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Reading that second reference, I wondered if anyone has tried developing a portable pressure suit. Basically I'd imagine all you'd need is an airtight plastic bag or space suit thingie, reinforced with a steel mesh and with an easily sealable opening. Then if this was pumped up with a suitable (low nitrogen?) air mixture, a diver inside would get at least some relief.
The snag is it probably couldn't deal with pressures much more than 2 or 3 atmospheres, which isn't equivalent to much depth. One only has to see how sturdy those decompression chambers are.
Perhaps a better design would be a set of overlapping slightly conical titanium rings that could be pulled out to a self-sealing barrel shape, again with a suitable top and base. That would be quite compact and light, but hideously expensive - thirty grand at least I'd have thought, and maybe a lot more, because titanium is difficult to work with (melting point of 3000 deg F for a start).
Well, indeed. I haven't got sound here but I can imagine what went on.
IMO, there's too much to go wrong with a rebreather - getting the slightest drop of water on your scrubber re-agent (or whatever it's called) releases a toxic gas - no fun.
In this case it appears it was user error rather than faulty equipment. He mixed and repacked the cannister instead of using new scrubber material. All the divers involved admitted at the end that they hadn't trained properly on rebreathers and had trusted that their scuba experience would be enough.
AFAIK most of the modern scrubber materials these days dont react with water in the same way as the early versions.
From the short section at the end showing how the cannisters are filled and assembled it looks pretty idiot proof. In their words all you have to do is fill it to the right level with fresh material and follow the instructions.
Diving is dangerous, no question, but not cutting corners and following the rules makes it a hell of a lot safer.
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