another man named Edwin A. Link who was
um who who was another oceanographer who was working in
the same field at the time. One of his projects,
called The Man in the Sea would in nineteen sixty
four get adopted by the U. S. Navy and that
(09:38):
would turn into the Sea Lab program that you guys
might have heard of. Yeah, I remember that show on
Cartoon Network. No, no different, different, different Sea Lab, although
they did have at some point a trained dolphin that
would run errands for them. Wow. Really, I I don't
know what to say about that. That was That was
Sea Lab two in nineteen sixty right, and so then
(10:00):
you've also got uh, I mean Custo continued work of
creating the conell three. Uh, there was the more sea labs,
as I recall, So we have this development where we're
learning more and more about how to create habitats that
can safely house people for a certain length of time,
increasingly long periods of time throughout throughout the sixties, we
(10:22):
went from that first initial week two up to a
month and more so right right there was Um, there's
one in particular I want to talk about, but I
want to I want to give you the opportunity to
get through the sixties and seventies first before I jump
into it, because I'm going to talk about the Noah one. Okay,
I think, go go for it, alright, alright, So, so
(10:42):
again sixties and seventies, we see more and more of
the same sort of environments used for Are these habitats
used for scientific research? Noah establishes one called Aquarius off
the coast of Saint Croix, and Aquarius is one of
the two underwater habitats that are still really actively used
(11:04):
these days. Um. The other one is now called Jewels,
but it's it's now privately owned. It's now privately owned
and operated as an underwater hotel. But it didn't start
off that way. He started, right, It started off as
one of these research habitats, and and all of these
that we've been talking about have been research habitats, you know,
kind of based on ocean life, but also kind of
(11:26):
based on exactly how can we do this crazy keeping
people underwater? Right? Right? So the Jewels Undersea Lodge was
named after, of course, Jules Willisberne and his leagues under
the sea. Right, although this one is not twenty leagues
under the sea, certainly not. It is less than that semifically.
It's I think it's twenty one below the surface exactly.
It is twenty one. The services the world's first underwater hotel.
(11:50):
It was originally called La lupa research lab. Yes, it
was rendered. It was created in the nineteen seventies and
then renovated into a hotel in the nineteen right. And
you it's it's scuba focus. It's really for scuba enthusiasts.
I think you don't have to have Scooba certification to go,
but they will make you take a training course just
(12:10):
to make sure that you're dive down because you have
to scuba dive into the hotel. That's the only way
to get there. The way it works is that they
have a wet room. That's that's called wet room because
that's where you go to when you when you come
into the hotel, and that's where you end up storing
all your scuba gear. And the entrance is what's called
a moon pool, which I just love how romantic and
lovely that name is, which is really a hole cutting
(12:31):
the floor. It's much nicer than hole cutting the floors.
Names go and uh and right. It's it's compressed, I think,
to the to the water around you. So you shouldn't
stay in there very very long. And the idea is
that you you swim underneath the structure, you come up
through the moon pool, you pull yourself out, kind of
like pulling yourself out of a swimming pool, and then
(12:52):
you are inside the hotel and uh, you know again,
it's it's that that water pressure specifically, because if you
were at serve this pressure, then you have to worry
about decompression. Uh. If you can then take off all
your gear, take a hot shower, and then move into
one of the other two rooms inside the Jewels. UH
motel is what I've seen it referred to by other
(13:15):
underwater hotel companies. Uh it is. If you want to
know some statistics. It's fifty ft long, which is about
fifteen meters. It's twenty ft wide that's six meters, and
eleven ft tall, which about three point four meters. It was.
It's off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys,
made famous, of course by the Beach Boys in their
(13:35):
song Anyway, so that you uh, you know, like you said, Lauren,
you have to get there by diving. Whether or not
you're certified doesn't matter. They can put you through that course,
but you have to get there by diving. They don't
have some other means of getting you there. I think
that originally they had let guests go down breathing through
(13:55):
a tube a pipe that was piping oxygen down like
snoop diving, which is a combination snorkeling and scuba, right,
But due to safety concerns they moved it to a
full exactly. That sounds like that was a good idea
moving it um it's uh, you know, once you get
in there, you've got some interesting amenities. They have windows
(14:17):
that look out their forty two inches in diameter or
um uh, it's the way wait, I wrote down how
many how many centimeters? A hundred seven centimeters? I'm looking
out for you guys. I just I can't make the
conversion in my head yet. I'm not that good. Um.
Other amenities include things like air conditioning and an entertainment center.
The picture I saw was was an old uh caval
(14:39):
ray tube television showing I think it was the Abyss
actually on pause. Um, but anyway, it's the You also
can have meals delivered down there, including from the tower
of Pizza Um restaurant. I know because I actually looked
into this to see. You know, I was curious to
see how much it was. Did you see how much
(15:00):
it costs to stay there? I did not, or if
I did, I did not make a noteworka. So it's really,
you know, when you think about it, you're staying underneath
the ocean. So first of all, when we're going to
talk about these other underwater hotels in the moment, we're
talking about super luxurious experiences. At least that's the idea,
and so they tend to be pretty pricey, with one
in particular really breaking the bank on a per night's stay.
(15:24):
But the Jewels Undersea Lodge, if it's if it's a
party of two, it's a d dollars per night. So
that's a party of two. That's expensive. But you're talking
about being underwater as a unique experience right now, right,
So uh, if it's three to but it gets lower
per person if you add more people. So if you
(15:44):
have three to four people staying there, it ends up
being three fifty dollars per person instead of four hundred
per prison. If you have five to six people staying there,
it's three hundred dollars per person. However, you are then
staying with five to six people in a tin can. Well,
you know, not all of us, everybody, Lauren, So you
know we can get along some of us with lots
(16:04):
of people in an enclosed space. This open floor plan
that we have in our office is really keyed up
us on our anxiety levels and aggression levels have gone
out the charts. I have to say, I'm pretty cranky. Yeah,
this is only the first day, Lauren. We've got lots
more of these to look forward to Succa. You have
to deal with me. There's some behind the scenes stuff
from how stuff works right there for you guys. So anyway, yeah,
(16:28):
not not so expensive. Comparatively speaking, it is very expensive
our hotel room, but for a hotel room underwater, as
it turns out, not so expensive. Um so that's That's
kind of the first one I wanted to talk about
because it was a direct descendant. In fact, it was
one of these underwater research habitats. Okay, it's Jonathan from.
(16:48):
If I could tell Jonathan from anything, it would be
you know, prepare for the worst. But hey, let's just
take a quick break and we'll be right back with
this classic episode. All right, So now we're gonna talk
about some other underwater hotels. There is one other one
(17:11):
that we can talk about that's actually running. It's working.
You can go and you can book a room there
if you wanted to, or the room there. There's only one.
There's only the one. This is called the utter In.
It is in Sweden on Lake something or other. I
can't pronounce it. I'm not even gonna try, Like Millaren,
Let's let's say that is that is the English looking
pronunciation of that name, which is probably completely incorrect because,
(17:32):
as we have previously learned in the pan episode, Sweden.
