[a_bonobo]

There's an interesting link between K-129 and the current 'boom' around deep sea mining: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

The cover-story to build the Glomar Explorer to recover K-129 was that Howard Hughes thought that it was economically feasible to mine manganese nodules from the deep sea. A lot of engineering research started that year (1974) that now, 2023, bears fruit in several large companies trying to mine the ocean floor with approvals to start probably happening this year: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02290-5

Without the cover-story and Howard Hughes I wonder how many researchers would have ever looked at deep sea mining.

[diracs_stache]

The Norman Polmar book on the topic is fairly interesting. Also, I've really turned into my dad reading Cold War non-fiction in bed.