I'm Vin Marshall. I've spent the last ten years building crazy machines and cool inventions.
Good job!
With my buddies Paul and Eric, we're attempting our toughest ever engineering tasks.
We're using materials and know-how that anyone can get their hands on.
This hardly looks like a deathtrap.
Whoo!
I'm an electrical engineer and the mastermind behind the whole operation.
I'm gonna win this staring contest, if it's the last thing I do.
Paul is a mechanical engineer. I've known him since high school.
I'll be doing this all day long.
Eric Gocke runs his own construction company. We go way back.
This is the first time I've been excited to see something not explode.
This time we're exploring the deep unknown.
The task? To find out: How hard can it be to film the ocean floor?
Paul!
It'll bring us face to face with man-eating sharks...
have us puking over the side...
and prove to be our toughest challenge yet.
Hey, look. This is the thing I'm trying to run!
So how hard can it be to film the deep-ocean floor?
The bottom of the ocean is the last undiscovered region on Earth.
At its deepest, it's nearly seven miles down, that's over a mile deeper than Everest is high.
I'd love to film down there.
In the best-case scenario for me, we end up either discovering some as yet unknown sea life
or getting pictures of some interesting but not entirely well-studied bit of sea life.
That'd be really cool to be associated with that or just to discover something new.
I don't care about fish or even like them.
What I really want to find is gold or some sort of bullion or something we can spend.
Before we get started, there is one vital thing we need to understand:
Pressure.
The average depth of the ocean is 12,000 feet.
The pressure down there is more than twice the force of a car crusher
squashing your station wagon.
In the interest of self-preservation, we're not going there.
It's way more sensible to send an unmanned device.
But how do you film the bottom of the ocean if you can't go yourself?
We're gonna need a camera.
And because we're going further than sunlight reaches, we also need some powerful lights.
We'll put all those in protective housings...
...add a brain to run the whole show.
And then we need a really, really long tether
up to the surface
where we can actually control everything that's happening down here and see live video.
So that's the essence of our challenge.
Essentially, what I'm talking about is an ROV, or remotely operated vehicle.
It will send back live video and data to a support vessel topside.
They're used all the time by the oil industry, scientists and deep-sea explorers.
The trouble is, these things cost millions and take years to develop.
We've got just three weeks and materials from the local hardware store.
But we're not going to let that stop us.
In Google we trust.
The search gives us this - a toy design.
This is like a hardware store, kids' version of an ROV.
Welcome to craft time.
The catch is, we're not going to read the instructions. We're only looking at the pictures.
It's just made of PVC and hardware store parts like these electric motors, airplane propellers
and um... melted wax.
The beauty of building this toy is that it's actually giving us a sense of the challenges to come.
We're going to need to build electric motors.
Then we're going to have to work out how to control them through a wire
that could be several miles long.
OK. Let's go jump in the pool!
We also need to build a small housing to protect our camera from water and extreme pressure.
And finally, ROVs, like submarines, must hang in the water.
So the flotation needs to be absolutely right.
- Do it. - There it goes.
Yeah!
This thing's really cool. We made a thing that's cruising around underneath the water.
Mission accomplished.
It's pretty easy to control, guys.
I can almost do that and talk at the same time.
Now all we've got to do is build a big, bad daddy of an ROV in just three weeks.
It has to withstand the ocean pressure at 12,000 feet all with parts from our local hardware store.
We'll start with a steel frame and motors to drive our craft up and down, left and right,
floats at each corner and a camera between two lights at the centre of the frame.
Then we'll need an electronic brain controlling both the motors and the camera.
A two-mile tether will take commands all the way down and bring live video back up.
Finally, the camera, lights and electronic brain
will need some watertight housings so they aren't crushed by the pressure.
A lot of times it's easier to have three sets of hands working on any project,
but in this case, this ROV is gonna take so much time, we'll have to start divvying stuff out.
Vin is handling the electronics and the tether equipment.
He's got to be able to send control signals to the motors and get live video to the surface.
I'm handling the lights for the cameras, setting up the ballast
and building most of the framework.
Paul has the toughest task.
He's trying to come up with a way to protect the cameras, lights and delicate electronics
from the pressures that would crush a nuclear submarine like a beer can.
Consider a one-square-inch area at this depth.
