Let’s take a break from battling over space.
Battling over the rights to the ocean floor could be much more rewarding (in the short run anyway).
“For the first time in history people will go down to the sea bed under the North Pole,” Balyasnikov told The Associated Press. “It’s like putting a flag on the moon.”
Russian scientists hope to dive in two mini-submarines beneath the pole to a depth of more than 13,200 feet, and drop a metal capsule containing the Russian flag on the sea bed.
Balyasnikov said the dive was expected to start Thursday morning and last for several hours.
The voyage, led by noted polar explorer and Russian legislator Artur Chilingarov, has some scientific goals, including the study of Arctic plants and animals. But its chief goal appears to be advancing Russia’s political and economic influence by strengthening its legal claims to the gas and oil deposits thought to lie beneath the Arctic sea floor.
The symbolic gesture, along with geologic data being gathered by expedition scientists, is intended to prop up Moscow’s claims to more than 460,000 square miles of the Arctic shelf — which by some estimates may contain 10 billion tons of oil and gas deposits.
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