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ROPOS under repair.
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The ROPOS Guys
by Peter Tyson
June 25, 1998
"A polite euphemism would be it was 'extensively damaged.'"
Kim Wallace, a lithe, mustachioed
ROPOS
pilot-in-training and electrical technician, is telling me
about an accident with the remotely operated
vehicle—actually, with the cage from which it is
deployed on the seafloor. The accident occurred during the
robot's recent trip to the Indian Ocean.
"Torn to shreds is what it was," he says, smiling without much
humor. We're standing in the Thompson's laboratory, a few
steps from the stern deck, where the ROPOS and its cage lie as
if in state. Members of the eight-person ROPOS team keep
sweeping through the lab, wielding unidentifiable parts and
concentrated looks. They're busily reassembling the robot and
its damaged cage for tomorrow's departure.
It seems that while ROPOS was "flying" up a slope
2,300 feet down on the
Southwest Indian Ridge, a spreading center near Madagascar,
its sonar suddenly "crapped out," as Wallace puts it. The
vehicle stopped but the cage to which it is tethered (and
which in turn is tethered to the ship), kept going, blind as a
bat without echolocation. It slammed into a wall of rock,
mutilating its superstructure. I can see it out on the ship's
fantail right now, half of it spanking new, the other half
still showing nasty scars from the crash.
Loading the Thompson.
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As if the crippled cage isn't enough to keep them busy, the
ROPOS guys are having tether problems. (The "tether" is the
cable between the robot and the cage, the "umbilical" the
cable from the cage to the ship.) "It gets abused," Wallace
says of the tether. "It gets yanked, pulled, and wound around
features on the bottom." Conductors inside the cable nearest
the robot begin to part, causing the cable to heat up. ROPOS'
handlers then have to cut off the damaged portion. In the
Indian Ocean, Wallace says, "it just got shorter and shorter
and shorter." By the end of the cruise, a tether that was
1,000 feet long when new had shrunk to about 100 feet.
So from the middle of the Indian Ocean,
Keith Shepherd
phoned the company that makes the tethers and ordered a new
one. For which we're now waiting. Not much time left; we're
supposed to shove off tomorrow.
"You're expecting it today?" I ask Wallace.
"No, a week ago," he says, again with that mirthless smile.
Turns out the tether company is in England, and they're having
trouble making a new one. So it's decided—as if there is
any choice—that the ROPOS crew will have to rely on two
old spares before the new tether arrives in Seattle and can be
shipped out on the Tully, the other ship on this expedition.
Even as I write, one of those old spares is being wound onto a
drum on the cage.
If these ROPOS guys are like so many worker ants, slaving away
in the nest, there are plenty of soldier ants streaming to and
fro along the gangway, bringing computers and boxes and
luggage on board. All day long, through the light rain we had
earlier and in the pupil-pinching sun now in mid-afternoon,
scientists, students, filmmakers and crewmembers have been
passing one another on the narrow steel walkway, keeping one
eye peeled for the business end of a crane being used now and
then by the ROPOS guys.
Peter Tyson is Online Producer of NOVA.
The Tug of the Thompson (June 23)
The ROPOS Guys (June 25)
In the Juan de Fuca Strait (June 27)
Special Report: A Visit To Atlantis (June 29)
Dive 440 (July 1)
Rescue at Sea (July 2)
What's Your Position? (July 4)
Phang! (July 5)
20,000 Pounds of Tension (July 8)
Four for Four (July 11)
Thrown Overboard (July 13)
Was Grandma a Hyperthermophile? (July 15)
Swing of the Yo-Yo (July 18)
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