@Sea--Ocean Net Buoy Mission

DISPATCH 1:
Interview with Jerry Neely,
continued...

A cutaway view of the Ocean Net buoy.

Standing at the base of the central hub, I am directly above an inventive "gas tank" that will provide the Ocean Net buoy with a six-month supply of fuel and will simultaneously enhance the buoy's stability. The tank is actually a long, steel cylinder filled with three, thick-skinned fuel bladders. When all bladders are full, the fuel's mass helps to keep the buoy from pitching. As fuel is consumed by the generators, seawater is allowed to flood the cylinder and hence, stability advantages are maintained. Special anti-fouling agents on the inside surface of the fuel cylinder keep rough spots or barnacles from endangering the fuel bladders.

Climbing the hub past the main deck, at the upper reaches of this big, conical machine, I reach the service platform. This tight space sports the buoy's only windows. The service platform provides access to a technically ambitious and unprecedented piece of hardware--a special, Harris-developed satellite antenna. Mounted on actuators like an airplane simulator, this antenna can aim a beam of data at a geostationary satellite, never wavering by more than 1.75 degrees even when the seas outside are churning with 18 foot waves! This ability to transmit data from remote ocean locations is the function around which the Ocean Net system has taken shape.

This morning as I sit in Jerry Neely's office, I wondered what it must be like to have someone come to you and say, "We need a bunch of instrument platforms operating autonomously in the open ocean gathering data from multiple experiments and talking to scientists on land via satellite." And then to sit back, scratch your head, and create from scratch 200,000 pounds of machinery to make it happen.


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"That's engineering," says Neely. "Someone comes to you with an idea and you get to dream up how to make it work. The thing about working in support of science is that almost all of the things we engineer have never been done before. For the Ocean Net buoy, we worked with Harris for a couple of years figuring out design tradeoffs before we started actual drawings. We had to figure out a lot of tricky things: we wanted something stable but not too big and expensive; we needed a mooring cable that could hold the buoy in place but also reliably transport data and power; we had to figure out how to make connections with instruments in 15,000 feet of water--that's not easy. And we had to figure out a way to make the whole assembly pop apart at a predictable place if the surface buoy ever gets run into and hauled off by some freighter or fishing trawler. To solve that problem, we constructed a sub-sea buoy that floats at a depth of 3000 feet. At 30,000 pounds of pull on our cable, a special link attached to the sub-sea buoy will separate--acting like the mechanical equivalent of an electrical fuse. The cable releases, the data unplugs, and all of the really expensive work deploying instruments at 15,000 feet stays right where we put it." Even if the surface buoy ends up in a fishing net. If something unfortunate like this happens, the Harris and HBOI engineers will determine whether the mooring cable is still in good shape. If it is, then all they have to do is replace the single "fuse" on the sub-sea buoy, plug everything in, and they're back in business.

Neely continues, "Harris designed the system and electronics, but for our group, the most high-tech and challenging component was the mooring cable. We knew that the Navy had something called an 'aerostat cable' that was pretty close to the strength and lightness we needed. They used the cable to reel out big balloons 20,000 feet from their ships, then a radar onboard the balloon would scan for drug traffic. The cable had fiberoptics and power in it, but we found out that it wasn't going to be strong enough. We went to 10 major cable manufacturers and found out that what we needed was beyond the reaches of current technology. So the technology had to come along with us--now we ARE the leading edge. This is the strongest cable ever made at this kind of weight, with the highest Kevlar content. All along it we've got mechanical and electro-optical terminations and underwater-matable connectors." Not your average extension chord, to say the least! This humbly-named "mooring cable" stretches the limits of engineering to provide the world's first reliable data pipeline between the familiar world above the surface and the alien environment deep below.

HBOI Engineering's enormous High Bay stands in the background as several major projects take shape in the yard. To the left floats the Ocean Net buoy. A large submarine sits nearby, under renovation. Directly in front of the High Bay is a big, gray claw that will be used to lift the Ocean Net buoy onto it's Bahamas-bound towing barge.
9:30 am, passing through HBOI's machine shop-- Jerry is leading me outside past an assortment of BIG drill presses, BIG lathes, and other very serious power tools. Robot arms, deep-sea sampling devices, plexiglas spheres and all manners of exotic undersea equipment are lying here and there, waiting to be tested. I couldn't be any more distracted when we pass through the door to the Engineering Division's High Bay facility. For any weekend tinkerer who knows the perpetual frustration of having too little work space, the HBOI High Bay would be the ultimate fantasy garage. It provides HBOI engineers with an uninterrupted workspace big enough to hold a ship.

Jerry points toward two huge steel plates that somehow manage to look small in this workshop. "These are going to be the main-deck floor plates for the next two Ocean Net Buoys. We built the first Ocean Net buoy in 7 1/2 months. We're scheduled to build the 2nd one in 5 1/2 months with a 3rd buoy one month later. It's going to be 9 hours/day, 6 days/week until Christmas." As we leave the High Bay, Jerry squints into the bright sun shining across the yard. "I just ordered the rest of the metal for buoys 2 and 3. This is one of those unusual administrative challenges...figuring out where I'm going to put 300,000 pounds of steel."

I say thanks and goodbye, and let Neely get back to his extremely busy schedule. I make my way back to my truck past the Ocean Net buoy as it floats in the Harbor Branch channel. I pass it's amazing anchor, studded with electro-optical connectors intended to be used solely by deep-diving robots. I pass submarines, and gigantic sonar platforms, and cranes of every size. Looking down the channel as I prepare to drive back to my office, I can see a line of bright white research ships taking on scientists and their tools. Many of those tools were built right here by HBOI's world-class team of ocean engineers.

For my next dispatch, I'm going to spend some more time walking around HBOI Engineering, and I'll speak with some of the other engineers and sub technicians who make this facility such a vital resource for the ocean science community.

In the meantime, I'm going to measure my house for a MUCH larger garage! If the HBOI High Bay comes up missing, you'll know who took it.

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