Bearing down on it is a column of water 12,000 feet tall.
That column of water weighs 5,000 pounds.
So what that means is that every square inch of our vessel
has to withstand 5,000 pounds per square inch.
What's that like?
That's like a large SUV bearing down on an area about the size of my thumbprint.
From the math, I need to make protective tubes from something extremely strong,
yet readily available.
This steel pipe seems to fit the bill.
So now I've just got to work out a way of sealing the ends to stop the water getting in.
I'm using a lathe to cut the metal into shape.
I need to make this face nice and flat and perpendicular to the tube
so that we can seal it against the sea pressure.
I'm going to check the end that I just cut for flatness. What I'm using is a feeler gauge.
Better than I expected. I'm flat within two thousandths of an inch.
So that should be a decent sealing surface.
This ROV build is an immense task, our toughest yet.
Frankly, there's a high chance it could fail.
Paul thinks he's cracked it.
I have no idea about that one.
But Gocke and I are about to ruin his day.
We want to put a camera and lights inside three of Paul's tubes,
attach the fishing line to a buoy and throw it all over the side.
We're calling it a dead drop.
This'll be our back-up plan to capture something on film in case the ROV fails.
If I look mad, it's because this back-up plan means me machining 15 extra tubes.
Today I'll be doing this... all day long.
Roughly an hour to cut an end flat, 15 tubes.
That's close to 30 hours just standing here... for a back-up plan I'm not even sure we need.
And that's not all.
The flashlights that we need to use are way too long.
If we have a long enough tube to make this run,
it's gonna have a pressure issue and it could collapse right in the middle.
We also need three batteries to make it run long enough.
I'm combining all these problems into one small solution.
What I'm doing is taking the three batteries it's gonna take to run one of these
and compressing it into a small canister.
The disassembled flashlight will now fit into one of our pressure pods.
Hey, man, they do exactly what I want now, so, you know, that's cool.
Cool for him!
This work is best described as long periods of interminable boredom
punctuated by brief seconds of panic.
I hate to say it, but my task is tough too.
I've got to figure out how to make a two-mile tether.
I'm opting for this stuff. It's what modern phone lines use - fibre optic.
This cable will link our surface remote control with the ROV on the ocean bottom.
I'm then hoping small computers will control signals going up and down.
We'll have one little computer up on the boat.
And then coming out of the serial link there, we go into the fibre-optic connection, our tether.
That goes down, like, 2½, 3 miles through the water.
In the other end of that, it gets turned back into an electrical connection.
These two guys work together, they communicate over the fibre optic.
This guy listens for our commands. This guy drives the boat.
And by boat, I mean ROV.
Paul's made some headway on the pressure pods,
but he's nowhere near finished, and now he's got to make them watertight.
I'm cutting this shoulder to fit inside this ROV body camera holder.
To seal the ends of the tubes, I'm trying out this clear plastic called polycarbonate.
It's used to make everything and anything from sunglasses to riot shields.
It's optically clear, meaning that the camera should be able to film right through it.
Cool stuff all around.
Hey, all right!
Because it needs to be watertight, it's a pretty close fit.
And I'm hoping a rubber O-ring will make doubly sure of the seal.
That's our completed pressure vessel.
- We got it, man. They're really nice. - Thank you.
Of course, to get cameras and lights in these things, I'll need to get the caps off again.
Whoa!
OK, make a face, Paul.
I can see him in my spyglass.
Vin thinks it's funny. I think it looks like another half day's worth of work.
It's really poisoned the well for any sort of dealing with other humans.
I don't want to be, like, dime-store amateur psychology.
But I've known you, like, half your life. Just take it easy. We're out here having fun.
Apparently, I need to take it easy.
Already one precious week down and we're only inching towards our goal
of building an ROV that can film the deep-ocean floor.
We have no motors or tether and no idea if our watertight housings actually work.
But we have found the perfect ocean to launch the ROV in.
With its deep, clear water, Hawaii fits the bill.
We've booked the flights and leave in a week.
What we need now is some expert inspiration to finish the job.
It's down to Deep Ocean Exploration and Research - DOER for short.
We're about to see how far behind the eight ball we are,
when we compare what we've made with what flies in the real world.
These guys have been working with ROVs for over 15 years.
This is the real deal.
Wow! Look at it.
