Sealab: America's Forgotten Quest to Live and Work on the Ocean Floor
In the 1950s, naval medical doctor George Bond evangelized a vision of submarine habitats that was realized in the 1960s in three successive projects called Sealab. A deadly accident with Sealab III, however, terminated a program that journalist Hellwarth reconstructs. Sealab’s genesis lay in Bond’s research into the physiology of diving, though Hellwarth underscores that Bond’s imagination ranged far beyond devising safe procedures. To Bond, “inner space” was as significant a frontier of exploration as outer space, an idea supported by the addition of Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter to his team. Dozens of others completed the Sealab rosters, many of whom Hellwarth interviewed. With details of their submersible activities, Hellwarth strives to animate a narrative about the Sealabs—stationary, pressurized vessels that were lowered by crane to the seafloor and ran in place until something went wrong. Such perilous incidents supply Hellwarth’s dramatic peaks, while, overall, his assemblage of living memory about Sealab constitutes important historical preservation of its place, possibly as cover for deep-sea espionage activities, in the annals of the U.S. Navy. --Gilbert Taylor