How NASA engineered the Chilean miners' escape pod | Hacker News Reader

How NASA engineered the Chilean miners' escape pod

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106 pointsjaxonrice28 comments

I helped design the drill (raisebore) used to get to the miners. It was by pure chance the rig was in the country at the time this happened.

Today is one of those "I did something that matters" moments for me.

Also not to take anything away from NASA (they are the reason I became an engineer) but they only assisted in the design by suggesting improvements etc. We sketched out the original capsule shape right here.

Could you give some details about how and why you got this job, and what considerations had to be made when designing it?

What they use these machines for normally is to drill shafts for ventilation or egress in mines. Generally there are two ways to drill shafts, top down (blind sinking etc.) or bottom up (raiseboring). Top down shafts used to be predominate, but these days they are only used for larger shaft diameters 5.5m+.

What you do is drill a pilot hole down for the shaft, attach the reamer head, then literally pull the drill rig upwards to ream the hole. Obviously in this case we can't get the reamer down there so they are using the pilot shaft hole to get the guys out (hence the tiny capsule!)

The rig (Strata 950) is used all over the world for these jobs, and it wasn't specifically designed for this, it just happened to be there at the time.

The major design considerations were the massive forces and torques that would be applied. However the biggest worry we had was the impact and fatigue strength of the rig, especially the reamer. This thing has upwards of 500T of thrust pulling it up and 600kNm of Torque on a 5.5m head. If it encounters a void or some other ground anomaly and it stalls or hits something, the damage it can cause is massive. It has been a while but I remember 25mm welds throughout it.

Hope that wasn't too long winded, but it is as 'simple' as I could really make it during my lunch break.

edit: some clarification

That's one very cool thing to have been doing, half the world is watching this, really neat to see you have played a part in it.

Mining technology (and off-shore stuff) is very impressive. I lived near a very large open pit mine in Germany and the gear they had there was the most impressive machinery I've ever seen.

Mining equipment is very fun and generally huge. What I am sure most people don't realise is the amount of safety is built into any design constructed (especially here in Australia). There are safety factors upon safety factors upon safety factors included before anything is built.

I am currently managing the design and construction of new infrastructure at a massive open pit mine in Australia. The shear magnitude of earth moving is unbelievable.

Hear is an interesting fact I am sure will surprise most: Most gold mines have ore grades of about 5-7g/Tonne.

That is 5g of gold for every 1 tonne of rock pulled out of the ground. Doesnt sound like much, but when a CAT 793C dumptruck is loaded with about 250T and the current gold price is as high as it is, you will see why even at 5g/Tonnes it is VERY profitable.

Mining is all about efficiency, and optimising how much ore comes out of the ground. If you can get just 1 more dump truck per day, at today's gold price that equates to about $18million in revenue per year.

If any entrepreneurs are looking for a market full of money, check out the gold miners. ;)

edit: formatting.

To me, this sounds like the "old NASA" that I read and heard about from the 60's. Limited time frame, small team and a focused goal. Is there a way we can get NASA back to that type of organization?

If we did that (and had some audacious goals), I think it would get the public interested in space travel again.

By outsourcing NASA to the private sector (e.g. Space X and whoever else enters this potentially lucrative market) and allowing capitalist competition expose the bureaucratic fluff that NASA is composed of these days. Eventually, the giant NASA-yak will be shorn, and scientists will do work again.

At least, that's what I think.

I'm skeptical that merely privatizing NASA or really any other public sector agency would automatically remove bureaucratic fluff, and that bureaucratic fluff is such a gargantuan problem at NASA that removing it would cause a miraculous internal shift for the better. It strikes me as more of a libertarian utopian cure-all than a decision based on NASA's particular problems and objectives.

I wouldn't characterize myself as a libertarian, nor do I think that privatizing is a cure-all. You misrepresent me.

What I said and what you portray my comment as saying are very different; contracting with third parties != privatizing NASA.

If SpaceX delivers, they'll be delivering a lot more for a lot less money. I'm sorry that my use of the word competition set off your "libertarian alarm", but I can't see how anything but good is coming out of contracting with SpaceX.

If not bureaucratic fluff, what is to blame for the great success of organisations such as SpaceX while Nasa has done less with more?

Still, I concede that we must be cautious about potential silver bullets. Good point on the "libertarian utopian cure-all"

Maybe this perception exists because there is less for NASA to do. There's not a lot for astronauts to do in space until we have some kind of breakthrough in propulsion. It's too slow and expensive to get around the solar system until then.

So for now we put up satellites and telescopes, send out probes, help with the ISS, and... study the sky. These jobs get done with what we have now. What great mission would even require the kind of NASA that existed in the 60s? Please don't say Mars.

I agree. NASA, and most people, thrive on having a mission - especially a challenge.

Why not say Mars?

There's no point, other than flag planting.

I had the same thought. Even though the scope of this operation was pretty limited, the can-do! of the NASA folks made me smile. Simple or not (relative to, you know, sending human beings to space and back), that's a lot of guys to throw at this and it can't have been cheap. I'm proud a few cents of my taxes went to this project.

More on the man who has come to embody the 60's NASA you're thinking of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Kranz

> I'm proud a few cents of my taxes went to this project.

Likewise. I was thinking about this recently, and this article is a great example. Disasters happen relatively rarely, and by involving American scientists, first responders, and military in assistance, we get disaster preparation experience, higher readiness, help people out, and build some goodwill and good relations around the world. Very much a win/win/win/win situation for all involved.

Essentially it's what german engineers built in the 60s. ;-)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahlbuschbombe

http://www.bergbaumuseum.de/web/Dahlbuschbombe

Wow, that's pretty close. English Translations:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl...

More on that particular mine collapse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengede

I think it's inaccurate to think that the type of organisation that NASA was in the 1960s was purely a product of intrinsic factors. I'd think that the reason NASA was as it was during the 60's was because of the external circumstances it found itself in:

- a competitive race with the Soviet Union against a background of the cold war

- a specific and hard presidential goal of "landing a man on the moon..before the decade is out".

Where those external pressures are in place, it would be almost expected that any organisation could (and likely, would) become entrepreneurial and innovative. And the converse is even more true: absent the goals driving the organisation, bureaucratic friction will drag it to a halt.

Seriously. Seems to me it's the 'old NASA' that would pick a name like "the Escape Vehicle". The names NASA picks always strike some kind of chord of passion in me.

Your comment reminded me of the saying, "work expands to fill the time allocated to it." Which means, I think, that, approximately speaking, if you assume it will take 100 people 1 year to solve a certain problem then that is probably about how long it will take. But if you instead say we only have 5 people and 1 month then, surprise surprise, you'll also have a solution too. Speaking in general terms, of course. You tend to need better people and less bureaucracy and friction in order for smaller teams and smaller time windows to be just as effective.

I can only imagine what it would be like to be inside a drill hole compressed inside a capsule and surrounded by rock for 20 minutes with the possibility of it being jammed. I can't help but to drag a comparison between surfacing out of this cramped chamber and birth. Instead of only the mother I'm sure the miners and their families will be under the effects of an endorphin rush.

That puts the term 'mother earth' in a completely new perspective.

It would be pretty nerve-wracking to be the last one to go up.

The first person down is going to be a paramedic from the surface. It would be natural for this person to be the last one up.

According to the BBC just now, the miners are trying to decide who will have the honour of being last out.

And the record for the longest time spent underground.

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