People spend five years and millions of dollars building things like this
and we've spent a few hundred dollars.
To our relief, it contains the basics we have in our design,
although not assembled from hardware store stuff.
It'd be really hard to steal.
But best of all, DOER has a test chamber that can simulate the pressure of the deep ocean.
The perfect place to test Paul's prototype housing.
This is the first real action that our home-made pods are going to see, so this is crucial.
If they survive, then we know we've got something.
And if they don't, it's just back to the drawing board completely.
We do not have the time for that to happen.
Filming the ocean floor, creating a remotely operated vehicle
and sending it 12,000 feet down is tough.
First, you need a camera.
Second, a tether to control the motors topside.
And finally, watertight housings to protect any delicate components from getting crushed
by the 5,000 pounds of pressure per square inch.
We're pressure-testing our housing, built from regular steel and plastic,
in a professional test chamber, right now.
This is it. We have to at least survive here.
If we don't, we're right back where we started and with even less time.
And the needle's still creeping up.
That's 1,500.
That's 3,000 feet. That's more than half a mile below sea level.
- Are you sure it hasn't leaked yet? - No.
We hit the max pressure limit for the test chamber.
- 1,700. - We got it.
Wow.
1, 700 pounds per square inch.
That's the equivalent of nearly 4,000 feet deep.
...lift off your lid.
- Looks good. No water. - Still empty!
Yes! Whoo!
We can't slap hands well.
I'm really impressed with what we were able to achieve with a few dollars of pipe,
hardware store stuff, and some plastic.
This is the first time I've ever been excited to see something not explode.
We passed the pressure test. This gets us to about 40% of our rated pressure.
That's definitely a step in the right direction.
Man, a week on the lathe making these pressure pods drove me nuts.
Thank God they work!
Gocke has picked up the next vital part of our ROV - an electric outboard motor
and a battery to power it.
This is the size motor we can get.
It's about $160 dollars.
It's expensive, but it's really hard to move it without it.
I got us a nice battery. It's nice and small.
Obviously a motor and battery can't fit into Paul's steel tubes.
But there is another way to protect them. It's a technique called pressure compensation.
Imagine this bottle is our ROV and my hand is the water pressure.
I can easily crush it.
Now take an identical bottle and fill it with oil.
I can't crush it at all. Even if I stand on it.
Using oil in this way is called pressure compensation
and it's how we're going to protect our motors and wiring on the ROV.
I got us a ton of laxative, lubricant, mineral oil.
- That's how it's labelled? - I bought that with this other oil.
They must think I have a serious problem!
Dismantling, reassembling and pressure-compensating the motor
proves trickier than we first thought.
Here. Take a listen.
- Watch your arms. - Yeah.
We've created a deathtrap!
We've filled the motor with oil so we can pressure-compensate it.
Because it's a non-conducting oil, you see how it's not running smoothly any more.
But we think it's probably not that big a deal, because when we drove our test ROV...
Short bursts seem to be the easiest way to navigate.
Two weeks down, we've got half a motor
and a few watertight housings, but nothing to call an ROV.
This is our final day in the shop before we fly to Hawaii.
You could cut the tension with a knife.
- We need to do one more thing. - I told you what I was doing!
Hey, look. This is the thing I'm trying to run!
With the deadline looming, I calm the ship.
This has always been the characteristic of our project.
There's not gonna be any testing, we're just gonna throw it in the ocean
and try and see what happens.
But...
This is just like... like school. The ink's still gonna be hot when we turn in the paper.
I like it this way.
I'm loving our "go get 'em" attitude, but there's still no superstructure to pack.
To float our ROV, we've scored this syntactic foam from the guys we met at DOER.
Made from millions of tiny glass balls bonded together with epoxy resin,
it's the ultimate flotation material.
When you think of foam, you usually think of the Styrofoam cup that holds your coffee.
But this is different stuff. This is solid...
...as a rock.
Without this foam, there'd be no way for our ROV to make it back to the surface.
We'll sink the ROV with a load of weight.
But I'm making something to release that ballast so the ROV floats back up.
Hopefully this battery-powered catch will release the ballast when the batteries die.
This is going to drop the extra weight that we have...
at the bottom of the ocean
and allow the buoyant parts to float back up to the top.
The electronics, the fibre optics, all this stuff is important.
