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Earth Technology Science

Giant Survival Ball Will Help Explorer Survive a Year On an Iceberg 128

Posted by Soulskill from the rolling-the-seven-seas dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Ben Yeager reports in Outside Magazine that Italian explorer Alex Bellini plans to travel to Greenland's west coast, pick an iceberg, and live on it for a year as it melts out in the Atlantic. It's a precarious idea. Bellini will be completely isolated, and his adopted dwelling is liable to roll or fall apart at any moment, thrusting him into the icy sea or crushing him under hundreds of tons of ice. His solution: an indestructible survival capsule built by an aeronautics company that specializes in tsunami-proof escape pods. "I knew since the beginning I needed to minimize the risk. An iceberg can flip over, and those events can be catastrophic." Bellini plans to use a lightweight, indestructible floating capsules, or "personal safety systems" made from aircraft-grade aluminum in what's called a continuous monocoque structure, an interlocking frame of aluminum spars that evenly distribute force, underneath a brightly painted and highly visible aluminum shell. The inner frame can be stationary or mounted on roller balls so it rotates, allowing the passengers to remain upright at all times.

Aeronautical engineer Julian Sharpe, founder of Survival Capsule, got the idea for his capsules after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. He believes fewer people would have died had some sort of escape pod existed. Sharpe hopes the products will be universal—in schools, retirement homes, and private residences, anywhere there is severe weather. The product appeals to Bellini because it's strong enough to survive a storm at sea or getting crushed between two icebergs. Bellini will spend almost all of his time in the capsule with the hatch closed, which will pose major challenges because he'll have to stay active without venturing out onto a slippery, unstable iceberg. If it flips, he'll have no time to react. "Any step away from [the iceberg] will be in unknown territory," says Bellini. "You want to stretch your body. But then you risk your life."
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Giant Survival Ball Will Help Explorer Survive a Year On an Iceberg More

Giant Survival Ball Will Help Explorer Survive a Year On an Iceberg

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  • Next up... (Score:4, Funny)

    by pigiron ( 104729 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @11:48AM (#49551067) Homepage

    going over Niagra Falls in a barrel.

  • So he built a nice, indestructible, iceberg-proof capsule. I assume he has an unsinkable ship to go with it?

  • James Bond (Score:5, Funny)

    by bkmoore ( 1910118 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @11:53AM (#49551097)
    I think James Bond beat him to it....will that ball come with a foxy KGB agent inside?

  • Bad use case (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @12:01PM (#49551133)

    Aeronautical engineer Julian Sharpe, founder of Survival Capsule, got the idea for his capsules after the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. He believes fewer people would have died had some sort of escape pod existed

    What the Indonesians needed was a warning, not an escape pod. With no warning, the pods are useless. With warning, just get out of the path.

    • Re:Bad use case (Score:5, Interesting)

      by KingOfBLASH ( 620432 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @12:35PM (#49551269) Journal

      What the Indonesians needed was a warning, not an escape pod. With no warning, the pods are useless. With warning, just get out of the path.

      The key here is how much warning. Having been to indonesia, I can tell you that if you're on a beach you'll see signs everywhere pointing out the most efficient tsunami escape path. The problem is, even if you see it coming, and you start running, you might not be able to cover the kilometer or so to safety in the time you have warning. (Contrary to popular opinion tsunamis are not a giant wave, but more like a tide rolling in)

      This provides a solution that allows you to survive with less reaction time. Which may be a good thing.

      • This provides a solution that allows you to survive with less reaction time. Which may be a good thing.

        Only if it is more accessible by many people than the escape paths. Imagine 5 people panicking and fight to get into one of these things. It really makes no sense. Is it even remotely realistic that a country would line its beaches with thousands of these things? Then everyone that does manage to get into one of these gets swept out to sea. Seems like a very poor solution path to me.