Be crazy. Yeah, we we are. Our mouths don't make
those sounds utter in obviously that that means otter. In
it's is otter. So it's about otters. It was created
as an art project in the year two thousand by
Mikhail Genberg. And okay, so so it's got it's got
(17:55):
an above above surface part in a below surface part
above above ground above sir, as I keep wanting to
say ground, there's it's kind of like a red shed
with a deck around it. Yeah, it looks like it
looks like it's got a little floating dock that's got
nothing but a little tiny red shack on it. So
if you were looking at it just from the surface,
you think that is the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen.
(18:16):
It's just floating out there on the lake. And what's
that very small barriage which with a very small wood
shed on it. Um it does have you know, a
little bit of a deck for sun chairs or something.
You can fit a good few sun chairs out there.
And then there's a tube leading below the surface. You
can go down a ladder through this tube into what
I believe is a single room. It does not look
(18:37):
terribly roomy, no, I think it's a room. It has
two beds and a few picture windows that will let
you look out into the lake. As of as it
listed for UM, I think a thousand, seven hundred and
fifty dollars for seven nights. Okay, so I'm not bad.
It's actually cheaper than the Jewels one if you're looking
(18:58):
to stay for a week, uh if you. But however,
you're pretty much left up on your own here. You
can opt in to getting food delivered to you for
an extra charge. Where I think, I think it's row
about distance to them. Yeah, they give you an inflatable
canoe where you can you can row back to shore
so that you can go and get things like food
(19:21):
or entertainment. It is. It is pretty impressively creepy looking. Actually,
I have to say I was looking at some pictures
of the interior and the lake is a very living lake,
and so it's a little bit briny. It's kind of
grayish and greenish, lots of allergae, lots of fish. Yeah,
it gets very dark at night, and I'm sort of
(19:41):
uncomfortable with that. Yeah, the idea that you, yeah, you're
not getting any starlight or moonlight down there. I mean,
it was the same sort of thing with the Jewels one, right,
like the Jewels Hotel that if you ever see pictures
of it, you see these big round windows since looking
onto very green water, you know, and it's it's not
like it's not the kind of don't think about those
Caribbean beaches or the ones and you see in Southeast Asia,
(20:04):
whereas that crystal blue water, it's not like that. So anyway,
the those are the two that you could actually book
a room at right now and go and stay in
right now, the Jewels and the other. But therefore, for
a room underwater, there are a couple other hotels that
do have portions something underwater, like the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. Specifically,
there are two Atlantis resorts. There's one in Dubai and
(20:26):
there's one in the Bahamas. If you ever look at
this thing, it looks like two giant wings and the
center of it um has sort of an outline that
looks like an Arabesque tower with a sort of a
bridging kind of section on the very top. That will
come in into play in just a second, because I've
got a tangent that I have to talk about. But anyway,
(20:48):
it has two suits, the Poseidon and the Neptune. Very clever.
The Posidona Neptune suites are multi floor suites and part
of it is above the level of a lagoon that
it looks out over, but the bottom floor is actually
under the surface of the water line and has windows
look out into the lagoon. So according to one picture,
(21:11):
although I couldn't find any confirmation on the actual Atlanti site,
it was one of those pictures where I wondered if
it was a an artist rendition or if it was
actually this was really taken inside the suite, and one
of them that showed a bedroom where the entire bedroom
was submerged in the lagoon, so you you are looking
out like when you look up from your bed, you're
(21:33):
looking at the aquarium essentially, or in the inside the lagoon,
so you're looking at all the sea life swimming around you.
None of the pictures I saw on the actual site
reflected that specific setup, so I don't know that that's
really how it turned out. That might have been one
of those things like and what it really looks like
is no, you've got a window that looks out into
the lagoon, which still is gorgeous but it's not the
(21:55):
same effect obviously. Um. Anyway, these two swe eats are
a little a little expensive. If you want to stay
at either the Poseidon or the Neptune Sweet in the
Atlantis Resort in Dubai for one night, that'll set you
back eight thousand eight for one night's stay. Yeah, it's
(22:16):
not the most expensive sweet in the hotel I and
I'm sure it's not by far the most expensive sweet
in Dubai. The most expensive sweet in the Atlantis Resort
and Dubai is Remember why I said I had that
bridging kind of section that's at the very top of
that Arabesque tower. Well that that bridging section is actually
a suite. It's called the Royal Bridge Suite. And one
(22:38):
night's stay will set you back about thirty seven thousand,
eight hundred dollars for one night. So that's a good
salary right there for one night's stay. Yeah, that's that's
much like many people's yearly y. Yeah, to stay for
one night. Anyway. Clearly there's a section of the world
(22:59):
that lives in a a front bracket than I do. Uh.
It's still pretty interesting, but it's not the same thing
as the submerged hotel idea that we were promised no,
and uh, there's there's also a restaurant that you can
go to in a Hilton Hotel out in Maldives, Maldives Islands. Yes. Um,
(23:20):
that's the Conrad mal Dives, Rangali Island. It's it's owned
again by the by the Hilton Hotel chain. Um. The
hotel itself is spread over two islands connected by a bridge.
Most of it is top side, but it does have
this this undersea restaurant that's available. Um. It's only has
fourteen chairs, but you can also rent it out for
events for an undisclosed amount of money. Undisclosed huge amount
(23:43):
of money meaning huge. The pictures of this are very
similar to what I was talking about about that bedroom
where it's the you know, because the the ceiling itself
is also made out of a crylic. It's this arc.
There's an arch all the way through the dining room
where you're surrounded on both sides and above it's like
a seventy degree so you're you're you're looking around underwater,
(24:07):
and it looks very much to me like the there's
a tunnel in the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta that
is a very similar view. Or um, maybe if you
guys have seen a really terrific BioShock causplay of a
big daddy and little sister, it took place in this
in the Georgia Mark. You've seen the documentary Jaws three,
which takes place in Sea World and they walk through
some of the Sea World tunnel. Same sort of thing,
(24:28):
except you know, wider. Uh So that kind of brings
us to some of the ones that have been proposed
but as far as we can tell, have yet to
be built in some cases, have yet to have any
work done on them whatsoever. In most cases have yet
to have any work done on them. And that that
I think we should probably go ahead and just start
with the Poseidon because that was the one that that
(24:49):
I first heard of and was so impressed by and
could not wait to hear. But it was originally supposed
to open in two thousand eight nine, I think, okay,
two thousand nine. Uh, as far as I know, no
work has really been done on the the like they
haven't installed any of the actual units. Now, the Poseiton
approach was really kind of a cool idea, and it
(25:11):
may still be a cool idea like as in it
may still be built. But the ideas that they would
have an underwater corridor that was the connecting UH like
like permanently fixed corridor underwater, and then the suits would
be connected to it, but detachable and surfaceable in case
of either emergency or repair. Right. So so each suite
(25:32):
could be built completely separately. They're neutrally buoyant, so you
can move them fairly easily through the water either up
or down. You bring them down to the right level
you connected to the corridors. The corridor has a sealed door,
and so does the suite, so that air lock exactly
(25:52):
you can therefore use. You can pressurize it to surface pressure. Right.
