January 29, 2007: $300 Homemade spy sub

[Deuce]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The down side: a quarter-mile-long Ethernet cable. I guess wi-fi doesn't work underwater?

Somebody needs to tell them about acoustic transponders.

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.