        • Maybe not the government, but if you are in a high end resort, and staying on a beach bungalow (or living on the coast), it might be comforting to have one out back.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's not a solution. How many of these things would you have to build to save the majority of potential victims? Hundreds or thousands, likely. Where will you keep them? It's daft. Longer warning times are what is needed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        That idea just reminds me of people building nuclear bomb shelters in their backyard. Kind of cool if you want a clubhouse, but not completely thought out for their actual use, really.

        • Except of course if there ever really was nuclear war, they'd be much safer.

          You could use the same line of argument for a lot of things: seat belts, guard rails, non-slip shoes

          Silly people spending money to prevent something that most likely won't happen.

          However as a society we accept sometimes that preventing a marginal risk is the best scenario

      • Sure, the signs are there now...

        The only place where a warning was given in all of the eastern Indian ocean was on Maikhao Beach in Thailand, and that's only because one of the tourists there had been paying attention in school two weeks before. The whole of the Indian Ocean tsunami warning system [ioc-unesco.org] only came into being as a result of the 2004 tsunami.

    • I think it's a given that better warning systems are needed. We're actually extending our system in the Pacific after the latest tsunamis, and hopefully they emulate our Hawaii-based Pacific early warning center in the Indian ocean as well.

      I actually saw a story a few years ago about the company [survival-capsule.com] that are designing these survival capsules, which, IMO, is a lot more interesting than someone pulling a stunt like this. We actually have a very tsunami-vulnerable coastline in many US states ourselves, of course

      • I agree warnings have limitations, but they didn't have anything in Indonesia at the time and they have since been deployed. They may be a 'given' but that doesn't matter in a discussion of what is likely to be most beneficial in an event.

        Walls pretty much ruin a beach, so if you have a beach, tourist area a wall is not really desirable. I get the concept of personal or small group type protective devices, but they must be low cost and deployed in an easily accessible manner, and this particular solution

        • I think one solution I've seen that makes sense is being built on the coast of Oregon. A small city government building is being built on large reinforced concrete stilts, with parking underneath the building. There are external ramps up to the government offices on top. In the event of a tsunami, this structure is meant to hold a large portion of the town's residence as a temporary shelter.

          This seems like a reasonable way to protect large numbers of people in vulnerable areas. You don't have to build t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        The downside is that you'd have to have 1.4 million people who are perfectly positioned to take advantage of these devices with sufficient reaction time to be able to get to them, and sufficient warning time to know to try and find one. And once they did, you'd probably have two people trying to fight their way into one, while another at a less useful location was completely unused.

        In the same vein, nuclear bomb shelters were an iffy idea even if you ended up being able to get to them and use them, but they

    • They had warning. It has been known for thousands of years that the water receding rapidly, leaving dry beach. indicates a tidal wave approaching.

      My parents told me that when I was very young and we were at the beach. I still remember it.

      But the "educated" people in the Tsunami areas apparently did not know, or didn't believe. However, the tribal people who had legends about the waters did believe and retreated from the beaches. The death rate among them was much less.

    • I take that point, but my thought on reading the concept was "Great, so now you have hundreds or thousands of people bobbing around in the sea in indestructible survival capsules. Where they die slowly of thirst and starvation, as most of the local boats have been wrecked by the tsunami, or parked a kilometre inshore, or are being used by their owners to search for missing friends/ relatives, or to bring in supplies from nearby devastated areas.

      Then I look out of the window at the (nearly) indestructible T

  • This (Score:2)

    by BobSwi ( 607571 )
    Will not end well

  • High Visibility? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Personally I hope he paints one half red and the other white, with a black ring dividing the two sections and also forming a circle around the hatch.

    Alex Bellini, I choose you!!!

  • Attention whoring? (Score:3)

    by ah.clem ( 147626 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @12:14PM (#49551195)

    I have never understood this type of person. If you're going to do something, just do it, don't contact the press about it for the dramatic "look at me" moment. Perhaps Bellini didn't get enough parental attention as a child. Just my opinion.

  • Weird business model (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @12:22PM (#49551223)

    Sharpe hopes the products will be universal—in schools, retirement homes, and private residences, anywhere there is severe weather.