And so the ideas that you could be UH trans
spported by submersible down to the corridor. You get out
of the submersible into the corridor, you go to your room.
The entire time you are under surface pressure. You never
have that decompression issue, um, and you have this gorgeous
(26:14):
view where you can control the privacy of your room
through l C d UH screens. So you could actually
make them opaque or transparent and then either you know,
look at just a little section of the water or say,
you know, modesty be darned. I'm going to turn all
of the walls into windows for right now. And uh,
(26:36):
just you know, any divers are swimming by are just
gonna have to They're just gonna have to live with
the way I hang out of my hotel room. Yeah,
there's that. That would be some four inch thick plexiglass
windows that it's planning on using in twenty four underwater speed. Specifically,
I've heard UM construction was supposed to be in Portland, Oregon,
(26:57):
and you know, it's still in the works as far
as I can tell, it has not started again. They're
they're gonna lead it over to Fiji when it's done, hypothetically,
and it was announced in that they're scouting for a
second location that they have so much interest that they
want to build too. However, also that the same year
(27:18):
a Swiss firm called Strategic Hotel Consulting estimated that the
cost of one suite, building one suite, not staying there
just building it would be eleven point four million dollars
for one suite, So that could end up being a
huge issue. If that actually is an accurate estimation, then
that could really cause problems with them building this and
(27:41):
you know, affording to build a full hotel. So we're
still waiting to find out if that's in fact going
to happen. Um. There's some other cool ideas that are
part of this hotel there they talked about. Each room
would also have underwater lights, so you could light up
the scene around you at night and see the fishies
swim around the night. Also, they would have push button
(28:02):
fish feeders, so if you want to feed the fish
eies and and or attract more fishies around your window,
you push a button and it shoots food out. And Okay,
this sounds gorgeous and wonderful, and the cynic in me
is saying that it is going to be awful for
the local ecosystem. You might see a lot of obese
fish like I just yet, I've never seen a flounder
(28:25):
around before. Really delicate balance. There's there's certainly some things
that you've got to take into consideration. Althowiy I supposed
just the mere you know, anchoring of a giant corridor
in twenty four submersible rooms underwater, we're probably screw stuff up.
There's probably an environmental impact there. Yeah, there's also uh,
(28:45):
you know, it's not just made of a crylic obviously,
it's also made of steel that steals about an inch thick.
It's about twenty five millions. For you guys out there
who don't follow the imperial system like I do. We
have a little bit more to talk about as far
is sleeping underwater goes, But first let's take another quick break.
(29:11):
Then we've got a couple of other hotels we can
talk about. I mean, there's more stuff we'd say about
the sign, but the biggest thing is that we're still
waiting on the poseidon. We don't really have that much information. Yeah. Yeah,
China has plans to build one into the cliff side
of an abandoned rock quarry in Shanghai. Heard this is
the Shimal Wonderland, and it would have two submerged floors.
(29:34):
The rock quarries is partially flooded and so so two
submerged floors, and then uh, you know, down there they
would have a sports complex, spa swimming pool, restaurant and
some guest rooms, and then top side there would be
some rock climbing, bungee jumping, that kind of extreme sports
sort of thing. It was planning on opening, which looks
unlikely as of right. Now. But CNN reports that there
(29:57):
are reports of initial construction having I did um, which
is about as vague as I think it deserves to be. Well,
there's another one. Um, did you hear about the Hydropolis
underwater Hotel and Resort. I didn't, but that's a really
terrific word. So this one was proposed back in two
thousand six, again in Dubai. Dubai is going to pop
up a lot here, yeah, um, So this one was
(30:20):
proposed back in two thousand and six. The projected cost
at that time was either, depending upon the source, you read,
three million dollars or three million pounds. That's a big difference.
That is a really huge difference. Unfortunately, half the sources
I looked at said one and the other half the
sources said the other. And I think it all depended
on whether or not the person was writing in the
US or in the UK. So I do not know
(30:41):
which one of those figures is correct. I would imagine
that both of them are way low yea from what
it would actually cost. I also do want to take
this opportunity to say that a lot of our research
about these hotels has come from um, perhaps less reputable
sources than when we would usually use just because all
of these are technically fictional, right, Yeah, they're just kind
of idea is Yeah. In fact, if you ever do
(31:01):
a search for underwater hotels, you're gonna come across all
these top ten lists or seven lists or whatever travel blogs,
and most of them are talking about like these hotels
are either in operation right now, are going to open
it really soon. But that does not appear to be
the case. It looks more like these are great ideas
that mayhaps are before their time. Um. But anyway, the
(31:22):
Hydropolis was supposed to open years ago and it has
not opened yet. If in fact, as far as I
can tell, there's been no construction performed at all, or
even plans for construction, like actual concrete plans to build something.
It's just been in the discussion stage. But originally the
(31:44):
ideas that it's supposed to have a land station, so
you would enter this hotel through the land station. Then
there's a connecting tunnel from the land station to the
main hotel, and then the suites of the hotel are
all underwater. Uh, and that was supposed to be two
hundred twenty suites. This hotel is, if it were built,
(32:04):
would be enormous to be two sixty hectars, which is
about the size of Hyde Park in London. Yeah, big
one night's stay was projected to be at a measly
five thousand five now pocket change. Yeah, I'm sure that
that number has probably gone up as the hotel has
failed to be built. But I would imagine that number
is even higher now due to inflation if nothing else.
(32:26):
But then we've got another another Dubai one right, the
water discus, right, and this is being designed by Deep
Ocean Technology, which has plans to launch several of these
suckers around the world, including one over in Maldives. Um
And yeah, this this plan is for twenty one rooms
under the surface, plus a lobby and in a Scooba
training pool. Useful. This one actually looks like imagine two frisbees.
(32:48):
One of them is above the water and one of
them below the water, and they're connected by a tube,
and the tube actually has inside of it an elevator
and stairs, and then there's a few kind of outlying
disc ufo kind of looking things coming coming off of
it as well. Occasionally they kidnapped cows for no reason.
I don't know why, you know, happens. UH. Supposedly, the
(33:12):
latest estimate I read was that it would be finished
if everything goes as planned, by March two thousand fifteen.
So we still have a couple of years to go
before this thing gets built. If it gets built, keeping
in mind that we have the Poseidon and the Hydropolis,
both that predate the announcement of this hotel that still
have not been built. H this one. That underwater portion
(33:33):
would also be serviceable, like like those room pods from
from the Poseidon and UH, and those top side portions
that the kind of outlying UFO things that I was
talking about can be released and used its flotation for
the rest of the hotel in case of emergency, which
is important. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you have
an earthquake or something, or tsunami or some other issue
(33:55):
when you're right next to the ocean um. Then there's
also there's one that I saw where I found mentions
of it across the web except for anything that actually
said it existed. There were a lot of blogs that
said this is going to be an amazing underwater hotel,
and then when I tried to actually find any real
information about it, it would just fade away. But it's
(34:15):
called Reef World and it's supposed to be a floating
hotel that's along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and
it would have eight underwater suites UH that you could
stay in, so the suits themselves are submerged underwater. The
rest of the hotel is sort of floating on the
surface and even had like a helipad in the illustration
I saw where a helicopter could land. Ah, but it
(34:38):
was all artist concept drawings that I could see. I
couldn't find any actual information about whether or not construction
ever started. There is a reef World UH project in Australia,
but that refers to these pontoon boats that you can
go out to two snor Cole and to explore the
Great Barrier Reef, and there are a couple where you
can do an overnight stay as part of a package.
