Crossword clues for aquanaut
aquanaut
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. An underwater explorer.
WordNet
n. an underwater swimmer equipped with a face mask and foot fins and either a snorkel or an air cylinder [syn: skin-diver]
a skilled worker who can live in underwater installations and participate in scientific research [syn: oceanaut]
Wikipedia
An aquanaut is any person who remains underwater, breathing at the ambient pressure for long enough for the concentration of the inert components of the breathing gas dissolved in the body tissues to reach equilibrium, in a state known as saturation. Usually this is done in an underwater habitat on the seafloor for a period equal to or greater than 24 continuous hours without returning to the surface. The term is often restricted to scientists and academics, though there were a group of military aquanauts during the SEALAB program. Commercial Divers in similar circumstances are referred to as Saturation Divers. An aquanaut is distinct from a submariner, in that a submariner is confined to a moving underwater vehicle such as a submarine that holds the water pressure out. Aquanaut derives from the Latin word aqua ("water") plus the Greek nautes ("sailor"), by analogy to the similar construction " astronaut".
The first human aquanaut was Robert Sténuit, who lived on board a tiny one-man cylinder at for 24 hours in September 1962 off Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera. Military aquanauts include Robert Sheats, author Robin Cook, and astronauts Scott Carpenter and Alan Shepard. Civilian aquanaut Berry L. Cannon died of carbon dioxide poisoning during the U.S. Navy's SEALAB III project. Scientific aquanauts include Richard Cooper, Stephen Neudecker, Al Waterfield, Jonathan Helfgott, Robert Dill, Sylvia Earle, Ian Koblick, Neil Monney, Chris Olstad, Joseph B. MacInnis, John Perry, Harold "Wes" Pratt (on whom the character Matt "Winch" Hooper in Jaws was based), Phillip Sharkey, Dick Rutkowski, Alina Szmant, Bill High, Phil Nuytten, Matthew Morgan, Steven Miller, Morgan Wells, and about 700 others, including the crew members (many of them astronauts) of NASA's NEEMO missions at the Aquarius underwater laboratory.
Usage examples of "aquanaut".
The spherical form was necessary to withstand the pressures on the suit at depth, either from the crushing weight of the deep sea or the controlled, one-atmosphere internal environment that surrounded the aquanaut wearing it.
Once the aquanaut was inside, the helmet was lowered onto the collar and attached.
As the strange underground aquanauts watched with unwinking eyes, the three men stepped into the pool.
Although they encountered many creatures that had not been seen before, the limits of visibility and the fact that neither of the intrepid aquanauts was a trained oceanographer meant they often weren’t able to describe their findings in the kind of detail that real scientists craved.
If the foolhardy aquanauts had happened to put to sea again from the island they had landed on by chance, they would have got further and further away from their home port.