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(1) What would be the cost per hour diving with an old-style oxygen rebreather getting oxygen and sodalime from ordinary industrial sources? (2) What would be the cost per hour diving with modern mixture rebreathers where the manufacturer insists on supplying ready-made expensive absorbent refills? E.g. from what I read, the handy little light Fieno (from what I read of it, even lighter than the old handy little on-land-industrial and short dive Siebe Gorman Salvus oxygen rebreather), does <not> have a handy little light cost per hour's diving!, whereas the Salvus did. (3) Have any computerized rebreather makers moved away from the `each set is intended for its own one diver only' stance? What I would like, as I said before, is for the set's computer to be DETACHABLE, i.e. an ordinary dive computer (= bendmeter) which also has a lead that can be connected to the set's ppO2 detector; if used loose the computer assumes air (= aqualung) (and thus nearly always errs on the side of safety if he is on a mixture set after all) unless he tells it that he is on pure oxygen (e.g. for decompressing). When I asked someone about this, he said directly that "ability to pass the set about easily between divers, would mean less sets being sold"; but:- (a) We are to dive, not to maximize diving gear traders' profitability. (b) Things are not that simple. If I was organizing a diving expedition, I might well be <more> inclined to buy computerized rebreathers if they were easily exchangeable between divers. Else I might shy away from such sets because of fear of nuisances such as Set #4 having to be specifically Mr.X's and having to clutter the gear store in idleness while Mr.X is (e.g.) catching up with developing photo film while he finishes offgassing after some deep dives; instead of Mr.X merely taking his dive computer off Set #4 and Mr.Y putting his dive computer on it and using it. I heard that at least one computerized rebreather is designed to switch itself off completely if used more than a certain time without being serviced. I don't like this. It is like holding to ransom. Sets suddenly going down for this reason could threaten an expedition or a work operation, and could encourage the ship's dive gear mechanic to open the set and bypass things and break or cut things and short things out (like hot-wiring a car) to force it to keep on supplying breathing gas for at least a few dives longer. Within the limits of what a diver can carry I don't think that a (set whose time-since- last-service detector has `timed-out') would be completely `burglar-proof': I don't trust at all that the time between servicing will always in every case be decided only on set technology reasons and won't ever be set artificially short to make users pay for a service more often. How does breathing set absorbent compare in price and in effectiveness with the ordinary industrial sodalime that very many early divers routinely used? (4) We should resist attempts to make rebreather diving so expensive that it is priced out of the market for many. OK, e.g. I know that for a trader it is tempting to each day sell one item for $100 and then take his leisure until the evening, rather than slaving away all day selling 100 items for $1 profit each; but sometimes the people do need the 100 items per day.
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