back to article China plans 'deep-sea base project'

China is to test a manned submersible capable of descending to 7,000 metres (23,000ft)* beneath the waves as part of a planned "deep-sea base project", the China Internet Information Centre reports. Xinhua news agency is keeping tight-lipped on details, but notes that the submersible programme will enjoy "equal importance with …

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  1. LPF

    Smart move

    If there are resources that can be gained from the ocean depths, the first thing you have to do is work out a way for humans to be able to work long in that environment without ill effects.

    Of course, china will have to relty of stealing western tech as per usual, so they will not be able to go as far as they have with the space program, which is mostly modified soviet tech.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just in time for retrieving bits of fallen satellite?

    Perhaps.

  3. Bad Beaver

    Strange

    Why is it that all those endeavours China undertakes lately have this typical western 1950s/60s "The world of the year 2000" air to them? Have they accumulated material since 1945 and now work through it by category?

    Military - check

    Economy - check

    Fantastic world of tomorrow - getting there

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @LPF Contraversial

    two words, gun powder

  5. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Flame

    Found in Translation

    Of course, there is always A.N.Other Reality Possibility .....that it is a Deep C Base Project too.

    And that may very well, when done very well [and the East does things very well indeed once they set their mind to the task] have them Lead in Sublime Feeds.

    A Nation hungry for Knowledge rather than Wealth is the Richest of Peoples and will easily Eclipse Power with ITs Controls.

    The Knack which Fat Cat Wild Westerners appear to have lost/forgotten/forsaken? It is certainly one which they ignore even whenever IT is Mooted in Plain Text/Mother Tongue.

  6. RainForestGuppy
    Coat

    @Bad Beaver

    Does that mean that in a couple of year's they'll enter the summer of Peace and Love...

    My God, with a population that large, the dope cloud could do more environment damage that any number or SUV's

  7. Andraž Levstik

    Well

    @Strange

    Communist work in some 5 year or so steps... For each 5 years they plan what will happen and how it

    will happen etc... So yeah it would make sense...

    Generaly:

    I guess they found another solution for their overpopulation... just populate the bottom of the sea...

    Plenty of dirt down there...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mwahahahah!

    Presumably it'll flit between picking up bits of lightly barbecued spy satellite and snipping ocean cables?

  9. Geoff Spick
    Thumb Down

    Going down?

    Arr your deep sea base belong... glug, glug, glug

  10. Bad Beaver

    Chinese of the deep

    @ RainForestGuppy:

    Likely, but you won't read about it anywhere. We'll need to monitor that dope cloud from space (as the Chinese will).

  11. Solomon Grundy

    5 Year Steps

    Communist work in some 5 year or so steps... For each 5 years they plan what will happen and how it?

    So do most successful businesses, does that make them Communist?

  12. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Alien

    Real Spooky ........or just Innocent Coincidence?

    Crikey, RainForestGuppy/Bad Beaver [now there's an oxymoron in the present context :-)] .... is there some Love already, all ready, in the AIR? Last One to the Gig is a Fairy.

    FlowurPower2 ... Posted Friday 22nd February 2008 11:50 GMT ...... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/21/spy_sat_shoot_hit_secrets_safe/comments/

  13. Ru

    Contraversial [sic]

    What about gunpowder? The chinese made all sorts of clever things a very long time ago, and yet so many of these technologies were never developed to the extent that European nationed managed.

    Artillery and rocketry, anyone?

    I'm not about to cast aspersions on the Chinese, but it might be nice if someone could give examples of interesting things they've created in the last 1000 years or so? Or better yet, the last 100?

  14. Chad H.
    Coat

    Memo from china

    all your base are belong to us

  15. Rob
    Pirate

    Bioshock...

    Have the Chinese finally got Bioshock?

  16. kolakidd

    If it were the Japanese...

    The whales would be nervous. For now it's just the sea cucumbers freaking out

  17. Peter Lenz
    Alien

    @amanfrommars

    "A Nation hungry for Knowledge rather than Wealth is the Richest of Peoples and will easily Eclipse Power with ITs Controls."

