Day 8, Recapping <(Cont'd) Cont'd>
Day 5, Leaving GalvestonOK, well, whatever we haven't done and need to do, it is too late! We're off! And it seems the engineers and pilots had a VERY late night. It seems during their final check on the vehicle, they found they had a ground fault. That's bad. This is what they needed to do to fix it:
They had to cut 1 kilometer of Argus' control cable. This cable contains fiber to transmit data from the sensors and the video from the cameras, and has power cable to power up Argus. All 3,000 meters (well now 2,000 meters, oops!) winds around a huge winch that controls how deep Argus goes. It seems there was a break/dent in the cable about a thousand meters from the vehicle, and every time they powered up the vehicle they would create resistance in the cable and it was burning a whole through the cable. Oops! They spent most of the day reconnecting the end that connects to Argus to the shorter winch cable.
We've left the dock, but don't worry we're still connected with four phone lines (as if we were making a phone call from URI's campus), and an internet connection (which is how I can keep posting to this blog).
The NR-1 has a top speed of about 3 knots. It would take a very long time to go the 100 nautical miles to the Flower Gardens, so the SSV Carolyn Chouest tows the NR-1 with these huge cables and ropes.
posted by DaveandBrian @ 11:41 AM
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