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DISPATCH 1:
Interview with Jerry Neely
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Director of Engineering at HBOI, Jerry Neely.
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| Sean Kelley is a familiar face behind the scenes at our website, but now he's on the other side of the server. What lured him away from his HTML? A lot of very cool machinery... |
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8:30 am, offices of HBOI's Division of Engineering--The halls leading to Jerry Neely's office are lined with framed photos of oceanic machines--ships, subs, assorted robot arms and grabbers, but mostly with photos of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). Over the last 25 years, these versatile little unmanned submarines have become the workhorses of underwater industry, and Jerry Neely has been there, designing and building them every step of the way. "That's how I got started in ocean engineering," says Neely. "I worked at a shipyard to pay my way through electronics school. Afterwards, I got a job working on early computer systems at Texas Instruments while several of my buddies went to work as deep-sea divers doing underwater construction in the North Sea. They were making a whole lot of money, and they kept wanting me to come over there. Well, I'm not a diver, but when my friends told me about these new little robotic vehicles they were starting to use, I was over there in a heartbeat. I started working on machines with propellers and cameras on them, just thinking it would be a fun way to make some extra cash. Now, all these years later, I'm still doing the same thing!"
Jerry Neely does a whole lot more than just tinker with undersea robots...he runs what is arguably the world's most multifaceted ocean engineering facility. "We design, build, and deploy just about anything you can think of for the ocean. We can take a prototype from a blank page to a working machine then test it right here on our subs and ships. Electronics, software engineering, large-scale fabrication, at-sea project management, deployment and recovery--having all of this stuff happen in one place is very rare."
Having had a look around the Ocean Net buoy, I have no doubt of the do-anything capability of Neely's team. Walking around inside the buoy is like being on the set of 2001, A Space Odyssey. Everything is gleaming white, with giant steel cylinders, disks, and beams joining in flawless welds. Bundled wires and rows of tubing trace their way along neat, geometric paths up the curving walls.
The inside of this futuristic craft is split into three levels. The main deck is just above sea level and is the roomiest campartment onboard, providing a generous entryway for technicians who may be called on to service the buoy while it is at sea. Right down the middle of this large, cone-shaped room runs the hub--a large steel tube with ladders running up the inside and out. At every level, this tube supports heavy steel doors...the kind of watertight hatches you see in old submarine movies. Turning a wheel at the door's center releases a radial set of bolts, allowing the hatchway's considerable mass to swing free. A trip downward in the hub leads to the buoy's two sub-sea compartments. On one side is a generator room housing two large diesel engines. This engine compartment, capable of generating power enough for the buoy to stay at sea for five years at a time, is spotlessly clean and uproariously loud--an earplugs-only attraction. Across the hub through the other hatchway is the "equipment" room. Here, banks of computers will manage the buoy and all of the data it collects. This is the nerve center of the Ocean Net buoy, and it looks it. Myriad wires snake their way from component to component...they're neatly bundled, but overwhelming in their sheer numbers. Working away amid these heaps of multicolored techno-spaghetti is an MCS electronics engineer, completing final preparations for the buoy's launch. She actually seems to know what each of these million wires do, but my best attempts at shouting questions are completely swallowed in the roar of the generators. I finally give her a "nevermind" wave and move on.
Go to page <<1, 2, 3>>
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<<DISPATCH 1
page 1, 2, 3
<<DISPATCH 2
<<DISPATCH 3
<<DISPATCH 4
<<DISPATCH 5
<<DISPATCH 6
MISSION
CONTROL
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