But if we can't get it back up again, it's kind of a waste.
I'm disconnecting this battery to replicate the system's battery dying.
Hey, it works.
Day moves to night.
The pressure is on to get the frame built and flat-packed for our flight in the morning.
We've got four hours.
It's the 11th hour. What I'm doing right now is chopping off pieces here.
I'm sending them over here.
I'm then bringing them to Vin so he can get it welded.
These are the brackets that we hope will hold the ROV together.
Everything has to be a size we can pack, including our syntactic foam.
Right now I'm covered in glass dust, on the inside and the out.
Cutting up these things.
We've got about 150 pounds of syntactic foam.
Trying to get it onto the truck in such a way we can get it on a plane tonight to Hawaii
with the rest of our freight shipment.
I was told we have about three minutes.
We're down to the bitter end right now and there's still a whole ROV to be built.
It is Friday at 9 pm.
We have not assembled our ROV, we have not wet-tested our motors,
I haven't seen any of the control systems
and really I'm not sure what's happening at all.
Tomorrow we've got to be ready.
We've made it to the Big Island, Hawaii.
We should be on the beach.
Instead, we're building an ROV to film the ocean floor in a hotel room.
That's how we roll, with the only plan in Gocke's head.
So, Eric, tell me how it works.
OK, so, lucky for us, we sort of had some of this figured out.
- These mount onto here. - OK.
Buoyancy on all four corners to kind of just hold it balanced.
Yeah.
On the insides, we've got one motor here,
another motor here... and then a third motor here.
These control our direction, this controls our up and down.
I hope this whole thing comes together.
Oh, I know it'll come together. I just don't know if it'll do anything when it's one piece.
That's what I mean.
My original plan was to build our ROV in California
and come here to Hawaii to drop it 12,000 feet to the ocean floor.
It hasn't quite worked out that way. The ROV is nowhere near ready.
So we're wet-testing Paul's camera and housings instead.
We're aiming for 1,000 feet.
It's trivial as compared to where we're actually headed,
but this is our first shot, to just get a feel for how these things are going to behave.
We're having a little trouble with the assembly. It's just fiddly.
Everything is kinda greasy and the boat is moving.
Yeah. No kidding.
Still, it's all for the cause.
Num, num, num!
You can truly do anything with duct tape!
We've attached some bait creatively with some tape
and we're gonna put it in 1,000 feet of water and see how we make out.
- Ready? - Yeah.
Time to test whether all our work has been for nothing.
Ready to go. It's floating nicely. Let's start dropping it.
21...
24...
27... 30. Wow. It's paying right out.
The ocean is divided into three zones - sunlight, twilight and midnight.
Our test drop is headed through the sunlight zone right now.
This is cool.
This is footage from our onboard camera
as it descends over 600 feet...
...into the twilight zone.
How quick does it feel like it's going down? Can you do it pretty quick?
Yeah, it pays right out. I just did 1,000 feet.
- Well, that's a good sign. - How much is left in the box?
Good bit yet.
Is it gonna keep going down?
It's got 4,200 in it. Let's see how far it goes.
Footage from the underwater camera shows just how black it is down there
and how important the lights are.
Our camera rig hits the bottom. Almost as deep as the Empire State is high.
Incredible.
- Has that hit the bottom now? - It's slack.
It's slack. It's hard to say.
Our camera rig is on the bottom and we're filming deep-sea visitors.
A squat lobster, just four inches long, but over 1,000 feet down.
It scavenges for food on the sea floor.
Curious long-tailed red snapper are also caught in the light.
It's mission accomplished for now. Time to get this the test drop back onboard.
Gocke and I are enjoying the water.
Our underwater camera is still rolling.
It suddenly captures amazing footage of one of the ocean's most feared killers.
An eight-foot man-eating tiger shark,
the most dangerous shark known to man after the great white.
And just 100 feet below the boat.
We could be lunch.
My worst nightmare. A polycarbonate cap just fell off.
- Oh, man, the fish has gone! - We just lost a light.
Did we?
With the cap gone, the tube's flooded.
And the light's out.
- The camera is still going. - The camera looks good.
- Well, we lost both lights. - That was kind of a disaster, actually.
We learnt a couple of things from the test.
I'm happy we had the camera back, cos maybe it'll tell us when these things failed.