(35:00):
But it's not it's about Yeah, it's a boat. It's
not designed as a hotel. It's a boat. It does
have it does a underwater viewing area's kind of like
a like a glass bottom boat. But it's not a submersible,
so it's and it's not it's clearly not the same
thing as what all these blogs were saying, or if
it is the same thing, they scaled down big time
(35:21):
because they went from this massive floating hotel with a
helipad to a pontoon boat that I would say is
a step down into the water, you know, And anything
without a helipad is obviously yeah, I don't, I don't
stay and I won't stay in a holiday and unless
it's got a helipad, that's such as the life of
a podcasting, right, you know, I live in a helipad.
(35:44):
That was a terrible joke. That was bad even for me.
I feel almost ashamed. If I could feel shame, I
would feel it right now. Well, you know that's getting
Do you have any other underwater hotels you wanted to
talk about? I do not. That was everything on me. Yeah, yeah,
there's there. Occasionally you'll see other jested underwater hotels, but
most of the cases it's not really an underwater hotel.
(36:04):
And again, the ones I'm really interested in are these
ideas that the submerged, the totally submerged hotel, where you
you aren't just looking out into an aquarium or a lagoon,
you really are under the ocean. I think that's really
an interesting idea. I would be willing to try it. Lauren,
you said the Dead's doesn't really appeal to you. Yeah,
I'm kind of quicked out by open water. I'm not
really okay with it. I really like breathing, and I
(36:28):
really like walking on solid stuff. It's a they don't
They don't inject you into the ocean. Are purpose not
on purpose, and accidents can happen. You give that champagne
bottle in there and the cork explodes with just a
little more force than you were expecting. The next thing,
you know, and acrylic panel pops in. That would be
an issue. I'm I'm sure, I'm sure that they if
(36:51):
you know that the safety issues are why they do
not exist right now, and that if they were created
that they would be very safe. I would certainly like
to go check one out and maybe leave afterwards. Maybe
not stay. I'm not sure if I could sleep right right. So,
while I do still want to do the tech stuff,
travels around looking at cool things. Idea that we have,
(37:12):
um the underwater hotel, we may just may just breeze through,
maybe have like a five star meal. Yeah, I would
be fine with justifive star there and then we'll go
stay at the holiday and with the helipad that works,
I can. I can deal with that. And that wraps
up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you
guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future
(37:34):
topics we should tackle on tech Stuff, let me know.
Send me a message on Twitter. The handle is tech
stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(37:56):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Three
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. This time for a
classic episode. This episode originally published on October twenty one,
(00:25):
two thousand thirteen. It is called Sleeping Underwater, and it
is not a reference to the Godfather and Sleeping with
the Fishies. Honestly, I don't remember if I made that
reference in the episode or not. Let's listen in and
find out. I remember reading about these proposed underwater luxury hotels.
We're talking like five star hotels with all the amenities,
(00:50):
or or totally submerged in the case of one of them,
which those one I'm specifically thinking of the Poseidon we'll
talk about in a little bit later in the podcast. Yeah,
they started playing that in two thousand or two thousand one,
two one, I think, and it still doesn't exist. As
it turns out. When we started doing research for this,
we were like, oh, none of these really exist yet.
There are a few that you can stay in that
(01:12):
are real, right, They're not the super luxury hotels though, Well,
there's one that is a super luxury hotel that does
have an underwater restaurant. And then there's one that has
the underwater room because there's the Atlantis, but it's not
a completely submerged hotel the way the Poseidon is supposed
to be. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We are,
we are getting weight ahead of ourselves. Um let us
(01:34):
let us start. Well, Okay, what do you want to do?
You want to talk about the problems here. Yeah, let's
talk about the problems. Okay. So, Lauren, if I were
to tell you that you are going to go and
sleep with the fishes, you would probably think I was
going to put a hit on you, you know, Godfather style.
But if I were to say, no, no, no, I
mean that there's this hotel that's underwater where you can
(01:56):
fall asleep underwater and wake up to looking outside all
these gorgeous fish, you realize that there are some issues
you've got to work out too before anyone is comfortable
staying in that space. I would I would ask, how
am I going to breathe? I enjoy breathing. That's something
I do. Every top of the list is the breathing problem. Yeah,
As it turns out, I don't know if you guys
know this. We don't breathe water so well. We like
(02:19):
air that has a mixture of some pretty typical gases
that you find on our atmosphere. It's very convenient for us,
seeing as how this is where we live. But if
you go underwater, you know, if you get that challenge.
So you have to find a way of supplying breathable atmosphere.
You have to find a way of maintaining pressure. Uh.
And and to prevent front water pressure from breaking the
(02:40):
the the confines of your habitat, right and killing you,
because I could see above you can't breathe water, so yeah.
So and if you're deep enough, then the pressure alone
could kill you. Although for the habitats we're talking about,
you're in semi shallow water, shallow not to not like
you're waiting around in it. But we're talking maybe thirty
(03:02):
to fifty ft deep something along those lines, not you know,
a thousand meters below the surface of the ocean. Right.
This is partially because water exerts more pressure on us
than air at atmosphere pressure. Yeah, So the deeper you go,
the more pressure you feel, right, So, I don't know,
we talked before the podcast, you have not seen the Abyss. Right. So,
(03:23):
in the ABYSS, you have these characters who are going
on these deep, deep, deep ocean UH missions, and at
one point they start to experiment with a liquid oxygen.
The reason why they're using a liquid oxygen is because
if they were to go out in a diving suit
under the amount immense pressure that they would be under
as soon as they left the confines of their submersible, UH,
(03:47):
all that air would end up dissolving into their blood
and they die. So they they have come up with
this liquid stuff that would allow them to breathe. Well,
we don't really have the liquid stuff that we can
do like on the level that they did in that movie.
Right that there is research with liquid forms of I
do not have the name of it right in front
of me, but it's some kind of flora carbon actually,
(04:10):
which which is weird and interesting to me, but it's
it's a pressurized liquid ish gas and very strange. I
don't know how that would feel. Doesn't seem comfortable to
me personally, but right, so, so the problem when you
go deep enough, I mean, once you're getting down to
like three or ninety something like that, some of the
gases that you're breathing, especially nitrogen, are going to dissolve
into your blood and tissues, which is okay for a
(04:34):
short period of time, but it's very bad in the
long term and be when you go back up to
the surface. If you don't take steps to decompress, it
can turn back into nitrogen bubbles and forming in in
your tissue and blood and make you extremely sick. It's
called it's called the bends or a decompression sickness, right,
(04:55):
and it can be deadly. I mean, that's we're talking
serious stuff here, right, right. It sounded like when you
hear like always got the bends, you might get the
idea that, yeah, I just I guess did you did
you just eat something? Exactly? What's going on? Are you
a crazy straw? What happened? No, it's very serious stuff.
