Deep Sea Base - Why be there? Biotechnology

[DeepSeaBase]

In continuing my series on a deep sea base, another hypothesized reason of being there is biotechnology. This one seems more probable than the diamond anvil cell. The most obvious need is to research piezotrophs in their natural habitat. If the lab can be ambient pressure then the lab really can just be as flimsy as tin foil. Not literally, but relatively speaking that's still true.

The problem of deep ocean comes from pressure hulls and ballasts that can survive those depths. Even the best ballasts, syntactic foams, are likely to crack and their failure means the loss of the lab to the Deeps.

Enthalpy has shown some other interesting solutions to ballast, but ultimately, if the lab is staying on the bottom, it doesn't have to be substantial and can be exposed to the ambient pressure.

If the lab environment needs some inert gas or such to keep the experiments more pure, well the lab can still be at no pressure gradient and a moonpool etc would function normally.

So I have been looking for biotechnologies that would benefit from such a high pressure lab environment and there's quite a lot.

I believe, and would like to test this rationale, that a high pressure environment would allow for a simply built high pressure laboratory, since if the ambient pressure is 110MPa then a 110MPa internal pressure would have zero gradient.

Thus, the lab environment would reduce the need for specialized equipment which interferes with cell-cultures. This is actually true if you think I'm just rambling about science fiction.

I have citations to the peer reviewed research that is in my actual proposal that someday I hope to publish. But for the purposes of this thread, basically, the equipment needed to provide pressure to cell cultures also impedes natural processes that the cells would otherwise use, such as oxygenation of the samples. As such...the experiments are by their nature flawed.

However, if the experiment were conducted at 110MPa and the whole lab were pressurized, then the experiments can be conducted using normal lab equipment with little modification to the equipment themselves. The experiments would have higher fidelity.

The question is why not just build a room-sized pressure vessel at sea level buried into the ground or something to prevent rupture of the containment vessel.

My only argument to that thus far is that both a high pressure containment or a high pressure hull are similar technological challenges and so we might as well put it at the bottom of the ocean where a deep sea station will better be able to facilitate MORE local habitat conditions than just a pressure vessel at sea level.

There's also a few technical considerations, primarily a pressure hull is self-sealing where as a containment vessel is likely to explode if any component fails.

When working with deadly pathogens, that simply is unacceptable.

Since the ONLY way to kill viruses and keep them intact for faithful-analogs and for high-fidelity killed-virus vaccine prototypes is to kill viruses with 100+MPa; pressurizing equipment to 100MPa in a BSL4 lab at sea level sounds like a bad idea, and is impossible given regulations.

So this advanced methodology for vaccine production is virtually shut-off for more dangerous diseases.

But, put them at the bottom of the ocean and put them in a pressure hull that has zero pressure gradient (no likelihood to explode) and now you have a very attractive BSL4 lab at the bottom of the sea that if it fails it doesn't explode into a weapon of mass destruction, instead if it fails it self-sterilizes.

So I'm very excited by these probable reasons for being at the bottom of the sea.

Edited May 10, 2021 by DeepSeaBase