It'll even tell us if, you know, one light did survive all the way to the surface,
but just died right when we popped it off.
But either way, we need to come up with a better plan.
It's just one more problem to add to the list.
Filming the ocean bottom with a home-made ROV is proving mission almost impossible.
Today I'm working with a material I've never worked with before.
This fibre-optic cable has got to do two things -
carry commands down to the motors and bring live video back up to the boat.
Larry, Hawaii's fibre-optic man,
is helping me join two miles of the stuff into one line.
We cannot mess this up. It cost a fortune.
Watch this. See?
See, if you do that, watch. Watch what happens.
- You got it right out. - It breaks the fibre.
But first it's hard work, not delicate science.
What we're doing is transferring the cable off of these spools
into something that we can put on a boat and then pay out over the side.
This is one spool's worth.
Larry's splicing together the fibre and that whole apparatus over there.
That's how you connect the two fibres.
A connector here goes into the equipment on the boat
and a connector there goes into the ROV.
This thing's gonna be this tall. It'll weigh, like, 500 pounds.
We work into the night to get the splicing finished.
With just a day to go before launch, I'm worried about the cable.
I'm terrified that the weight of the ROV descending 12,000 feet
will yank it right out of the connector box.
I thought they'd come together and we'd have some over-moulding.
We're more likely than not going to break it right here as we're paying it out.
Larry, we thought... We didn't really picture how that splice was gonna look.
We pictured the cables coming in from opposite sides.
We're kinda concerned about how it's gonna pay out when the ROV is hanging from it.
I mean, that looks like the cables will want to go like this and kink.
What do you think? Do you think we've got a problem here?
We do. The stress on the cable going at that depth will probably kink it.
And if we kink it, we lose the fibre, right?
- Definitely. You lose all transmission on that. - That's a major problem.
This is a huge blow.
Not joining the two different cable lengths means the mission objective is over.
The ROV cannot film at 12,000 feet.
We've got 4,000, 5,000-odd feet of cable here and 6,500 here.
The option is to just use this, the bigger reel alone with no splice,
just use the longest contiguous reel we have.
This is, like, 6,500 feet. That's still 50% deeper than a nuclear submarine can go.
Actually, it's 59% deeper than a nuclear submarine can go.
But now's not the time to argue.
We're out of here in two days.
Time to get over the depth disappointment and get this thing in the water by tomorrow.
I've got to solder each of the electrical connections
and solve an internal wiring puzzle.
Gocke and Paul must complete the ROV build
and pressure-compensate the battery, motors and external wiring.
It's a lot to ask.
The ROV is much closer to the water now and I hope we are too.
One of the first jobs is to try and stop the polycarbonate caps from being knocked off
as easily as they were on the wet test.
I'm securing them with more than tape this time.
We drilled holes in the polycarbonate through both ends
and we're gonna put a wing nut on each end,
and that'll force the polycarbonate lenses closed.
Now we attach everything to the steel frame
before finally pressure-compensating the battery, motors and wiring
by filling them with oil to stop the phenomenal ocean pressures crushing them.
This box holds our batteries.
This tube has the wires that go to our controls.
This tube has the wires that we'll pull out to charge the batteries.
I'm gonna fill it with oil to pressure-compensate it and attach it to the bottom of the ROV.
We'll get our electronics, get everything installed and drive our ROV.
The ROV is pretty much complete. I'm exhausted but relieved.
It's so late, but there's an odd smell coming from the battery box.
It smells like burning...
Paul!
...oil burning.
Paul, batteries are shorting!
Paul!
This box full of oil could ignite in my face
or I could touch the wrong thing and get electrocuted.
The batteries are shorting.
It's a hassle. It's late. Everybody's tired.
It's just one more thing at the tail end of a day when all we want to do is wrap this thing up.
No battery. No thrusters.
This is officially the final day.
Trying to build an ROV to film the ocean floor in three weeks is nuts!
The battery box that exploded last night has been rewired and pressure-compensated.
I'm installing the electronics to give us long distance-control of the ROV.
But I'm still not confident we can get it in the water today.
It's time for plan B.
Gocke heads out with the dead drops.
These are the self-contained camera and light units that we made in case the ROV failed.
He's hoping to sink one at 12,000 feet - our original mission depth -
and another at 4,000 feet as a backup.
