{"id":42,"date":"2008-11-24T16:28:26","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T23:28:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/?p=42"},"modified":"2008-11-24T16:58:57","modified_gmt":"2008-11-24T23:58:57","slug":"bob-ballard-calls-for-ocean-colonization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/24\/bob-ballard-calls-for-ocean-colonization\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Ballard calls for ocean colonization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of this video<\/a> is familiar history to me, but the last 10 minutes held some surprises for me.\u00c2\u00a0 First, the U.S. Government is now funding a new ocean Explorer program and dedicated ship<\/a>, though it’s still poignant that the NASA budget for outer space exploration is 1600 times the NOAA budget for inner space (ocean) exploration.<\/p>\n

\"Ballard's<\/a><\/p>\n

Second, he posed a question I’ve never heard an ocean leader pose: “Why are we not looking at moving out onto the sea?”\u00c2\u00a0 While showing a schematic of a (hypothetical?) ocean habitat in a giant spar buoy, he goes on:<\/p>\n

“Why do we have programs to build a habitation on Mars and we have programs to look at colonizing the moon, but we do not have a program looking at how we colonize our own planet?\u00c2\u00a0 And the technology is at hand!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps it is time to learn how to live in the ocean right here in the Pacific Northwest?\u00c2\u00a0 What could we learn if the Salish Sea had a sea floor observatory?\u00c2\u00a0 Would it be valuable for research or education to have a human habitat underwater at\u00c2\u00a0 the Friday Harbor Labs or Lime Kiln State Park?\u00c2\u00a0 Or can the same value be gained through virtual presence: enhancement of the underwater sensors at Race Rocks, the Seahurst Observatory, and the fledgling Ocean Observing Initiative’s Northwest regional expression<\/a>, like the Venus line<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of this video is familiar history to me, but the last 10 minutes held some surprises for me.\u00c2\u00a0 First, the U.S. Government is now funding a new ocean Explorer program and dedicated ship, though it’s still poignant that the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[11],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-iron-fertilization","tag-ballard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qtAj-G","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}