It's actually one of those things that divers have to consider.
(05:15):
It's when if you've ever been diving, then you know
all about this. If you've ever heard people talk about
how you have to take dives in very gradual stages.
You can't just swim straight down to the bottom of
the ocean floor in a very deep area and then
swim right back top. You have to you have to
be much more careful or else you can suffer from it.
(05:36):
And that's a huge part of your training when you
go scoopid diving, right, and you have to occasionally go
into something like a decompression chamber where the pressure inside
the chamber is controlled so that it will allow you
to get back to the surface pressure and then you
can go outside and not not suffer from decompression sickness.
So that's clearly one issue is you got to figure
(05:57):
out not just the breathing, but also how do you
do this in a way where people are not going
to suffer decompression sickness as soon as they transfer from
being underwater to being within the hotel environment or the
habitat environment. Right. So and so there are two ways
that you can pressurize an underwater cabin, and those are
to the water pressure that's surrounding the habitat, in which
(06:19):
case you're gonna want to use it in only very
shallow situations and again have some kind of decompression process
if if necessary, or to pressurize this container to the
surface atmosphere using airlocks, right, and that would be like
a submarine, a submarine is pressurized to the surface temperature,
which is why when a submarine comes back up, it's
not that you know, suddenly all the sailors on board
(06:41):
have to go through a decompression chamber or else they'll
all suffer from the bends. It's because that submarine itself
is pressurized to the surface pressure. It's similar to what
we see with airplanes, to the pressurized cabins and airplanes
to maintain a certain within a certain parameter UH closeness
to the surface pressure so that you don't have these
problems that you would suffer otherwise. Now, all of what
(07:03):
we know about this pressurization and the the gases that
you can breathe when you're underwater started. The research really
started in about the nineteen fifties. The principle of saturation diving,
which is that prolonged exposure to UH to pressurized gases
that's going to build up nitrogen in your system, was
proposed by Captain George F. Bond, who is a U. S.
(07:25):
Navy physician, and that's what really kicked off the ability
for us to start doing research with with underwater habitats.
And this was becoming important because of a little thing
called the Cold War in the space race. Oh yeah,
I remember that. I mean, also environmentalism was was on
the rise, and people were becoming really interested in all
(07:46):
of the life in oceans while to study that. Yeah,
that was still I would say that that really got
a lot of traction in the seventies, apart from one
specific person who anyone who's familiar with marine biology knows
the name, Jacques Cousto right, was certainly instrumental in six Yeah. Yeah,
(08:07):
So his work in the sixties certainly went a far
away to giving us a greater appreciation and understanding of
underwater environments. And in fact, um he started looking into
an underwater habitat right, Right, in nineteen sixty two, he
started launching experiments in these pressurized underwater trips. Uh. He
(08:29):
created the con Shelf one, which was a free standing
structure down about thirty six ft under under the water,
and and divers lived in it for about a week.
So nineteen sixty two, that's pretty that's that's fairly impressive.
I mean, considering that, you know, you're you weren't going
to have many Apollo astronauts going up until wait, wait,
I guess, I guess about that time well, they're starting
(08:50):
the training programs. Anyway, it wasn't until the late sixties
that you really got them into going out into orbit.
But yeah, so so you've got this this underwater habitat
staying there for about a week, which that plays into
our discussion on underwater hotels. That's you know, a typical
vacation stays is a week long. So it's funny to
think that scientific research here, specifically looking into marine environments
(09:15):
of marine life, is somewhat of paving the way underwater,
as it were, to underwater tourism and underwater hotels. Absolutely. Yeah.
There was another man named Edwin A. Link who was
um who who was another oceanographer who was working in
the same field at the time. One of his projects,
called The Man in the Sea would in nineteen sixty
four get adopted by the U. S. Navy and that
(09:38):
would turn into the Sea Lab program that you guys
might have heard of. Yeah, I remember that show on
Cartoon Network. No, no different, different, different Sea Lab, although
they did have at some point a trained dolphin that
would run errands for them. Wow. Really, I I don't
know what to say about that. That was That was
Sea Lab two in nineteen sixty right, and so then
(10:00):
you've also got uh, I mean Custo continued work of
creating the conell three. Uh, there was the more sea labs,
as I recall, So we have this development where we're
learning more and more about how to create habitats that
can safely house people for a certain length of time,
increasingly long periods of time throughout throughout the sixties, we
(10:22):
went from that first initial week two up to a
month and more so right right there was Um, there's
one in particular I want to talk about, but I
want to I want to give you the opportunity to
get through the sixties and seventies first before I jump
into it, because I'm going to talk about the Noah one. Okay,
I think, go go for it, alright, alright, So, so
(10:42):
again sixties and seventies, we see more and more of
the same sort of environments used for Are these habitats
used for scientific research? Noah establishes one called Aquarius off
the coast of Saint Croix, and Aquarius is one of
the two underwater habitats that are still really actively used
(11:04):
these days. Um. The other one is now called Jewels,
but it's it's now privately owned. It's now privately owned
and operated as an underwater hotel. But it didn't start
off that way. He started, right, It started off as
one of these research habitats, and and all of these
that we've been talking about have been research habitats, you know,
kind of based on ocean life, but also kind of
(11:26):
based on exactly how can we do this crazy keeping
people underwater? Right? Right? So the Jewels Undersea Lodge was
named after, of course, Jules Willisberne and his leagues under
the sea. Right, although this one is not twenty leagues
under the sea, certainly not. It is less than that semifically.
It's I think it's twenty one below the surface exactly.
It is twenty one. The services the world's first underwater hotel.
(11:50):
It was originally called La lupa research lab. Yes, it
was rendered. It was created in the nineteen seventies and
then renovated into a hotel in the nineteen right. And
you it's it's scuba focus. It's really for scuba enthusiasts.
I think you don't have to have Scooba certification to go,
but they will make you take a training course just
(12:10):
to make sure that you're dive down because you have
to scuba dive into the hotel. That's the only way
to get there. The way it works is that they
have a wet room. That's that's called wet room because
that's where you go to when you when you come
into the hotel, and that's where you end up storing
all your scuba gear. And the entrance is what's called
a moon pool, which I just love how romantic and
lovely that name is, which is really a hole cutting
(12:31):
the floor. It's much nicer than hole cutting the floors.
Names go and uh and right. It's it's compressed, I think,
to the to the water around you. So you shouldn't
stay in there very very long. And the idea is
that you you swim underneath the structure, you come up
through the moon pool, you pull yourself out, kind of
like pulling yourself out of a swimming pool, and then
(12:52):
you are inside the hotel and uh, you know again,
it's it's that that water pressure specifically, because if you
were at serve this pressure, then you have to worry
about decompression. Uh. If you can then take off all
your gear, take a hot shower, and then move into
one of the other two rooms inside the Jewels. UH
motel is what I've seen it referred to by other
(13:15):
underwater hotel companies. Uh it is. If you want to
know some statistics. It's fifty ft long, which is about
fifteen meters. It's twenty ft wide that's six meters, and
eleven ft tall, which about three point four meters. It was.
