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J Shepherd <jms@fe*.ed*.ac*.uk*> wrote:- > Hmm, Hans Hass used a rebreather for a lot of his work, and well it worked > too. I think there was a conscious decision by sport divers to go for the > safety aspects of open circuit rigs. At the diving exhibition in Birmingham yesterday I saw a video about the history of diving, which included a clip from an old film that Hans Hass made during the 1939-1945 war rebreather diving in the Aegean Sea, where he said that there he once dived to 35 meters (115.5 feet) with an oxygen rebreather without ill effects!!!!!!!! (I did not mis-hear: the film (which was in German) had English written subtitles that showed the number clearly, <and> I clearly heard the German original `dreizig fuenf'.) If he started with bag & lungs full of ordinary air, that would cause somewhat of a nitrox effect [1], but still!!! That, plus the amount of times he has oxygen rebreather dived without ill effects to 50 feet, shows that he must be an extreme physiological oddity re handling oxidation metabolic byproducts. If I was a diving biochemist or physiologist, I would much like a tissue sample from him!! If that or something could lead to a reliable medication to suppress oxygen depth (ppO2) poisoning down to say 5 or 6 bars ppO2 and so allow oxygen rebreather diving to 40 or 50 meters (132 or 165 feet), that would remove a LOT of complications in designing and using middle-depth diving gear. [1] A friend of mine once drove round the coast of Scotland sea diving with a Seibe Gorman Salvus 30-40 mins oxygen rebreather, taking Protosorb with him and getting oxygen from garages' welding tanks. He stuck to valid oxygen depth usually, but he said that once he successfully ventured 60 feet by filling his bag & lungs with air first. WARNING: trying that unless you are VERY careful (including avoiding underwater activity that may distract you from keeping track of what you are breathing) is liable to result in you breathing the gas down to nitrogen only and a quick end, as the absorbent stops a CO2 build-up from raising an alarm. The Salvus has no oxygen steady flow; you have to let more oxygen into circuit yourself each time. > On a sideline, is it true that the CIS-LUNAR unit was designed > with astronautical applications in mind? `cis-lunaris' is Latin for `on this side of the moon'. The CIS part is not initials. He started by wanting to design a spacesuit.
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