IT Blog

There’s a poster in the Aquarius Reef Base command center in Islamorada, Florida, that chronicles the evolution from the first undersea habitat to the International Space Station (ISS). It usually merits no more than a glance from visitors. But Cady Coleman stops to peruse the text about Sealab, the experimental underwater habitats the Navy ran in the 1960s.

“My dad worked on Sealab,” says Coleman, slowly running her hand over its logo. “He was an engineer in charge of structural modifications. [Mercury astronaut] Scott Carpenter came over for dinner one night, as part of the team that was going to live under the sea. He had lunch with Jacques Cousteau. I grew up with the idea that exploration was normal: living someplace dangerous, where you really had to think about what you were doing. But I don’t think I grew up thinking I could be one of those explorers.”