Tool Team Improvises Repairs
June 3, 2004
Dr. Robert Ballard (left) kneels on the deck of the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown and applies the finishing touches to the recently repaired tether connecting ROV Hercules to the towed camera sled Argus.
Photograph by Dave Wright © IFE/National Geographic Society
Argus and Hercules are pushing the technological envelope, but Wednesday they needed some jury-rigged steel pipes, plates, and bolts to get them ready to return to the water. The two exploration vehicles were found to be banged up after being hauled aboard the stern of the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown. Repairs began almost immediately.
Dr. Robert D. Ballard, leader of the Return to Titanic expedition, pronounced himself "tickled pink" by the 12 hours worth of breathtaking images the vehicles captured at Titanic's bow, yet saddened by the decay and damage.
"Yes, it's still the grand old lady down there," he said. "But it's not the same grand old lady as it was when I was there (in 1986)."
The live video images confirmed holes in the bridge and boat deck, as well as impact damage from submersibles. Television viewers can see for themselves during Return to Titanic, an hour-long National Geographic Channel program, to be broadcast at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday.
As the barometer fell and winds rose above 30 knots early Wednesday, the science team decided to raise Argus and Hercules from the bottom and lash them to the deck.
When engineers examined Argus's tow cable, as well as the tether that connects it to ROV Hercules, they found damage that required some tricky repair before the next dive.
Dave Wright, a self-described "shadetree mechanic" from Louisville, Kentucky, as well as a skilled engineering support member of Dr. Ballard's team, said the cable's "mechanical termination" had pulled about an inch from its setting and would have to be rebuilt.
Argus's 4,000 pounds of dead weight puts a tremendous strain on its cable, especially when it is whipped by the motion of the surface ship.
"We had a backup for it," Wright said of the crucial part. "Sort of like a belt and suspenders." Nevertheless, he said, it started to move and might have dropped Argus and Herc on the floor of the North Atlantic if not fixed.
Later that night, after the part was disassembled, Wright and the senior engineers inspected it and decided it wasn't as bad as they thought. They reassembled it and successfully pull-tested 18,000 pounds from the stern.
In addition to the cable problem, welds in the aluminum connections at both ends of the 98-foot (30-meter) optical-fiber tether cracked and had to be strengthened.
They could not be rewelded in place without destroying embedded glass filaments, which transmit Hercules's video images to the surface.
Instead, ship's Acting Chief Engineer Jim Gatlin suggested the eventual solution: Fashion a new support collar out of steel ? shaped in a mirror image of the aluminum parts, wrapped around the cracks, and bolted in place.
Brennan Phillips, an engineer with Dr. Ballard's Institute for Exploration, said he and Ron Brown First Assistant Engineer Keegan Plaskon made the parts by welding the end of a steel pipe to a steel plate, and then slicing through the pipe lengthwise. The finished product looked like two halves of an ankle-high tee-ball stand.
The IFE tool van on the stern contains hydraulics repair equipment, spare parts, computer hardware, a drill press, and virtually a small hardware store, but Phillips and Plaskon had to borrow the ship's arc welder and band saw for the job.
A minor problem with Hercules's mechanical arm also was being corrected. A faulty cylinder made the arm jerk repeatedly as pilot Todd Gregory attempted to pick up a rusticle experiment station from Titanic's boat deck. After at least 15 minutes of trying, Gregory finally snagged the station and dropped it in Hercules's "bio box."
Hours later, on the stern deck, microbiologist Roy Cullimore retrieved the experiment he had placed on Titanic in 1998. He intends to analyze the rusticle colonies it acquired to help him plot a rate for the ship's deterioration.
Herc's arm received a new cylinder Wednesday afternoon.
The repair team hoped to re-launch Argus and Hercules sometime Thursday. Dr. Ballard said he expects the next voyage will visit Titanic's catastrophically ruptured stern.
While the science crews worked, many on board went forward to watch dolphins playing in the Ron Brown's bow wake or relax with a movie in the ship's lounge.
(Note: nationalgeographic.com does not research or edit dispatches.)
