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A science fiction/science truth evaluation of Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove, the fictionalized model of the Hughes Glomar Explorer expedition 50 years earlier than the OceanGate Titan tragedy.
My new science fiction/science truth article for Science Robotics is out on why deep ocean robotics is difficult. Especially when attempting to carry up a sunken submarine 3 miles underwater, which the CIA truly did in 1974. It’s even tougher should you’re attempting to carry up an alien spaceship- which is the plot of Harry Turtledove’s new sci-fi novel Three Miles Under. It’s a pleasant Forrest Gump model of that 1974 Hughes Glomar Explorer expedition. Though the expedition was 50 years earlier than the OceanGate Titan tragedy, the identical challenges exist for right this moment’s robots. The robotics science within the guide may be very actual, the aliens, not a lot.
In 1974, the CIA deployed a 3 mile lengthy, 6 million pound robotic manipulator to get better a Russian submarine. The cowl story was that Howard Hughes was deep sea mining for manganese nodules- which unintentionally began everybody else investing in deep sea mining.
The Glomar Explorer was additionally a breakthrough in pc management, because the ship needed to keep on station and transfer the arm to the sub within the presence of wind, waves, and currents. All with an array of 16-bit microprocessor, 5MHz clock, 32K phrases of core reminiscence Honeywell computer systems. Consider {that a} late mannequin iPhone makes use of a 64-bit microprocessor, a 3GHz clock, 6GB of RAM and a GPU.
Turtledove takes one main liberty with the in any other case arduous science retrospective: the CIA recovering the Soviet sub was in flip a canopy story masking the true mission to salvage the alien house ship that apparently collided with the sub!
The dry humor and a spotlight to scientific particulars makes for an entertaining sci-fi compare-and-contrast between deep sea robotics and computer systems within the Seventies and the current day. It’s a enjoyable read- not only for roboticists and pc scientists.
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Robin Murphy
is a Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and Vice-President of the not-for-profit Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue
Robin Murphy
is a Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and Vice-President of the not-for-profit Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue