James Cameron on Exploration of Deep Sea and Space | StarTalk

So it's not just you're interested in the oceans or space; you've touched and been touched by engineering and technology. There was a lot about the cameras used for Avatar, but you go farther back than that.

Well, yeah, just, I just love engineering. I love solving hard engineering problems, and I love working with really smart engineers in a room and trying to do something that hasn't been done before. Like, you know, make a sub that can go to extreme depth. You know, there were materials problems, electronics, batteries—all sorts of things that had to be developed that were actually hard problems. And, you know, I just like that.

So, Charles II liked solving problems? Yeah, so he would have made a good scientist. He would have made a good engineer. He would have been good just about anything. He could have been somebody. But that got me wondering, okay, what kind of preparation, what kind of thinking must have gone in to motivate him in 2012 to make the first solo descent to the deepest place on earth in a submarine that he piloted and co-designed? Wow.

So you know where he went? What's the deepest place on earth? The Marianas Trench. Dad, I thought you were gonna say my fears.

Almost seven miles down—seven, almost seven miles down off the coast of the Philippines. And so I asked him about that record-setting dock. Let's check it out.

So what motivated you to go to the bottom of the ocean—the bottom of the earth? You know, the funny thing is that I've been asked that a lot, and it occurs to me that a kid would never ask that question because a kid wouldn't know. You just gotta go.

Why wouldn't a kid? So, this me in that moment right there. Culture—we start to think like what about a kid again? I know, exactly. So a kid would say, "Why wouldn't you go?" Yeah, it's there, and you haven't looked yet, so why wouldn't you build a sub and get in it and go and look?