It's off the coast of Key Largo in the Florida Keys,
made famous, of course by the Beach Boys in their
(13:35):
song Anyway, so that you uh, you know, like you said, Lauren,
you have to get there by diving. Whether or not
you're certified doesn't matter. They can put you through that course,
but you have to get there by diving. They don't
have some other means of getting you there. I think
that originally they had let guests go down breathing through
(13:55):
a tube a pipe that was piping oxygen down like
snoop diving, which is a combination snorkeling and scuba, right,
But due to safety concerns they moved it to a
full exactly. That sounds like that was a good idea
moving it um it's uh, you know, once you get
in there, you've got some interesting amenities. They have windows
(14:17):
that look out their forty two inches in diameter or
um uh, it's the way wait, I wrote down how
many how many centimeters? A hundred seven centimeters? I'm looking
out for you guys. I just I can't make the
conversion in my head yet. I'm not that good. Um.
Other amenities include things like air conditioning and an entertainment center.
The picture I saw was was an old uh caval
(14:39):
ray tube television showing I think it was the Abyss
actually on pause. Um, but anyway, it's the You also
can have meals delivered down there, including from the tower
of Pizza Um restaurant. I know because I actually looked
into this to see. You know, I was curious to
see how much it was. Did you see how much
(15:00):
it costs to stay there? I did not, or if
I did, I did not make a noteworka. So it's really,
you know, when you think about it, you're staying underneath
the ocean. So first of all, when we're going to
talk about these other underwater hotels in the moment, we're
talking about super luxurious experiences. At least that's the idea,
and so they tend to be pretty pricey, with one
in particular really breaking the bank on a per night's stay.
(15:24):
But the Jewels Undersea Lodge, if it's if it's a
party of two, it's a d dollars per night. So
that's a party of two. That's expensive. But you're talking
about being underwater as a unique experience right now, right,
So uh, if it's three to but it gets lower
per person if you add more people. So if you
(15:44):
have three to four people staying there, it ends up
being three fifty dollars per person instead of four hundred
per prison. If you have five to six people staying there,
it's three hundred dollars per person. However, you are then
staying with five to six people in a tin can. Well,
you know, not all of us, everybody, Lauren, So you
know we can get along some of us with lots
(16:04):
of people in an enclosed space. This open floor plan
that we have in our office is really keyed up
us on our anxiety levels and aggression levels have gone
out the charts. I have to say, I'm pretty cranky. Yeah,
this is only the first day, Lauren. We've got lots
more of these to look forward to Succa. You have
to deal with me. There's some behind the scenes stuff
from how stuff works right there for you guys. So anyway, yeah,
(16:28):
not not so expensive. Comparatively speaking, it is very expensive
our hotel room, but for a hotel room underwater, as
it turns out, not so expensive. Um so that's That's
kind of the first one I wanted to talk about
because it was a direct descendant. In fact, it was
one of these underwater research habitats. Okay, it's Jonathan from.
(16:48):
If I could tell Jonathan from anything, it would be
you know, prepare for the worst. But hey, let's just
take a quick break and we'll be right back with
this classic episode. All right, So now we're gonna talk
about some other underwater hotels. There is one other one
(17:11):
that we can talk about that's actually running. It's working.
You can go and you can book a room there
if you wanted to, or the room there. There's only one.
There's only the one. This is called the utter In.
It is in Sweden on Lake something or other. I
can't pronounce it. I'm not even gonna try, Like Millaren,
Let's let's say that is that is the English looking
pronunciation of that name, which is probably completely incorrect because,
(17:32):
as we have previously learned in the pan episode, Sweden.
Be crazy. Yeah, we we are. Our mouths don't make
those sounds utter in obviously that that means otter. In
it's is otter. So it's about otters. It was created
as an art project in the year two thousand by
Mikhail Genberg. And okay, so so it's got it's got
(17:55):
an above above surface part in a below surface part
above above ground above sir, as I keep wanting to
say ground, there's it's kind of like a red shed
with a deck around it. Yeah, it looks like it
looks like it's got a little floating dock that's got
nothing but a little tiny red shack on it. So
if you were looking at it just from the surface,
you think that is the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen.
(18:16):
It's just floating out there on the lake. And what's
that very small barriage which with a very small wood
shed on it. Um it does have you know, a
little bit of a deck for sun chairs or something.
You can fit a good few sun chairs out there.
And then there's a tube leading below the surface. You
can go down a ladder through this tube into what
I believe is a single room. It does not look
(18:37):
terribly roomy, no, I think it's a room. It has
two beds and a few picture windows that will let
you look out into the lake. As of as it
listed for UM, I think a thousand, seven hundred and
fifty dollars for seven nights. Okay, so I'm not bad.
It's actually cheaper than the Jewels one if you're looking
(18:58):
to stay for a week, uh if you. But however,
you're pretty much left up on your own here. You
can opt in to getting food delivered to you for
an extra charge. Where I think, I think it's row
about distance to them. Yeah, they give you an inflatable
canoe where you can you can row back to shore
so that you can go and get things like food
(19:21):
or entertainment. It is. It is pretty impressively creepy looking. Actually,
I have to say I was looking at some pictures
of the interior and the lake is a very living lake,
and so it's a little bit briny. It's kind of
grayish and greenish, lots of allergae, lots of fish. Yeah,
it gets very dark at night, and I'm sort of
(19:41):
uncomfortable with that. Yeah, the idea that you, yeah, you're
not getting any starlight or moonlight down there. I mean,
it was the same sort of thing with the Jewels one, right,
like the Jewels Hotel that if you ever see pictures
of it, you see these big round windows since looking
onto very green water, you know, and it's it's not
like it's not the kind of don't think about those
Caribbean beaches or the ones and you see in Southeast Asia,
(20:04):
whereas that crystal blue water, it's not like that. So anyway,
the those are the two that you could actually book
a room at right now and go and stay in
right now, the Jewels and the other. But therefore, for
a room underwater, there are a couple other hotels that
do have portions something underwater, like the Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. Specifically,
there are two Atlantis resorts. There's one in Dubai and
(20:26):
there's one in the Bahamas. If you ever look at
this thing, it looks like two giant wings and the
center of it um has sort of an outline that
looks like an Arabesque tower with a sort of a
bridging kind of section on the very top. That will
come in into play in just a second, because I've
got a tangent that I have to talk about. But anyway,
(20:48):
it has two suits, the Poseidon and the Neptune. Very clever.
