MORE details have been released of plans to build the Blue Abyss research pool at Essex University’s Knowledge Gateway.

If planning permission is granted, the £40 million pool, measuring 50m deep, 40m wide and 50m long, will be the largest and deepest pool of it’s kind in the world.

It’s developer, Blue Abyss, says the pool will be the UK and Europe’s premier marine and space research facility.

The mega pool will also be opened up to commercial and recreational divers, who no matter what ability, will be encouraged to discover the joys of exploring the marine environments which can be simulated at the pool.

In addition, Blue Abyss want to open a £5 million, 120-bed hotel at the site to accommodate researchers, along with a state-of-the-art lecture theatre, six classrooms and a mission control style video room for pool supervision and training feedback.

The developers say this “would create a research facility in Colchester that would be the envy of the world.”

In total the company expect the site will create upwards of 150 jobs.

The new images, created by Cityscape Digital, show the pool using a virtual reality video game simulation.

A virtual reality tour of the site has been made, and will be shown to help the planning committee visualise the scale and impressive nature of the pool.

John Vickers, managing director of Blue Abyss, said: “This is a much more finalised version of the pool and much closer to what I envisioned.

“I am confident it will be approved.

“It is not just the amount of jobs we are creating, but the level of jobs are high quality.”

Mr Vickers thinks the additional time it has taken to get to this stage has allowed Blue Abyss to improve the plan and get the right people behind the project.

Sources of funding for the centre include both grants and private investors.

Mr Vickers said: “I am much more confident now that we have got the right people. We are already working with the European Space Agency. We are getting very positive feedback from everywhere.”

Professor Walter Kuehnegger, one of Nasa’s Apollo Lunar Exploration Principle Investigators, is part of the Blue Abyss team as well as a consultant and Britain’s most recent space explorer Tim Peake, European Space Agency astronaut, has previously shown his support for the project.

Mr Peake said: “I support Blue Abyss and see this future facility as something that does not yet exist in Europe and that would compete with, or potentially even surpass, what is available in the United States and Russia. This will be an outstanding facility.”

The most similar pool is based at Nasa in Houston, Texas, and is 62 metres long but just 12 metres deep.