In the middle of the Cold War, the Soviet missile submarine K-129It sank on March 8, 1968 and was located almost 5,000 meters deep, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at some never-revealed point between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Hawaiian Islands. The US intelligence agency (CIA) took advantage of this remote location in international waters, very close to the 180th meridian that marks the international date line, to mount one of the most complex, sophisticated and expensive secret operations of that time of maximum tension. between the two great superpowers of the 20th century. Many details of that enormous technological challenge remain undeclassified and have once again awakened the fascination of both science fiction readers and researchers in underwater robotics, especially after the submersible accident. Titan last June.
In 1974, the United States completed its covert operation and managed to recover part of the submersible and the bodies of six submariners who were in it, all thanks to the construction of a ship with the largest manipulator arm in the world. In his latest novel, Three Miles Down(in English, three miles down, which is the approximate depth of five kilometers), the renowned science fiction author Harry Turtledove takes up the story of the submarine rescue, and contrasts the robotics of the seventies with the current one, according to a recent article published by the magazine Science Robotics. “Robotics is the only possibility of rescue for these situations,” reveals Robin R. Murphy, author of the analysis and professor at Texas A&M University.
In order to recover the lost Soviet submarine, the K-129the CIA secretly built a ship called Hughes Glomar Explorer.Ostensibly, it was a commercial mining ship, owned by billionaire Howard Hughes, and theoretically designed to extract manganese nodules from the ocean floor. But that was just a cover, which Turtledove puts another twist on. In his novel, the recovery of the submarine is, in turn, a way to cover up the rescue of an alien spaceship that had collided with the K-129.
The ship, both in fiction and reality, featured a derrick, a giant robotic claw mounted on the end of a pipe.five kilometers long, called strong-back, and a central docking shaft to store the submarine once rescued. The project, in addition to expanding the frontiers of mechanical construction, pushed the limits of offshore drilling technology, according to the recent scientific article. “Strong-backis the term used to refer to the tubes that connect the drilling rig to the ship or platform on the surface. The limits were exceeded due to the extraordinary length of the pipe and the Hughes Glomar Explorer It moved with the wind and waves, while the underwater current moved the tube,” explains Murphy.
Murphy’s analysis recounts how the 1974 computer system was key to the success of the mission, for two reasons. First, because the ship had to remain static in the ocean, taking into account changes in the state of the sea and without a precise satellite positioning system like the current GPS. And second, because I had to be able to locate the position of the claw (called Clementine) and compensate for pipe deformationby the currents. Engineers created a complex system of buoys, hydrophones and sonars to measure waves, winds and currents.
Today, technological development is much greater: one only has to compare your current phone with the prototypes that existed in the early seventies, explains engineer Iván Masmitja, from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM). The current iPhone has a 3 gigahertz microprocessor, a speed 600 times greater than that of the computers that controlled the claw Clementine. “Underwater control, positioning and localization systems have changed a lot. We have autonomous robots piloted by artificial intelligence, capable of navigating and locating objects underwater. ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) can transmit HD and 4K images, which greatly improves exploration,” he details.
For the search operation Titanthe Ocean Gate company submarine that disappeared last June with five tourists on board to see the Titanic, the French robot was used Victor 6000, capable of studying and exploring the ocean. The ROV is connected with a cable, like an umbilical cord, to a ship on the surface, where pilots have direct access to the instruments and cameras, explains Masmitja. Due to its configuration, it is not capable of towing large weights, like a submersible, but it can tie a cable to the submarine or the device that is to be lifted. Then you climb aboard with the ship’s winch. “Like when fishing boats drag and lift large nets,” Masmitja illustrates.
When trying to upload the K-129 surfaced during the rescue operation, a section of the submersible broke off and fell to the ground, as revealed by the CIA in a very generic version of the report on the Azorian project, which also has numerous details blacked out. The recent scientific article asks whether the fall was due to a failure of the claw fingers or the loss of structural integrity of the ship at extreme depths, as Clyde Burleson maintains in his research book on that colossal covert operation.. The latter, according to Murphy, is what happened to the submersible Titan. Antonio Crucelaegui, director of the School of Naval Engineers at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, explains that the compression of the structure is due to the high pressure: “In the Titan It was equivalent to having 10 buildings like the Empire State Building on top, weighing 375,000 tons each. That same weight is what justifies the implosion,” he explains.
Despite the complexities and dangers of marine technology, Project Azorian recovered the remains of several Soviet sailors, who were later buried at sea, as revealed by the CIA after the ship’s true purpose was leaked to the press. Hughes Glomar Explorer. In the recent case of Titan, the US Coast Guard reported in June the discovery of possible human remains among the submersible fragments. In both cases, the value of robotics is revealed so that humans can act in such extreme environments. Marine robotics is, according to Robin R. Murphy’s analysis, the only option to recover a sunken submersible; both in our reality and in an alternate reality where the real objective is to rescue an alien spaceship from the deep ocean.
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