82 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 11.19
Lang was laid off and decided
to go all-in on the robot. He and
Stackpole sited their project in
Stackpole’s garage in Cupertino,
and in the spirit of open-source
development, they launched a
website, OpenROV.com, to so-
licit feedback. They heard from
amateur hobbyists, graduate
students, and professional en-
gineers all over the world.
Initially, the goal wasn’t to
create a company so much as a
revolutionary tool. “From the
first conversation, it was: ‘What
if there were 10,000 of these
around the world on the front
lines of exploration?’ ” says
Lang. “We kind of worked back-
ward from that dream.”
Though unmanned sub-
marines have powered monu-
mental finds—deep-sea hydro-
thermal vents in the 1970s, the
discovery of the Titanic’s re-
mains in 1985—they can cost
millions to build and tens of
thousands per day to operate,
since they require the support of
large ships. Simpler models with
lesser capabilities have been
around for a couple of decades,
but even those run $50,000 and
up. Stackpole and Lang had
something different in mind: an
everyman’s ROV. The size of a
toaster and operated by laptop,
it would be an aquatic version
of the aerial drones that wan-
nabe action-sports filmmakers
get for Christmas. Like almost
all ROVs, it would be tethered to
a surface controller, but opera-
tors could send it a few hundred
feet below the waves. It would
sell for around $1,000.
In early 2012, they worked
their way into a meeting with the
Marine Science and Technology
Foundation, a nonprofit funded
by Eric Schmidt, then the exec-
utive chairman of Google, and
his wife, Wendy. The Schmidts
were offering grants for projects
that advanced oceanographic
research. Stackpole and Lang
showed up with a barely func-
tioning prototype and a speech
about the world-changing po-
tential of a budget ROV. (They
neglected to mention the gold.)
“They said, ‘OK, what do
you need?’ ” says Lang. “At that
point, we were strapped for cash
and thinking only about the very
next steps. So we asked for a few
thousand dollars to buy parts to
build 15 more prototypes.”
The foundation was flum-
moxed. The ask was so low—
most of their grants were in the
hundreds of thousands—that a
typical proposal review process
didn’t make sense. In the end,
Lang and Stackpole walked away
with just over $7,000, promising
to submit their receipts.MARINE SCIENTISTS have often
complained that we care more
about understanding the emp-
tiness of space than the living
seas that make up 70 percent of
our planet.
“Why are we ignoring the
oceans?” Bob Ballard, the cel-
ebrated deep-sea explorer,
groused at the start of his 2008
TED Talk on the future of under-
water research. He claimed that
NASA’s annual budget to inves-
tigate the heavens would fund
the National Oceanic and At-
mospheric Administration’s sea
exploration for the next 1,600
years. Others have pointed out
that we have better maps of
the surfaces of Mars and Venus
than the seafloor. According to
NOAA, 80 percent of the ocean
realm remains unexplored.
Making matters worse, gov-
ernment support for explor-
atory science isn’t what it used
to be. Coming out of World
War II, American leaders be-
lieved that the quest for knowl-
edge was essential to progress.
Following the creation of the
National Science Foundation
in 1950, government funding
dominated R&D across numer-
ous disciplines. These days, not
so much. One analysis by Sci-
ence found that in 2015, federal
dollars accounted for less than
half of the funding for so-called
basic research—projects that
don’t have immediate commer-
cial applications. By contrast,
that level was above 70 percent
in the 1970s and 61 percent as
recently as 2003.
These days, new hope for
ocean exploration often comes
via the largesse of billionairephilanthropists, who’ve poured
money into a range of projects.
Marine research has long had
its patrons—David Packard es-
tablished the now iconic Mon-
terey Bay Aquarium Research
Institute in 1987—and in recent
years there has been a stampede
of benefactors looking to the sea.
Making the biggest splash,
at least in the press, is hedge-
fund magnate Ray Dalio, who in
a Wired op-ed last year declared
a desire “to revive the Jacques
Cousteau moment” with a high-
profile media initiative called
OceanX, which involves con-
verting a 280-foot former oil-
industry survey vessel into a
fully equipped research ship for
a National Geographic Televi-
sion series produced by James
Cameron. Dalio has been loan-
ing out his 184-foot yacht, Alu-
cia, to the Woods Hole Ocean-
ographic Institution since
2012, but the new craft, Ocean-
Xplorer, is as much a filmmak-
er’s dream machine as it is a sci-
entific marvel, with a submarine
hangar that seems straight out
of the Avatar production book,video- editing stations capable
of working with 8K raw foot-
age, and cameras pretty much
everywhere. The big idea is to
chronicle expeditions guided
by researchers and explorers in
a reality-format show that cap-
tures both natural wonders and
human struggles. Last October,
Dalio and Michael Bloomberg
announced a $185 million joint
effort to “capitalize on OceanX’s
powerful imagery” as a way toadvocate for marine protection
and conservation.
The Schmidts also have a
snazzy research ship, the 272-
foot Falkor, which has been al-
most continuously at sea since
2013 and offers free passage to
scientists using new technol-
ogies and research methods.
On board, they have access to a
first-rate sonar system for sea-
floor mapping, a fleet of sub-
mersibles, and an advanced
computing system that enables
virtual-reality data visualiza-
tion (think plankton in 3-D),
plus teak outdoor furniture and
a luxurious sauna.
More important, the Schmidts
have pioneered a Silicon Val-
ley approach to ocean explo-
ration by funding the develop-
ment of disruptive technologies.
Around the time that the Marine
Science and Technology Foun-
dation met with Stackpole and
Lang, it had funded an adven-
turous British engineer named
Richard Jenkins. Jenkins had
set a new wind- powered land-
speed record with a contrap-
tion he’d built a few years earlier,
and he applied what
he’d learned to cre-
ate the Saildrone.
The 23-foot auton-
omous vessel can
navigate the open
ocean for a year at
a time, collecting
data and stream-
ing it back to shore
via satellite, with
power provided by
solar panels. It po-
tentially enables
a multitude of re-
search and moni-
toring activities—
measuring ocean
acidification, tracking tagged
fish, detecting oil spills—at a
fraction of the cost of a manned
expedition. No big ship or crew
required: just set some drones
on their way and have a seat in
front of your computer.
For researchers, afford-
able tech opens up new worlds.
“Your decision process is funda-
mentally different when you can
use cheaper tools,” says Jim Bell-
ingham, director of the CenterTheir goal wasn’t
to create a company
so much as a
revolutionary tool.
“What if there were
10,000 of these
around the world?”
says crowdfunder
David Lang.