William C. "Bill" Stone (born December 7, 1952) is an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

caver Caving – also known as spelunking in the United States and Canada and potholing in the United Kingdom and Ireland – is the recreational pastime of exploring wild cave systems (as distinguished from show caves). In contrast, speleology i ...

and

explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...

, known for exploring deep

cave A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

s, sometimes with

autonomous underwater vehicle An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is a robot that travels underwater without requiring input from an operator. AUVs constitute part of a larger group of undersea systems known as unmanned underwater vehicles, a classification that includ ...

s. He has participated in over 40 international expeditions and is president and CEO of Stone Aerospace.

Biography

Stone grew up in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. He was an active caver in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Outing Club while studying for a

B.S. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University ...

Civil Engineering Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads, bridges, canals, dams, airports, sewa ...

, awarded in 1974. In 1976, while studying engineering at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

, Stone took part in an expedition to the Sistema Huautla in

Oaxaca Oaxaca ( , also , , from nci, Huāxyacac ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Oaxaca), is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of Mexico. It is ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

, where his group set a new penetration depth record of . After obtaining a Ph.D. in Engineering, Stone worked at the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

in Gaithersburg,

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

from 1980–2004. While at the institute, Stone established the Construction Metrology and Automation Group. He led the group for seven years before stepping down to focus on projects at Stone Aerospace. In 1998–1999, Stone directed an international group of explorers consisting of over 100 volunteers to participate in the Wakulla 2 Project. Upon securing a permit from the State of

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

the expedition began mapping the cave of

Wakulla Springs Wakulla Springs is located south of Tallahassee, Florida and east of Crawfordville in Wakulla County, Florida at the crossroads of State Road 61 and State Road 267. It is protected in the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park. Description ...

, near

Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the populatio ...

. Stone was the

principal investigator In many countries, the term principal investigator (PI) refers to the holder of an independent grant and the lead researcher for the grant project, usually in the sciences, such as a laboratory study or a clinical trial. The phrase is also often us ...

for the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

-funded DEPTHX project, which produced a highly advanced AUV to explore the world's deepest

sinkholes A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...

. The success of that project was key in getting funding for the

ENDURANCE Endurance (also related to sufferance, resilience, constitution, fortitude, and hardiness) is the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from an ...

project, with Professor

Peter Doran Peter T. Doran, Ph.D. is Professor of Geology and Geophysics and John Franks Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University. Prior to 2015, he was faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Doran specialize ...

of the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois ...

as its principal investigator. ENDURANCE completed two field seasons at Lake Bonney in the

Dry Valleys The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

in 2008 and 2009. Both projects served as a testing ground for developing a vehicle that can autonomously scour the seas of Jupiter's moon Europa for signs of microbial life. Stone's caving expeditions in Sistema Huautla in

is chronicled in his book, ''Beyond the Deep: The Deadly Descent Into the World's Most Treacherous Cave'' (2002), which he co-authored with Barbara am Ende and Monte Paulsen. Stone also figures prominently in James Tabor's book ''Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth'' (2010), which discusses his contribution to extreme caving and summarizes many of Stone's caving expeditions, most notably those to Huautla and Cheve.

MK1 rebreather

In December 1987 Bill Stone became known to the wider diving community when he demonstrated the Cis-Lunar MK1 model

rebreather A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's breathing, exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content, and unused inert content when present, of each breath. ...

in a scuba dive which lasted 24 hours and used only half of the system's capacity.''The Cave Divers'' (Burgess)
p. 122.

TED appearance

Bill Stone gave a talk at TED 2007 about exploring the world's deepest caves and frontier space travel. In the talk, Stone pledged his devotion to lead a mining expedition to the Moon "to mine ice thought to be trapped on the Moon's southern pole at

Shackleton Crater Shackleton is an impact crater that lies at the lunar south pole. The peaks along the crater's rim are exposed to almost continual sunlight, while the interior is perpetually in shadow. The low-temperature interior of this crater functions as a ...

, and to sell derived products (including

propellants A propellant (or propellent) is a mass that is expelled or expanded in such a way as to create a thrust or other motive force in accordance with Newton's third law of motion, and "propel" a vehicle, projectile, or fluid payload. In vehicles, the e ...

and other consumables) on the Moon and in

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never mor ...

(LEO) to international consumers."

References

External links

* *
"I'm going to the moon. Who's with me?" (TED2007)
** at TED conference
Video: Journey Towards The Center Of The Earth, Google TechTalk, July 2006
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Stone, William 1952 births Living people American aerospace engineers American cavers American explorers American inventors American underwater divers Businesspeople from Pennsylvania Missing middle or first names Place of birth missing (living people) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumni Sportspeople from Pennsylvania Cockrell School of Engineering alumni

Biography

MK1 rebreather

TED appearance

See also

References

External links