William Stone (caver) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
William Stone
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| Born |
William C. Stone
December 7, 1952 Pennsylvania, US
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| Education | University of Texas at Austin |
| Occupation | CEO of Stone Aerospace |
| Known for | Exploration of deep caves |
William C. Stone, born on December 7, 1952, is an American engineer and explorer. He is famous for exploring very deep caves, sometimes using special underwater robots. He has been on more than 40 trips around the world and leads a company called Stone Aerospace.
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About William Stone
William Stone was born in Pennsylvania on December 7, 1952. He loved exploring caves while studying Civil Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He earned his degree in 1974.
In 1976, while studying engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, Stone joined a trip to a cave system called Sistema Huautla in Oaxaca, Mexico. His team explored deeper than anyone before, reaching 2,624 feet (about 800 meters) down!
After earning his Ph.D. in engineering, Stone worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 1980 to 2004. There, he started a group focused on construction technology. He led this group for seven years before focusing more on his projects at Stone Aerospace.
Exploring Wakulla Springs
From 1998 to 1999, Stone led a big international team of over 100 volunteers for the Wakulla 2 Project. After getting permission from the state of Florida, the team began mapping the cave at Wakulla Springs, near Tallahassee, Florida.
Robots for Exploration
Stone was the main scientist for the NASA-funded DEPTHX project. This project created a very advanced autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), which is like a robot submarine. This robot explored the world's deepest sinkholes.
The success of DEPTHX helped get funding for the ENDURANCE project. This project completed two field seasons at Lake Bonney in Antarctica in 2008 and 2009. Both DEPTHX and ENDURANCE helped test ideas for a future robot vehicle. This vehicle could explore the oceans of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, to search for tiny forms of life.
Books About His Adventures
Stone's cave explorations in Sistema Huautla in Oaxaca, Mexico, are written about in his book, Beyond the Deep: The ... Descent Into the World's Most ... Cave (2002). He wrote this book with Barbara am Ende and Monte Paulsen. Stone is also a big part of James Tabor's book Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth (2010). This book talks about his important work in extreme caving and shares many of his cave trips, especially those to Huautla and Cheve.
MK1 Rebreather Diving
In December 1987, Bill Stone became well-known in the diving world. He showed off a special diving device called the Cis-Lunar MK1 rebreather at Wakulla Springs, Florida. He used it for a scuba dive that lasted 24 hours, using only half of the system's power!
TED Talk and Moon Plans
Bill Stone gave a talk at TED 2007. He spoke about exploring the world's deepest caves and future space travel. In his talk, Stone shared his goal to lead a trip to the Moon. He wanted to find ice that scientists believe is trapped at the Moon's southern pole, in a place called Shackleton Crater. His idea was to sell products made from this ice, like rocket fuel, to other countries and companies in space.
See also
- Shackleton Energy Company