    According to the website they sell capsules for 2-10 people. Can you imagine how big a 10 person capsule would be? For a small school of 300 kids you'd still need 30 of them! Even if you had the money where does he expect people to store them?! It doesn't even make sense for paranoid families.

    If you're that worried about the weather then you won't stick around for a bad hurricane (or you'd have a safe room built in).

    An earthquake won't give you time to reach the survival ball.

    Yes it might be useful for the tsunami they focus on, but those are incredibly rare and inconsistent, and if people were that worried they'd already be buying cheap air tanks and respirators.

    On the other hand a good usage might be what they're doing now, using it as a lifeboat (assuming the crew is small enough). If a really severe storm comes up and the ship is going down then an impregnable capsule where you can wait for rescue sounds appealing.

    Am I missing something or is that the only real market for their product? Their obsession with tsunamis just strikes me as bizarre.

  • So he is going to live in a 3 meter hamster ball on an iceburg for a year? I wonder what his plan to keep warm is. Putting aside the option of getting a sponsorship from Kia and waring a warm fuzzy hamster suit, I suspect there would be some serious technical challenges.

    The article says that he plans on a wind generator and solar panels. This would provide energy for light, but probably not for heat. Wind and solar generation would need to take place outside his sphere (as he is "planning" on having the ic

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nkwe ( 604125 )
      Bah. Missed a line. Since external power generation would need to take place outside his sphere, and he his planning on the icebrug flipping, he would need to plan on losing any equipment outside the sphere, therefore he needs to have enough stored energy inside the sphere to last at least until rescue.
    • He has a team that will be with him providing supplies as needed. So would guess he will have generators, toilet, cooking heat source,elsewhere when not using those will stay in his ball.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nkwe ( 604125 )

        He has a team that will be with him providing supplies as needed. So would guess he will have generators, toilet, cooking heat source,elsewhere when not using those will stay in his ball.

        I didn't get that from the articles. I read the following:

        This is a precarious idea. Bellini will be completely isolated, and his adopted dwelling is liable to roll or fall apart at any moment, thrusting him into the icy sea or crushing him under hundreds of tons of ice.

        The article may, of course, be incorrect, but from what I have read it appears he will be alone. If he is not alone, and he has a support team, How would the support team keep safe in the event that the iceberg they are all on collapses or tips over? I ask because the article talks about how he has to spend practically all of his time in the ball because the iceberg could tip over at any moment.

        Bellini will spend almost all of his time in the capsule with the hatch closed, which will pose major challenges. He’ll have to stay active without venturing out onto a slippery, unstable iceberg. If it flips, he’ll have no time to react.

        I would buy that Bellini or he and his team plan to live

  • If he's going to be spending the entire year inside the ball, why not simplify? I see a hamster ball, lined with solar cells, battery, extra memory, and one or more video cameras. Add a satellite location beacon to pick up the ball afterwards.

  • Marketing genius! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @12:37PM (#49551271)
    Hi, all you citizens making an annual salary of $100 American eeking out a living on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Sign here to authorize delivery of your $50,000 pod you can use to escape that 1 in a 100 year event!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by darronb ( 217897 )

      I honestly cannot understand the positive comments I read on this idea.

      At $5000/person or so, the number of people in harms way, and the relative likelihood of needing it... it's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.

      It doesn't make sense even in rich countries.

      You'd think someone intelligent enough to design and build these would realize that (although sometimes not)... they are probably just spending sucker investor money.

      • someone watched movie 2012, and thought... aha.... what if... a floating ball! And before you know it, we got a product out there.

    • You are right about the price but not about the 1 in a 100 year chance.

      Between 2003 and 2011 we already had seven!

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        A disaster is a "one in a century chance" if it averages one occurrence per hundred years at a given location. Quoting the nationwide or worldwide incidence rates is not relevant or helpful in this context. Similarly, a "hundred year flood" averages once a century here, not once a century anywhere in the world. And so on. Local disaster rates are the only consideration when deciding the cost effectiveness of prevention/mitigation techniques.