The Posidona Neptune suites are multi floor suites and part
of it is above the level of a lagoon that
it looks out over, but the bottom floor is actually
under the surface of the water line and has windows
look out into the lagoon. So according to one picture,
(21:11):
although I couldn't find any confirmation on the actual Atlanti site,
it was one of those pictures where I wondered if
it was a an artist rendition or if it was
actually this was really taken inside the suite, and one
of them that showed a bedroom where the entire bedroom
was submerged in the lagoon, so you you are looking
out like when you look up from your bed, you're
(21:33):
looking at the aquarium essentially, or in the inside the lagoon,
so you're looking at all the sea life swimming around you.
None of the pictures I saw on the actual site
reflected that specific setup, so I don't know that that's
really how it turned out. That might have been one
of those things like and what it really looks like
is no, you've got a window that looks out into
the lagoon, which still is gorgeous but it's not the
(21:55):
same effect obviously. Um. Anyway, these two swe eats are
a little a little expensive. If you want to stay
at either the Poseidon or the Neptune Sweet in the
Atlantis Resort in Dubai for one night, that'll set you
back eight thousand eight for one night's stay. Yeah, it's
(22:16):
not the most expensive sweet in the hotel I and
I'm sure it's not by far the most expensive sweet
in Dubai. The most expensive sweet in the Atlantis Resort
and Dubai is Remember why I said I had that
bridging kind of section that's at the very top of
that Arabesque tower. Well that that bridging section is actually
a suite. It's called the Royal Bridge Suite. And one
(22:38):
night's stay will set you back about thirty seven thousand,
eight hundred dollars for one night. So that's a good
salary right there for one night's stay. Yeah, that's that's
much like many people's yearly y. Yeah, to stay for
one night. Anyway. Clearly there's a section of the world
(22:59):
that lives in a a front bracket than I do. Uh.
It's still pretty interesting, but it's not the same thing
as the submerged hotel idea that we were promised no,
and uh, there's there's also a restaurant that you can
go to in a Hilton Hotel out in Maldives, Maldives Islands. Yes. Um,
(23:20):
that's the Conrad mal Dives, Rangali Island. It's it's owned
again by the by the Hilton Hotel chain. Um. The
hotel itself is spread over two islands connected by a bridge.
Most of it is top side, but it does have
this this undersea restaurant that's available. Um. It's only has
fourteen chairs, but you can also rent it out for
events for an undisclosed amount of money. Undisclosed huge amount
(23:43):
of money meaning huge. The pictures of this are very
similar to what I was talking about about that bedroom
where it's the you know, because the the ceiling itself
is also made out of a crylic. It's this arc.
There's an arch all the way through the dining room
where you're surrounded on both sides and above it's like
a seventy degree so you're you're you're looking around underwater,
(24:07):
and it looks very much to me like the there's
a tunnel in the Georgia Aquarium in downtown Atlanta that
is a very similar view. Or um, maybe if you
guys have seen a really terrific BioShock causplay of a
big daddy and little sister, it took place in this
in the Georgia Mark. You've seen the documentary Jaws three,
which takes place in Sea World and they walk through
some of the Sea World tunnel. Same sort of thing,
(24:28):
except you know, wider. Uh So that kind of brings
us to some of the ones that have been proposed
but as far as we can tell, have yet to
be built in some cases, have yet to have any
work done on them whatsoever. In most cases have yet
to have any work done on them. And that that
I think we should probably go ahead and just start
with the Poseidon because that was the one that that
(24:49):
I first heard of and was so impressed by and
could not wait to hear. But it was originally supposed
to open in two thousand eight nine, I think, okay,
two thousand nine. Uh, as far as I know, no
work has really been done on the the like they
haven't installed any of the actual units. Now, the Poseiton
approach was really kind of a cool idea, and it
(25:11):
may still be a cool idea like as in it
may still be built. But the ideas that they would
have an underwater corridor that was the connecting UH like
like permanently fixed corridor underwater, and then the suits would
be connected to it, but detachable and surfaceable in case
of either emergency or repair. Right. So so each suite
(25:32):
could be built completely separately. They're neutrally buoyant, so you
can move them fairly easily through the water either up
or down. You bring them down to the right level
you connected to the corridors. The corridor has a sealed door,
and so does the suite, so that air lock exactly
(25:52):
you can therefore use. You can pressurize it to surface pressure. Right.
And so the ideas that you could be UH trans
spported by submersible down to the corridor. You get out
of the submersible into the corridor, you go to your room.
The entire time you are under surface pressure. You never
have that decompression issue, um, and you have this gorgeous
(26:14):
view where you can control the privacy of your room
through l C d UH screens. So you could actually
make them opaque or transparent and then either you know,
look at just a little section of the water or say,
you know, modesty be darned. I'm going to turn all
of the walls into windows for right now. And uh,
(26:36):
just you know, any divers are swimming by are just
gonna have to They're just gonna have to live with
the way I hang out of my hotel room. Yeah,
there's that. That would be some four inch thick plexiglass
windows that it's planning on using in twenty four underwater speed. Specifically,
I've heard UM construction was supposed to be in Portland, Oregon,
(26:57):
and you know, it's still in the works as far
as I can tell, it has not started again. They're
they're gonna lead it over to Fiji when it's done, hypothetically,
and it was announced in that they're scouting for a
second location that they have so much interest that they
want to build too. However, also that the same year
(27:18):
a Swiss firm called Strategic Hotel Consulting estimated that the
cost of one suite, building one suite, not staying there
just building it would be eleven point four million dollars
for one suite, So that could end up being a
huge issue. If that actually is an accurate estimation, then
that could really cause problems with them building this and
(27:41):
you know, affording to build a full hotel. So we're
still waiting to find out if that's in fact going
to happen. Um. There's some other cool ideas that are
part of this hotel there they talked about. Each room
would also have underwater lights, so you could light up
the scene around you at night and see the fishies
swim around the night. Also, they would have push button
(28:02):
fish feeders, so if you want to feed the fish
eies and and or attract more fishies around your window,
you push a button and it shoots food out. And Okay,
this sounds gorgeous and wonderful, and the cynic in me
is saying that it is going to be awful for
the local ecosystem. You might see a lot of obese
fish like I just yet, I've never seen a flounder
(28:25):
around before. Really delicate balance. There's there's certainly some things
that you've got to take into consideration. Althowiy I supposed
just the mere you know, anchoring of a giant corridor
in twenty four submersible rooms underwater, we're probably screw stuff up.
There's probably an environmental impact there. Yeah, there's also uh,
(28:45):
you know, it's not just made of a crylic obviously,
it's also made of steel that steals about an inch thick.
It's about twenty five millions. For you guys out there
who don't follow the imperial system like I do. We
have a little bit more to talk about as far
is sleeping underwater goes, But first let's take another quick break.
(29:11):
Then we've got a couple of other hotels we can
talk about. I mean, there's more stuff we'd say about
the sign, but the biggest thing is that we're still
waiting on the poseidon. We don't really have that much information. Yeah. Yeah,
China has plans to build one into the cliff side
of an abandoned rock quarry in Shanghai. Heard this is
the Shimal Wonderland, and it would have two submerged floors.
