Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Planequarium

Have SCUBA, Will Travel
  (+46, -1)(+46, -1)(+46, -1)
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This massive underwater park is designed to emulate the entire solar system, including orbiting planetary bodies using special purpose spherical displays and an underwater burning Sun at the center.

Directed currents through out the park simulate orbits and gravity assist.

Tour the Solar System in a two or four seater spaceship or a one-person rebreather SCUBA suit with electric "jet packs".

theircompetitor, Oct 17 2005

Solar System - UK size http://news.bbc.co....ci/tech/4320011.stm
[po, Oct 19 2005]

Solar System - how to scale it http://www.backwood...les/silveira60.html
[wagster, Oct 19 2005]

Glass Fishing Net Floats: http://www.mpwarner...epth/image-964.html
Precious and durable, these may be suitable for underwater "planets". [Amos Kito, Oct 19 2005]

For pets orbital_20guppies
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 22 2005]

Moon Resort -- On Earth http://www.moonworldresorts.com/
[theircompetitor, Oct 01 2011]

Maine's Solar System Model http://www.umpi.mai...du/info/nmms/solar/
We've got the biggest one. Nyah-nyah! [Alterother, Oct 01 2011]

[link]






       Yes! With “Also sprach Zarathustra” (familiar song from 2001: A Space Odyssey) on the hydrophone.
Shz, Oct 18 2005
  

       Make a geocentric version!
jellydoughnut, Oct 18 2005
  

       Very very cool.
Is there a way to burn underwater without making a ton of bubbles?
  

       Oh, and singing dolphins. “If I had just one last wish, I would like a tasty fish!”
Shz, Oct 18 2005
  

       wow
Flux, Oct 18 2005
  

       With a whirlpool black-hole that takes you into another part of the galaxy [+].
coprocephalous, Oct 18 2005
  

       nice one, [coprocephalous]
theircompetitor, Oct 18 2005
  

       [tc] this is wonderful! (+) If built to scale, a tennis ball earth would be pretty hard to find in a Pacific size pool. Think of all the school tour groups we could get rid of!
ConsulFlaminicus, Oct 18 2005
  

       schools of fish in a giant plastic torus to simulate the asteroid belt.
phundug, Oct 18 2005
  

       [phundug] - 'twould be better if every so often we could get the fish to collide and fracture.
shapu, Oct 18 2005
  

       genius (+)
shinobi, Oct 19 2005
  

       Tennis ball? Try dust mote.
bristolz, Oct 19 2005
  

       It wouldn't be *quite* that small. To get the solar system comfortably inside the pacific ocean (make the diameter of pluto about 5000 miles) you need to scale it down by a factor of around 1,500,000. This would make the sun about half a mile across and the earth about nine metres across. I still wouldn't go looking for it with a bunch of schoolkids in scuba gear though.
wagster, Oct 19 2005
  

       //make the diameter of pluto about 5000 miles/ He did, of course, mean "make the diameter of the orbit of Pluto about 5000 miles".
coprocephalous, Oct 19 2005
  

       Ahem. Yes.
wagster, Oct 19 2005
  

       //I still wouldn't go looking for it with a bunch of schoolkids in scuba gear though// Particularly because the Earth would be moving about a mile a day.
coprocephalous, Oct 19 2005
  

       //an underwater burning Sun//   

       ...am i the only one who sees a distinct problem with this concept??...
daaisy, Oct 19 2005
  

       Tricky but not impossible [daaisy] - half a mile across really would be a feat of engineering though.
wagster, Oct 19 2005
  

       daaisy, have you not seen underwater flares?
theircompetitor, Oct 19 2005
  

       If Earth were reduced to the size of a pea, Jupiter would be over a thousand feet distant and Pluto, at a mile and a half distant would be the size of a single bacterium. (I read that somewhere.)   

       The distances in the Solar System are truly awesome.
bristolz, Oct 19 2005
  

       Nice
energy guy, Oct 19 2005
  

       scale it on kind of a log scale, where 1000x = 3x, 100x=2x, etc.
sophocles, Oct 19 2005
  

       <finds large metal ball, tethered> That's no moon...
lurch, Oct 19 2005
  

       Good plan [sophocles]!   

       <aside> clever clogs... </a>
wagster, Oct 19 2005
  

       great and even better if we could work the song from the recent "hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy" film in, "So Long And Thanks For All the Fish" [+]
Mr Phase, Oct 19 2005
  

       starfish for stars, perhaps?   

       (+)
soliloquy, Oct 20 2005
  

       [+] Brilliant.   

       School tour group: "Hey, Joey, guess what you can do in your suit!"
elhigh, Oct 21 2005
  

       Or maybe a scale atom.   

       Any hotels?   

       Don't keep to scale. If you did, your spaceship would be a giant in comparison. Instead, just have a model SUn at the center, with various stations in 'orbit' around it, that can be docked with by the craft.
Selky, Sep 28 2009
  

       I like it. The only downside is that since it couldn't be to scale, since there would be too much empty space in the exhibit, the off-scale version would stick in kids' minds and you'd have to emphasize in reality the sun is much bigger and the planets much further apart than it would appear. However, it would be so beautiful, and so much cooler than a book or video about the topic, it would still be worth a visit.   

       I'm sure almost everyone would love to fly into space and look down onto the earth, and this is as close as most people could get! Oh that gave me another idea - the Earth-globe surface could be a live projection of current satellite imagery, so you would be able to see wildfires, volcanoes erupting, and other natural events as if you were looking down at the planet today from space.   

       Great idea!
paix120, Sep 28 2009
  

       See link to Moon Resort -- being built on Earth
theircompetitor, Oct 01 2011
  

       How do they simulate the lung-sucking vacuum of outer space, I wonder? Seems to me that would be one of the key features of the 'Lunar Experience'.
Alterother, Oct 01 2011
  

       As a resident of the state that has the world's largest and most accurate scale model of the Solar System <linky>, I feel fully qualified to weigh in on this nearly-six-year-old discussion.   

       As many others have pointed out, building this model/underwater theme park to scale would be very impractical. Our model is over 40 miles long (from the Sun to Pluto) and requires the Sun model to be almost 50 ft in diameter just so Pluto can be 1" wide. The only way to make this a one-day attraction would be to shrink Pluto to the size of a pin-head.
Alterother, Oct 01 2011
  

       Since our solar system is in both space and time, a straightforward way to address distance, as your submarine spaceship travels the orbits, is to simply have it take longer to get from one place to the other, and to restrict the visibility of the glow of the individual planet as you are getting there.   

       This could be accomplished by building a set of "orbital" tunnels.
theircompetitor, Oct 02 2011
  
      
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