E.T. returns home to the ocean

The recent headlines of eccentric billionaires going on a space race have caught the interest of many. But what about a race in the other direction – into the ocean? It may not sound as glamorous and adventurous as exploring the universe, but NASA thinks it’s a pretty good idea. The U.S. space agency is scouring deep into the sea for clues that may help figure out otherworldly terrain, while also developing machines that can attend these space missions.

NASA intends to build a robot to explore the deepest depths of Earth’s oceans. This robot would also be suitable for exploring frozen moons half a billion miles away. The challenge would be to design the robot to make its own decisions while withstanding extreme weather conditions. Such robots could be utilized for space missions and improve our understanding of interstellar travel, naturally with humans next to be on board on these missions.

Who knows if other companies working on rocketry and space exploration will dabble in deep-sea exploration – companies such as Boeing (NYSE: BA), Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), or Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOS). Although scouring the ocean is entirely different from space exploration, there is still much to learn. It remains to be seen how much valuable information can be extracted from the great depths, or whether it can contribute to technological advancements in space travel.

It’s believable that in the future, the technology to travel to other planets will have been strengthened by information that will be found from Earth’s oceans. In addition, the sea is probably the best place to search for actual signs of aliens that landed on Earth, if any ever did. It covers 70% of the Earth’s surface, and we don’t know anything about the vast majority of it. Who’s to say E.T.’s spaceship isn’t in the bottom of the Mariana Trench? 

It would also be much more exciting to see these billionaires race to the bottom of the ocean and see who could be the first (or last) to resurface. If venturing into outer space is moving forward, is going deep into the sea backward? If so, then sometimes going “backward” isn’t really going backward; it’s actually moving forward.