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Originally Posted by Undertoad
The down side: a quarter-mile-long Ethernet cable. I guess wi-fi doesn't work underwater?
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Somebody needs to tell them about
acoustic transponders.
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The technical details for making such a call have been in place for years. The three-person crew aboard the Alvin--submerged 2.5 kilometers below the East Pacific--communicates to the surface ship Atlantis via acoustic transponders, a type of underwater telephone. The phone on Atlantis is in turn connected to a satellite phone, which can buzz anyone on shore. To complete the sea-to-space link, scientists merely needed to have Atlantis call the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, where a high-powered dish transmitter speaks directly with the space station.
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