NASAdude

Some of you might find this interesting. Source.

Cavers have ventured deeper into the Earth than anyone has been before.

A Ukrainian team has reached a record depth of 2,080m (6,822ft), passing the elusive 2,000m mark at Krubera, the world's deepest known cave.

The nine-strong group were part of a project that has made breaking the 2,000m depth its goal for four years.

They built on records set by a previous expedition, which blasted through blocked passages in the cave, within Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia.

"Even now, we don't know whether we've reached the limit - or if it will go on. We're pretty sure we'll eventually go even lower," said Alexander Klimchouk, the veteran caver who organised the mission.

The Ukrainian Speleological Association's Call of the Abyss project is funded by the US National Geographic Society.

During an expedition from August to September 2004, a team of 56 cavers (45 men and 11 women) representing seven countries explored Kubera, deep below the Arabika mountain massif of the western Caucasus.

Obstacle course

Carrying about five tonnes of equipment, they had to negotiate vertical drops and freezing torrents of water. They were also forced to blast rubble from passages that were critically narrowed or blocked by "boulder chokes".

Team members had to negotiate cold pools of water (Image: National Geographic)

They set camps at depths of 700m, 1,215m, 1,410m and 1,640m, where they cooked meals, slept up to six people to a tent and worked for up to 20 hours at a stretch.

They kept in touch with the surface base camp by rigging nearly 3km (two miles) of rope strung with a telephone wire.

But the August-September expedition encountered many obstacles. By the third week, a sump (cold pond in the cave) blocked the team's downward progress.

When team member Sergio Garcia-Dils de la Vega investigated if there was a way through, he survived a cascade of near-freezing water but was forced to retreat after discovering his waterproof dry suit had holes in it.

Deeper still

Finally, colleagues Denis Kurta and Dmitry Fedotov squeezed through a narrow, 100m-long passage, which successfully bypassed the sump and pointed steeply down.

The August-September mission paved the way for October's record (Image: National Geographic)

In October, a team of nine cavers was sent back to Krubera to pick up where the previous group left off.

They examined all unexplored leads in the cave's lowest section until they broke through to a new series of passages and vertical pits. On 19 October 2004, team leader Yuri Kasjan dropped down a pit and discovered from his altimeter that he had passed 2,000m.

More pits and passages brought the explorers to a sandy chamber at 2,080m, the deepest to date any human has ventured below ground.

The cavers christened the chamber Game Over. But team members now want to return to the cave to see whether it leads even deeper.

The record is announced in this month's National Geographic magazine.

Posted by NASAdude at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This text was written in response to an article that Craig wrote.

In a true race,

• how hard you run affects the outcome of the race.
• how hard you run affects how quickly you reach the finish line
• quitting means that you haven't finished

In life, assuming death is the finish line,

• how hard you live life doesn't affect the outcome, since life isn't a race or competition
• how hard you live life doesn't affect how quickly you reach the finish line (assuming healthy living for both cases)
• quitting means that you have finished; suicide is a quick shortcut to the finish line

Life is not a race.

I used to be concerned a lot about "wasted time."  It doesn't slow you down on your way to death, but it affects how quickly you get to the waypoints on that road.

The real question is, what are your goals in life, your waypoints on the road  to death?  Those are what you need to race to achieve.  If you hurry from waypoint to waypoint, you can do so much in your life.  While the economics of our society might want you to believe that idea, that mode of thinking deprives you of a lot. 

It isn't a race to death.  It isn't a race to waypoints.  It comes down to the simple idea of doing what makes you happy.  I'm not condoning psychotropic drugs or living a life of leisure.  Or am I?  As long as your increased happiness doesn't significantly decrease the happiness of those around you, what harm is there? 

In a societal model, we would only need to optimize the summed happiness to find an ideal solution.  Arguably there are some people who will be put out and end up doing things that could make them unhappy.  But the net affect is that more people are able to increase their happiness due to the efforts of the unhappy person.  What's to keep the unhappy person from quitting, from seeking out a different role in society to increase their personal happiness?  The obvious solution is that society needs to endear the individual into seeing their sacrifice as something that makes them happy only because their efforts are benefiting others.  Simply foist self-sacrifice as a means to happiness.

Sure, it may seem like a catch-22, but it works.

Posted by NASAdude at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)