A consultant team has been appointed on the Blue Abyss project to build the world’s deepest pool for spaceflight and human endurance research.  Scott Brownrigg will be providing the architecture for the scheme, with Gardiner & Theobald providing cost advice, 3PM as project managers,  Hoare Lea  as M&E engineers and Pell Frischmann as structural engineers. The proposed 50m deep pool will be deeper than NASA’s 12m deep training pool in Houston and will be used to simulate the microgravity of outer space and deep sea environments.

Blue Abyss is planning to build a unique, state of the art aquatic research, training and development facility which will be the largest indoor pool by volume in the world at 50m long x 40m wide x 50m deep. Within the complex there will be a state of the art lecture theatre and six classrooms, a hyperbaric suite, a ‘mission control’ high-definition video room for pool supervision and training feedback and an adjacent 120-bed, three-star hotel.

Commercial and recreational divers can conduct training at various levels within the pool, while free-divers can test their endurance in the 50m shaft. The ability to insert simulated cave systems, or ‘wrecks’ alongside a fully flexible lighting system, plus a crane, tie-down points and lifting platforms will allow the pool to be customised for a huge range of uses.

John Vickers, Managing Director of Blue Abyss commented, “We are pleased to have support from G&T and their help to deliver the world’s premier marine and space research, development and training facility and our mission to create the world’s first commercial astronaut training centre.”

Supporters of the Blue Abyss project include organisations such as NASA and the European Space Agency as well as individuals including Major Tim Peake, Britain’s newest astronaut, Helen Sharman, the first Briton in space and the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991, Prof Walter Kuehnegger, one of NASA’s Apollo Lunar Exploration Principle Investigators and Scott Parazynski, a former NASA astronaut.