Dennis Chamberland

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Dennis Chamberland (1951- ) American bioengineer, explorer, and author.

Dennis Chamberland, an aquanaut and Mission Commander for seven NASA underwater missions, designed and built the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station underwater habitat. Chamberland was elected a Fellow of the New York Explorers Club in 1991.

At the turn of the 21st century, Chamberland had published nearly 100 articles and reference works, mostly dealing with scientific and technical issues. In 1986, Chamberland published a landmark cover story on Genetic Engineering in Christianity Today magazine. Chamberland also published an in-depth interview with General William Westmoreland in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings that leant a critical insight on the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War. He began writing books and novels in 1994.

Dennis Chamberland had maintained a life long interest in the human colonization of the undersea regions of the earth. He calls these regions “Aquatica” and its permanent human citizens “Aquaticans”. Chamberland released a book titled, “Undersea Colonies” in 2007 in which he described the imminent permanent human colonization of the seas.

Dennis Chamberland has made three attempts at this process, the first of which began in 1972 while he was a college student at Oklahoma State University. It was his attempt to begin the undersea settlement process beneath Tenkiller Ferry Lake in eastern Oklahoma. His interest continued and he began another serious attempt in 1991, forming a corporate venture called the “League of the New Worlds”. Combining his interest in space and ocean explorations, he reasoned that the technologies were in many ways twin technologies. Holding the position as a NASA Life Scientist and developer of Advanced Space Life Support Systems based on Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems for the space agency, he was able to view the two technologies developing simultaneously for all off-planet habitation pursuits.

In 1994, Dennis Chamberland, now a certified aquanaut, planted and harvested the first agricultural crop in a manned habitat on the seafloor off Key Largo. This NASA experiment was titled the OCEAN Project. In two years, Dennis Chamberland had designed and built the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station, a two man undersea habitat. In 1997 and 1998, he successfully operated his undersea station near Key Largo, Florida, inviting such guests as filmmaker James Cameron and television producer Rod Roddenberry.

Dennis Chamberland began another attempt at launching the first permanent undersea colony in the Gulf of Mexico in Florida Bay in 1998-1999 called the Trident Project. That project was later reorganized in late 2006 as the Atlantica Expeditions.

The Atlantica Expeditions is scheduled to launch in two phases. Phase one is slated to break the underwater habitation stay by a human in an 80 day mission near Central Florida. In Atlantica I, three aquanauts will share the single mission longevity record together in the Leviathan Habitat, a manned undersea habitat designed and constructed by Dennis Chamberland. Atlantica II is the follow-up mission to Atlantica II which will construct the first permanent human settlement off the central Florida coast in or near the Gulf Stream.

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