Lloyd Godson, an Australian marine biologist with the “BioSUB project”:http://www.biosub.com.au/ has been living underwater for two weeks. His home was this “underwater room”:http://www.biosub.com.au/Down%20under.htm fully-equipped with internet access, an electricity-generating exercise bike and an algae farm. Some of the stuff on board was pretty innovative, including the “‘biocoil'”:http://advbio.cascadeschools.org/Biocoil.html photosynthetic bioreactor developed by a high school in Idaho. From what I can gather, the point of the experiment was to show how people can create sustainable ecosystems underwater and live without bringing all their gases/needs with them. Now this is me thinking out loud, but could this be the key to living in similarly hostile environments like space?
There are a lot of interesting things to learn about this, so start out by reading this “TreeHugger post”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/man_underwater.php about the project before it started and “this one”:http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/man_resurfaces.php about the end of it. There’s also this “short report”:http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200704/s1900699.htm from ABC Australia.