Stepping on Neil Armstrong: Ars visits the Navy’s newest research vessel

[Boats]

Stepping on Neil Armstrong: Ars visits the Navy’s newest research vessel
By: JOHN TIMMER - 6/6/2017, 11:42 AM
RE: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017...search-vessel/

Note: Pictures and a Video on site only - worth watching.

Chief Engineer Gary McGrath made us an offer we couldn't refuse. Pulling aside a yellow cord that blocked off access to the lower reaches of the research vessel Neil Armstrong, he offered a look at the ship's engines and the very bottom of the ship, where sonar arrays are plugged in to the hull. It wasn't part of the planned tour, and it would require squeezing down a narrow ladder, but how could we say no?

In the fleet

Fleet Week, an annual event in New York City, generally features naval vessels from the US and other nations. So it was a bit of a surprise to get an offer to visit the Armstrong in the first place. But, while the ship is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), it was built and owned by the US Navy. So, while it was poorly armed compared to the vessels that accompanied it up the Hudson, the Armstrong was right at home.

The US Navy has a long history of ocean research. The Office of Naval Research dates back more than 70 years, and Navy seafloor maps revealed the mid-ocean ridges, helping usher plate tectonics into widespread acceptance. And, in recent decades, the Navy has followed a model where it builds research vessels and then has academic institutions operate them. Those institutions accept applications from individual researchers to spend time pursing projects onboard.

The Armstrong is one of the two newest vessels in the Navy's research fleet (the other, the Sally Ride, operates in the Pacific). Both are just over 72 meters long and displace a bit over 3,200 metric tonnes when fully loaded. And McGrath was happy to show us what makes them tick.

The engine room was dominated by the sound of four diesel generators, each of them capable of pushing out 1,044kW (1,400 HP). To move the ship, that power can be sent to two engines, each capable of using 876kW. The ship normally cruises at about 10 knots; as one of the bridge staff put it, that speed "tries to balance fuel efficiency with being able to get there in a reasonable amount of time."

But the ship's propulsion involves a lot more than raw speed. To begin with, it's designed to be quiet, so as not to interfere with its own sonar hardware. And it's extremely maneuverable, being able to turn within its own 72 meter length. That's in part because the engines turn a system with two nested shafts that can shift relative to each other, allowing the propellers to swivel and direct force. There's also a 620kW stern thruster that can push the rear of the ship left or right.

There's also a 680kW thruster in the bow that can direct thrust in every direction but up. "It's a water jet basically," said one of the crew. "Takes it in, shoots it out, and we can turn it any direction."

The ship's controls are heavily automated, as well. While there's still a ship's wheel, it has been reduced to the size of a large donut. With the right commands, the ship can zero in on its GPS position and adjust its various thrusters to keep itself in position without any crew intervention. Charts and radar all show up on computer screens, and closed-circuit TV gives the bridge crew a view of the ship and its surroundings in all directions. (Should everything go badly, there are two clear ports that are heated and rotate fast enough to keep ice and rain from building up.)

Two screens on the bridge also provide a full readout of what's taking place downstairs in engineering. While it's technically possible to run engineering from the bridge, the crew there quipped: "The engineers wisely lock us out of being able to change things."

Instead, the engineering systems are run from a set of screens in close proximity to the engines, even though the hardware apparently doesn't need intervention most of the time. "Most of the time we have an issue, we just reboot it." When asked how often that happens, McGrath just replied, "often enough."

Power to the science

When all those kilowatts aren't being used to push the ship around, they operate a variety of hardware dedicated to science. The ship has more than 130 square meters (1,400 square feet) of lab space that can be altered to adjust to whatever researchers are currently on board. "It's infinitely configurable," said WHOI's Dave Fisichella, "because we're a general-purpose research vessel. So we have to be adaptable from one cruise to the next. We could be doing geology one cruise, and come in with two days to turn the ship around and start doing biology."

There are some accommodations for shipboard labs. They lack the natural gas and vacuum lines that are typical of labs on land, and one end of a lab room has a roller door that opens onto the deck to allow samples to be transferred in. Plus one section of the lab's floor features a hatch painted bright yellow. "That's an emergency escape, probably from one of the engine rooms, so we have to keep that clear," Fisichella said.

The labs do have a ready supply of fresh water, courtesy of an 18,000-liter, reverse-osmosis desalination system, powered by the diesel generators. McGrath, the chief engineer, said that the original idea was to use waste heat from the generators to boil water for distillation. But the generators had to capture that heat to increase their efficiency, so the reverse osmosis system was added later in the design stages. It isn't the only water-handling system present; the Armstrong filters the water it pumps into its bilges for ballast in order to avoid transporting potentially invasive species.

Some of the power also goes to on-deck hardware. There are cranes that collectively provide more than 30,000kg of lift to get hardware into and out of the water. The Armstrong can control a variety of remotely operated vehicles and has immense drums of cabling above the engine room for these operations.

And then there are the sonars. "The ship was pretty much designed around the sonars," said Fisichella. A Woods Hole scientist had brought a variety of organisms and materials into an on-shore tank for testing, finding out which wavelengths they reflected most efficiently. Now, different sonar systems can pick out everything from specific species of fish to methane bubbles to tiny plankton and krill.

The sound frequencies themselves are generated by a small thicket of transducers deep in the ship. After McGrath led us down a ladder, we stood on a metal grid just inches above the Armstrong's hull and the Hudson River beneath it. The transducers are held in circular metal drums, bolted onto the hull. Some of them can be serviced internally, but for others, it's easier to send divers to the exterior of the hull.

Power to the people

While the hardware is all new, some of the crew are old hands. Many of them, after having completed degrees at nautical schools, have been working research vessels for decades. A number of them came straight from the ship that the Armstrong replaced, the Knorr.

The Armstrong has a crew of 20 and enough berths for 24 scientists at a time. The scientists and the crew have access to a 24-hour mess and a lounge with satellite TV, as well as a sick bay with diagnostic equipment that, in some cases, can directly transmit its results to shore facilities over the satellite connections. One of the WHOI staff described the scientists' quarters as a bit like a cramped college dorm room. Of course, she also noted, research time on the ship is rare enough that most scientists don't spend much time sleeping when they get it.

Moving about the ship was easier than the quarters would suggest, due to wide hallways and the use of stairways instead of ladders to move between most floors. The Armstrong is actually compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act rules, something that's a big deal for the two legally blind scientists on WHOI's staff.

As someone who grew up watching PBS specials where WHOI's submarine Alvin was launched from similar vessels, it was fantastic to see where technology has brought us in the decade since. Maybe some day, I'll get the chance to spend some time on the Armstrong while scientists are on board and research is happening. Until then, I'll have to settle for the opportunity to talk with some of those scientists—which we'll get to later this week.