Fingers crossed we capture something on film.
After the effort we've put in, I want to prove that filming the bottom of the ocean is possible
with the equipment we've built.
See you, buddy.
Travel well.
First up, the 4,000-foot dead drop.
First dead drop's away. Now I'm paying out 4,000 feet or so.
Soon as I get this one done, we'll throw in our second one,
and that'll go for a better part of 12,000 feet we're shooting for.
Hopefully we've got the light system set up. It's probably pretty dark where it is by now.
It's pitch black, but with the lights working,
the underwater camera films a two-foot snake mackerel
trying to snatch the bait at 1,500 feet.
All right. Good luck, buddy.
I attach the line to a buoy, so that we can find it in the vastness of the Pacific on our return.
Now for the 12,000-foot drop.
Good luck, buddy.
Back at the marina, Paul and I have been struggling to get a live video feed from the ROV
since Gocke left.
But finally, a dramatic breakthrough.
- Ha! - Hot damn!
- That's our camera. - All right!
Let's get this thing buttoned up and in the water.
So we've gone from the grass above the boat, down through 6,000 feet of fibre-optic cable...
- In the most convoluted way possible. ...most convoluted way possible, to this monitor.
It means all of our fibre connections are complete and we haven't broken it yet.
I spoke too soon.
Argh! Stop that.
- You'll get electrocuted. - Yeah.
For every step forward, there's two back.
Now there seems to be a problem with the battery power.
Probably when we put the large tube together, something shorted out the chassis.
That's why we're getting the spark. It's the worst possible scenario.
It looks as if the battery is shorting out to the steel frame, but we have no idea where.
Without battery power, the thrusters are dead and the ROV is going nowhere.
And if we disassemble this, I mean...
Oh, wow.
Out on the water, it's a completely different story. I'm ecstatic.
Finally there's something to phone home about.
Guys, I've just pulled up the 4,000-foot drop.
- What did you get? - No failures whatsoever.
It worked perfectly. The lights are still on, the camera came up just fine. Nice and dry.
We're glad you have good news. We don't have such good news.
- The batteries were shorted out to the chassis. - Ah, come on!
So it sounds like we're gonna follow up that great night last night of not sleeping
- with another night of not sleeping. - Wow, that sounds great.
I'm gonna get to it, because it's getting dark and it's gonna get harder to find the buoy.
OK. We'll talk to you later.
Finding a buoy, in the dark, on the Pacific Ocean, is impossible.
With this dead drop lost, so was the last chance of filming the ocean floor at 12,000 feet.
It's a huge disappointment.
I only hope the boys have fixed the ROV.
Time's up. We fly home tonight, but we'll keep trying to the last possible moment.
I've had a breakthrough overnight. The battery problem is just wiring issues.
I also changed a few electronic connections
to establish a link, via the fibre optic,
between the control unit on the boat and the ROV's thrusters.
OK, hit the red button.
- Hot damn! - We got it! We got it!
Press the other two. Press the other two.
I'm so happy to see this go.
- Up! - Right, we got 'em.
Hot damn.
With everything working, I want us out on the water before anything else fails.
We're finally going to launch the remotely operated vehicle
me and my buddies have spent three weeks building with hardware store materials.
It's a phenomenal achievement, but the challenge isn't over yet.
We're about to launch our home-made remotely operated vehicle.
I'm excited but delirious from exhaustion.
And now the electronic link running from my control unit to the ROV's motors isn't working.
The micro controller may have burnt out or shorted inside the metal tube.
We were outside in the sun for a long time.
That's what I'm thinking, it being in there, generating its own heat,
since it's been on ever since we packed up.
Plus it's sitting here in the sun.
- I wonder if that cooked it... - We should probably get cracking.
- Get this thing in. - Let's get it in before the camera gives up.
Even if we can't drive the thing, the video link is still working,
so if we get the ROV in the water, we could still film something down there.
Let the slack out. Where's the fibre?
Hot damn, it floats! All right!
We've still got video. Good.
We've also got a second camera unit hanging from the main frame
to pick up some great footage of the ROV itself as it descends.
We got this in the water. It sits pretty well.
We're pleased with that, but still bummed that we won't be able to drive it.
But as a consolation prize, we do get live video for 6,000 feet of descent and the rise back up.
