Reversing 'Brain Drain'
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Techshot Developing Undersea Research Equipment
An Indiana-company with 20 years of experience developing equipment for air and space research is entering a new—and equally fascinating—frontier: deep sea research. Located just north of Louisville inside the Indiana border, Techshot is creating a system to retrieve animals from as deep as 2,000 meters—more than a mile—under the sea and safely bring those animals to surface laboratories for study. The equipment is the first of its kind and will give researchers newfound capabilities.
The two-year, $400,000 contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the product development company's first significant step in providing research equipment for scientists studying marine life. However, company leaders say there are many similarities in developing aerospace and deep sea research equipment.
"It's very expensive to launch [space mission] payloads, so there's a lot of specialty equipment that has to be condensed to an extremely lightweight package," says Todd Fricke, project manager at Techshot. "The same is true for the system we're designing for NOAA's underwater research. The only thing out there right now weighs about 1,500 pounds and requires a dedicated sailing mission to take it out, drop it in the bottom of the ocean and then retrieve it, which is very expensive."
The system Techshot is designing weighs one-tenth of that amount; about 150 pounds. Approximately the size of a beach ball, the spherical chamber is enclosed in a square frame and can be mounted on a submersible (small three-man submarine) and taken underwater. Listen
While small in size, the company believes the equipment will have a significant impact on deep sea research. In the past, scientists struggled to bring marine life from its high-pressure, natural deep sea environment to the surface while keeping the specimen alive.
"When you go to the bottom of the ocean, collect a specimen and close the lid on the jar, the pressure around the container drops when you return to the surface. The container will, likewise, attempt to go down in pressure," says Fricke. "If you don't have controls in place and a container designed to manage that, the pressure will drop to levels that are detrimental to the specimen inside."
While researchers have equipment in surface laboratories to obtain the desired pressure, they had no way of transporting the specimens from the ocean floor to their labs while maintaining a pressure level that sustains life for optimum research. The system Techshot is developing will provide a chamber with a pressure of 4,500 pounds per square inch—a level very close to equipment Techshot has already developed for aerospace research. Listen
"Another challenge of the project is the system has to be operated by not only the lab technician, but the robotic arms on the front of the submarine," says Fricke. "It adds a great deal of complexity to the design; it has to be elegantly simple. There are a lot of motions we take for granted that are very difficult to replicate using a robotic arm."
Fricke says NOAA will use the system to bring various fish species, coral and living rock to its surface laboratories to study. For example, scientists could use the marine life to learn more about extremophiles, organisms that thrive in extreme conditions such as low oxygen levels undersea. Listen
Techshot's Vice President of Corporate Advancement Rich Boling says the system could have many applications beyond studies conducted by NOAA researchers, possibly sparking a new business unit for the company. Techshot has received interest from universities around the country that conduct underwater research, and they also hope to pursue international research teams.
"I think our eclectic experience is what gives Techshot a great advantage," says Boling. "Maybe we don't have a lot of experience in undersea research equipment, but we've done a lot in aerospace equipment, life sciences equipment and so many other varied industries. We can take the best of what we've learned across all these industries, meaning the latest thing we do is always the best thing we've ever done."
Techshot plans to complete the project and deliver the equipment to NOAA in the fall of 2010, giving scientists newfound opportunities to study the physiology of creatures living a mile below the water's surface.