    • eeking out a living

      They farm mice?

  • If it's so dangerous to go out, how will he manage supplies? Even the 8' sphere won't hold a year of food and water.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • If you imagine shooting an arrow at a wooden ball, unless you hit dead center, it’ll ricochet.

    Being crushed between two icebergs is not a point force. A closer analogy would be a ping pong ball between two large blocks of wood. The ball gets crushed.

  • I don't say it very often, but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... this seems like a waste of time and effort.

    I don't say that very often because some people like adventure, even though I don't.

    But I'm trying to imagine his day. He's in this giant hamster ball on an iceberg, all alone, he wakes up, asks himself "Am I dead yet?", looks out the portal, "Nope, not today", has a meal, does some exercise, maybe opens the door and sniffs some fresh air and then goes back to sleep. Day after day. For a year.

    Sounds like a year in solitary confinement in a Supermax prison. What

  • Location, location, location. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @03:04PM (#49551743)

    Bellini will spend almost all of his time in the capsule with the hatch closed, ...

    So, the iceberg part is actually irrelevant. The ball could be anywhere.

    • Yeah, but "living in a large aluminum ball in his parents' basement" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

    • So, the iceberg part is actually irrelevant. The ball could be anywhere.

      The iceberg part is relevant. With this thing packed inside an iceberg, where does he plan to store a years worth of rations? How does he realistically expect to dispose of a years worth of shit? He's going to be pretty rank after a year inside a small ball.

      And, if it just sits on top of the berg, who cares? If it's inside the berg, again, who cares? there is no actual science that can not be done in a much more reasonable way.

      is Red Bull sponsoring this? Seriously, why does crap like this make it to the

  • You have the pod attached to your ship. Then, when Darth Vader boards your ship you use it to send your roomba to safety.

  • Won't work! (Score:3)

    by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @05:08PM (#49552129)
    It's right there in the article "They can hold from two to ten people, depending on the model ...." The minimum number of inhabitants is two.

  • Just marketing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's obviously just a marketing stunt for the idiotic lifepod. The icebears would peel the aluminium pod to get to munch him. The forces delivered by a catapultic swing into the water might allow the pod to survive, but the g-forces inside the pod will probably be too high. It might get stuck under water under the iceberg (everybody who has been diving underneath icebergs can confirm that one). And there is sooo much more wrong with this,... stupid marketing consultant...

  • Christen it the Unsinkable Titanic II (Score:3)

    by trout007 ( 975317 ) on Saturday April 25, 2015 @08:34PM (#49552883)

    So it can survive being crushed between icebergs? I guess it depends on how big they are.

  • Spent several months on an iceberg with only a tent and the occasional polar bear.

  • Has anyone told him what sea water does to aluminium? Or mentioned that's why almost nobody operates flying boats commercially any longer? The constant corrosion? The constant leaks? The constant repairs?

    Reminds me of those clowns who set out to cross the oceans in a small boat without no radio or nav equipment, and only a school atlas. Other people have to risk their lives to rescue them.

    Let's hope the USCG makes him post a bond big enough to cover the cost of the rescue before he departs. That should
  • he's got ball.
  • Please contact the Canadian Search and Rescue Centre before starting your trip. Link to JRCC Halifax, Nova Scotia below. You will need their number on your speed dialer. Also, please pre-pay a deposit of $100,000 CDN for your rescue. Have a great trip. http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/ope... [forces.gc.ca]

  • Bellini plans to use a lightweight, indestructible floating capsules, or "personal safety systems" made from aircraft-grade aluminum in what's called a continuous monocoque structure

    So a giant ball... made out of a monocoque? Unless I'm mistaken, the emphasis should be on the monoball, since monocoques are the most common variant, while monoballs are somewhat of an exception.

    And sometimes you have bivalves or whatnot, and a monocoque just isn't sufficient. Sometimes what's required is a bicoque. I think

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