Hasta La Ideas

James Cameron has, as it’s called in Hollywood, “F.U. money.” Enough money to buy sports teams or superyachts or spend the rest of his days on a private island. But the Avatar director has eschewed the idle-rich lifestyle to fund and participate in exploration.

Cameron helped design the Deepsea Challenger craft, a one-man, 24-ton submersible that he himself piloted to the very bottom of the ocean last Sunday. “…The idea is that if you can go to the deepest spot in the ocean, you can go anywhere in the ocean,” Cameron told NPR. “There are so many of these extremely deep places that, together, form the last unexplored frontier on our planet.”

While the novel craft is stored in a horizontal position before deployment, once in the water it goes vertical, like a seahorse. Here’s some pre-dive video featuring Cameron discussing the mission and the craft:

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