The article kindly submitted here mentions<p><a href="http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep-borehole" rel="nofollow">http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kola-superdeep-borehole</a><p>as a source of more information.
xkcd had a comment showing relative depth of the oceans and lakes. The kola borehole was also on there.<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/1040/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1040/</a>
Much more at wikipedia: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole</a>
Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's usage of Moholes for ore mining and energy production in his Mars trilogy:<p><a href="http://kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Mohole" rel="nofollow">http://kimstanleyrobinson.info/w/index.php5?title=Mohole</a>
FYI: Exxon recently surpassed the depth of this hole while drilling in the Chayvo oil fields.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I</a>
So how is the drilling actually conducted? Is there basically a miles-long, rapidly-spinning, articulated shaft with a drill bit at the bottom and a motor at the surface? What sorts of weird and wonderful engineering challenges do you run into with that sort of setup, especially as your giant drill grows larger than 10 miles in length?
Watching Cosmos last week had me thinking about how deep we'd drilled to date. I meant to go look it up but didn't. Thanks for posting.<p>It saddens me/blows me away we've only gone 7.5 miles (into the 22 mile crust). It also reminds me how fragile our biosphere is and how little we really understand it.
A video about this, for folks who would rather watch/listen than read: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz6v6OfoQvs</a>
I can't help but remember a certain Art Bell episode: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvnxeX2SQso" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvnxeX2SQso</a><p>Art Bell was awesome..