AHC: Ocean travel instead of Space travel

[lerk]

We know more about outer space than we do about our own ocean. How could ocean travel have supplanted space travel as the main, I don't know what's the word "Science Experiment" or whatever which every developed, large country wants to get in on? Where they make "Ocean Programs" instead of "Space Programs" and by making one they become more respected on the international stage. Sea rovers instead of Mars rovers. Do you think that if this was the case then we would've managed to get a man all the way at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, like how there was a man put on the moon? Is that even possible? Very interesting questions raised here.

 

[Alex Richards]

We know more about outer space than we do about our own ocean. How could ocean travel have supplanted space travel as the main, I don't know what's the word "Science Experiment" or whatever which every developed, large country wants to get in on? Where they make "Ocean Programs" instead of "Space Programs" and by making one they become more respected on the international stage. Sea rovers instead of Mars rovers. Do you think that if this was the case then we would've managed to get a man all the way at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, like how there was a man put on the moon? Is that even possible? Very interesting questions raised here.

I'd say it's effectively impossible to completely supplant.

Space travel was driven by the twin facts of

a). Rocketry being useful in military terms.

b). The commercial and military applications of satellites.

Now, there's ways to delay space exploration, you certainly don't need to have the manned lunar missions, but I can't see what the driving impetus in the other direction is. You might have a lot of surface activity to try and fill the gaps left by satellites in terms of weather observations etc. but with submarines there's not the advantages in going deep in that way.