    Somethings wrong with our Martian friend, that almost made sense.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Time for a remake..

    of The Spy Who Loved Me?

    We have the underwater car (it's even a lotus) and now the underwater base.

    All we need is for a 7 foot man with metal teeth and we're sorted.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Ru

    'I'm not about to cast aspersions on the Chinese, but it might be nice if someone could give examples of interesting things they've created in the last 1000 years or so? Or better yet, the last 100?'

    Ziyi Zhang???

    Well *I* find her interesting ;)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Ru

    The ability to rapidly gear up industrially, launching genuine competition in all manner of consumer goods against much more technologically advanced traditional powers such as the Western Europe and North America?

    Sure, they haven't invented anything new, but they're sure kicking our asses making copies of the old stuff. Even if there's not a lot of innovation in shovels, for instance, you can sure make a bunch of money if you sell a billion of them.

  21. Robert Hill

    Trieste...

    "*Impressive, but some way short of the all-time record, achieved in 1960 by the US's bathyscaphe Trieste which, with its crew of two, hit the bottom of the Marianas Trench at 10,900m (35,800ft)."

    Yes, but Trieste wasn't REALLY American - it was built by a French father and son, who built it in...the city of Trieste, France. They could not keep paying for it's improvements and upkeep however, and sold an interest in it to the US Navy. Flush with the cash of the Americans, the Frenchmen made some further improvements, and with the son piloting, he and an American Navy officer decended once, and only once, to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. They disturbed some flatworms as they touched down, proving that life could exist at amazing depths, but conducted no other science. Hence, no one has returned, because we just didn't learn a hell of a lot.

    If the Chinese need undersea tech, they certainly don't have to buy it from the US, they can always head to France and other EU states...

  22. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Dumb Move

    Just how hard is it to build an unmanned submersible on a long wire? (If the wire breaks, the sub stops what it is doing and returns to the surface.) As with space travel, many of the engineering challenges relate to keeping people alive in places where they should be dead. Unlike space travel, the long wire approach means you don't even need breakthroughs in AI.

  23. Seán

    Sharks with frikking laser beams attached to their heads

    uhuh huh yeah

  24. R Stinstrom
    Coat

    I thought . . .

    The best Sea Base was Chilean . . .

  25. StopthePropaganda

    what possible point?

    militarily it's stupid. maybe they plan on basing supercavitating torpedoes as some sort of anti-naval invasion device. the Navy gave up on undersea bases when it became possible to launch highly accurate ICBM's from mobile submarines. That's why the liquid breathing and gill experiments (like in The Abyss) lost favor and were discontinued.

    But for resource harvesting? Cmon. unmanned subs and servomechanisms have been tested and used for undersea work for decades. Anything that can be done underwater can be done by remote even better.

  26. Svein Skogen

    Ok, who allowed

    OK, who allowed the Chinese to play Deus Ex, and grab ideas?

    //Svein

  27. Alistair Young Silver badge
    Alert

    @Robert Hill

    Trieste is in Italy, not France. It was very nearly part of Tito's Yugoslavia after the last war, but my Grandfather stopped that happening right quick. (Well ok, the rest of the New Zealand Division helped a bit I suppose.)

  28. Peter Rowan
    Black Helicopters

    Undersea resources

    There are loads of manganese nodules and other materials not found closer and at less depth. Also the China sea has some very large deposits of oil, but again at really great depth. Our Oriental friends know what they are doing it seems. On other resources down in the depths, the UN still has to agree UNCLOS 3, look it up as I can't be bothered to explain it, sorry.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    The trouble with Chinese Sea Bases...

    is half an hour after you've eaten one, you are hungry again!

    Mine's the Mandarin Jacket

  30. Rui
    Black Helicopters

    Well..

    With all that high-tech sattelites, unmaned surveillance planes, eye-o-sauron type big brother techie things... they can even see what is the color of my boxers, here.

    But, will anyone see when Hu Jintao farts down there at deep sea base?.... maybe not...

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