(29:34):
The rock quarries is partially flooded and so so two
submerged floors, and then uh, you know, down there they
would have a sports complex, spa swimming pool, restaurant and
some guest rooms, and then top side there would be
some rock climbing, bungee jumping, that kind of extreme sports
sort of thing. It was planning on opening, which looks
unlikely as of right. Now. But CNN reports that there
(29:57):
are reports of initial construction having I did um, which
is about as vague as I think it deserves to be. Well,
there's another one. Um, did you hear about the Hydropolis
underwater Hotel and Resort. I didn't, but that's a really
terrific word. So this one was proposed back in two
thousand six, again in Dubai. Dubai is going to pop
up a lot here, yeah, um, So this one was
(30:20):
proposed back in two thousand and six. The projected cost
at that time was either, depending upon the source, you read,
three million dollars or three million pounds. That's a big difference.
That is a really huge difference. Unfortunately, half the sources
I looked at said one and the other half the
sources said the other. And I think it all depended
on whether or not the person was writing in the
US or in the UK. So I do not know
(30:41):
which one of those figures is correct. I would imagine
that both of them are way low yea from what
it would actually cost. I also do want to take
this opportunity to say that a lot of our research
about these hotels has come from um, perhaps less reputable
sources than when we would usually use just because all
of these are technically fictional, right, Yeah, they're just kind
of idea is Yeah. In fact, if you ever do
(31:01):
a search for underwater hotels, you're gonna come across all
these top ten lists or seven lists or whatever travel blogs,
and most of them are talking about like these hotels
are either in operation right now, are going to open
it really soon. But that does not appear to be
the case. It looks more like these are great ideas
that mayhaps are before their time. Um. But anyway, the
(31:22):
Hydropolis was supposed to open years ago and it has
not opened yet. If in fact, as far as I
can tell, there's been no construction performed at all, or
even plans for construction, like actual concrete plans to build something.
It's just been in the discussion stage. But originally the
(31:44):
ideas that it's supposed to have a land station, so
you would enter this hotel through the land station. Then
there's a connecting tunnel from the land station to the
main hotel, and then the suites of the hotel are
all underwater. Uh, and that was supposed to be two
hundred twenty suites. This hotel is, if it were built,
(32:04):
would be enormous to be two sixty hectars, which is
about the size of Hyde Park in London. Yeah, big
one night's stay was projected to be at a measly
five thousand five now pocket change. Yeah, I'm sure that
that number has probably gone up as the hotel has
failed to be built. But I would imagine that number
is even higher now due to inflation if nothing else.
(32:26):
But then we've got another another Dubai one right, the
water discus, right, and this is being designed by Deep
Ocean Technology, which has plans to launch several of these
suckers around the world, including one over in Maldives. Um
And yeah, this this plan is for twenty one rooms
under the surface, plus a lobby and in a Scooba
training pool. Useful. This one actually looks like imagine two frisbees.
(32:48):
One of them is above the water and one of
them below the water, and they're connected by a tube,
and the tube actually has inside of it an elevator
and stairs, and then there's a few kind of outlying
disc ufo kind of looking things coming coming off of
it as well. Occasionally they kidnapped cows for no reason.
I don't know why, you know, happens. UH. Supposedly, the
(33:12):
latest estimate I read was that it would be finished
if everything goes as planned, by March two thousand fifteen.
So we still have a couple of years to go
before this thing gets built. If it gets built, keeping
in mind that we have the Poseidon and the Hydropolis,
both that predate the announcement of this hotel that still
have not been built. H this one. That underwater portion
(33:33):
would also be serviceable, like like those room pods from
from the Poseidon and UH, and those top side portions
that the kind of outlying UFO things that I was
talking about can be released and used its flotation for
the rest of the hotel in case of emergency, which
is important. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you have
an earthquake or something, or tsunami or some other issue
(33:55):
when you're right next to the ocean um. Then there's
also there's one that I saw where I found mentions
of it across the web except for anything that actually
said it existed. There were a lot of blogs that
said this is going to be an amazing underwater hotel,
and then when I tried to actually find any real
information about it, it would just fade away. But it's
(34:15):
called Reef World and it's supposed to be a floating
hotel that's along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and
it would have eight underwater suites UH that you could
stay in, so the suits themselves are submerged underwater. The
rest of the hotel is sort of floating on the
surface and even had like a helipad in the illustration
I saw where a helicopter could land. Ah, but it
(34:38):
was all artist concept drawings that I could see. I
couldn't find any actual information about whether or not construction
ever started. There is a reef World UH project in Australia,
but that refers to these pontoon boats that you can
go out to two snor Cole and to explore the
Great Barrier Reef, and there are a couple where you
can do an overnight stay as part of a package.
(35:00):
But it's not it's about Yeah, it's a boat. It's
not designed as a hotel. It's a boat. It does
have it does a underwater viewing area's kind of like
a like a glass bottom boat. But it's not a submersible,
so it's and it's not it's clearly not the same
thing as what all these blogs were saying, or if
it is the same thing, they scaled down big time
(35:21):
because they went from this massive floating hotel with a
helipad to a pontoon boat that I would say is
a step down into the water, you know, And anything
without a helipad is obviously yeah, I don't, I don't
stay and I won't stay in a holiday and unless
it's got a helipad, that's such as the life of
a podcasting, right, you know, I live in a helipad.
(35:44):
That was a terrible joke. That was bad even for me.
I feel almost ashamed. If I could feel shame, I
would feel it right now. Well, you know that's getting
Do you have any other underwater hotels you wanted to
talk about? I do not. That was everything on me. Yeah, yeah,
there's there. Occasionally you'll see other jested underwater hotels, but
most of the cases it's not really an underwater hotel.
(36:04):
And again, the ones I'm really interested in are these
ideas that the submerged, the totally submerged hotel, where you
you aren't just looking out into an aquarium or a lagoon,
you really are under the ocean. I think that's really
an interesting idea. I would be willing to try it. Lauren,
you said the Dead's doesn't really appeal to you. Yeah,
I'm kind of quicked out by open water. I'm not
really okay with it. I really like breathing, and I
(36:28):
really like walking on solid stuff. It's a they don't
They don't inject you into the ocean. Are purpose not
on purpose, and accidents can happen. You give that champagne
bottle in there and the cork explodes with just a
little more force than you were expecting. The next thing,
you know, and acrylic panel pops in. That would be
an issue. I'm I'm sure, I'm sure that they if
(36:51):
you know that the safety issues are why they do
not exist right now, and that if they were created
that they would be very safe. I would certainly like
to go check one out and maybe leave afterwards. Maybe
not stay. I'm not sure if I could sleep right right. So,
while I do still want to do the tech stuff,
travels around looking at cool things. Idea that we have,
(37:12):
um the underwater hotel, we may just may just breeze through,
maybe have like a five star meal. Yeah, I would
be fine with justifive star there and then we'll go
stay at the holiday and with the helipad that works,
I can. I can deal with that. And that wraps
up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you
guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future
(37:34):
topics we should tackle on tech Stuff, let me know.
Send me a message on Twitter. The handle is tech
stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
(37:56):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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TechStuff News
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Karah Preiss
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