As long as all that stuff holds together, it's still gonna be pretty neat.
Now we're getting ready with the ballast release.
That's the heavy ballast that's gonna make it heavier than neutrally buoyant,
take it all the way down to the bottom,
wait for about two hours until the batteries die and send it back up.
All right, go for it.
Ballast away.
Disaster. The heavy chain has snapped the ballast right off the ROV.
The anchor's dropped the ballast drop. It just fell off. It ripped right off.
Without the heavy ballast, the ROV is floating on the surface, going nowhere fast.
We can't drive it and we can't even sink it.
We only got one shot at this.
We got a 600-pound rating on this.
I'm gonna yank the buoyancy. Let's let this thing sink like a stone.
We'll yank it up by the fibre-optic cable.
Gocke's plan is to strip sections of the syntactic foam so this thing has a chance to sink.
We'll then manhandle it from the bottom to the surface using a tether.
Right now we're just scrambling to find some ballast.
We found a couple of dead drop tubes we're not gonna use.
They're gonna become part of ballast too now.
It's frustrating to see the dead drops, our only backup cameras, used to sink the ROV.
Finally, after everything, our ROV descends into the abyss.
After all the failures, I am actually watching a live video feed from a descending ROV
at over 500 feet.
- I see a lot of blue. - That means it's in the ocean.
This is about as cool as it gets. It's what we worked so hard to engineer.
The ROV reaches the twilight zone at around 700 feet,
when suddenly...the sight I've been dreading.
- Yeah, we lost the fibre. - We just lost the fibre?
- Somewhere. - If it's not one thing, it's another.
After all of our efforts, it's officially game over.
Without a video signal, we cannot complete our mission of filming the ocean floor.
It's heartbreaking.
We were almost there.
I guess this is why it takes millions of dollars, six months
and teams of researchers helping you with this sort of thing
to get one of these things to go commercial.
Don't you remember the guys at DOER kind of laughing at us
when we said we needed to do it in a week?
It was worse than laughter. They just were silent.
Then, unbelievably, some good news.
Guys, I just heard on the radio that they found the buoy from the one you did last night,
- the 12,000-foot drop. - Get out of here! Really?
I never thought we'd see that again.
I was searching for it last night in darkness. I thought it was gone.
Recovering the 12,000-foot dead drop is like finding the gold I originally dreamed of.
I leave in search of treasure.
There's a whale.
The omens seem good.
Wey-hey!
The lost buoy is miles from where we first dropped it.
The ocean currents have dragged the dead drop 4,000 feet up from the abyss.
I only hope that this hasn't damaged the seals.
I have the line in my hands and just need to haul in two miles of it from the depths to find out.
It takes over three hours and a mighty effort to heave it in.
This better be good.
It's onboard!
You're not gonna believe this.
Both the lights are still on!
Camera's dead, though.
I can't believe these lights are still on.
Our technology has survived to the absolute limit.
We've thrown it to the depths and it hasn't buckled or blown.
That's one hell of an achievement.
What's up, boys?
Wow, you found it!
Oh, I brought you souvenirs.
Yeah, I got some interesting news for you.
Not only was it still that the lights were still on 27 hours later...
Amazing!
This went down to 12,000 feet, survived and came back with the camera intact?
Yeah, not exactly, exactly. Two out of three ain't bad,
- but in this case, that was... - It was these two?
- Yeah. - Oh, no!
I think the card's actually salvageable.
If it didn't blow up at the very beginning
or it didn't implode, we're still gonna have something to look at.
Finding that last pressure pod, surviving the 12,000 feet
was really kind of, like, you know, the icing on a poop pie.
It was pretty good.
Then, two weeks later, further revelations about our extraordinary engineering.
The card in the camera did survive the 5,000 pounds per square inch pressure
and after a little digital wizardry, I have something amazing to share with the guys.
This is the last thing that camera saw before it died.
That's the fish bait illuminated by the lights.
- Wow. Listen to it. - So that's the sound of the lens cracking?
It's gotta be, cos it's not the sound of the steel cracking.
- That is the sound of water. - Wow!
That is neat, and then that's the end, and that was...
- And then a second later, it died. - Yeah.
- So how hard was it? - Vin, that was insanely hard.
I gotta tell you, between the short amount of time that we had,
not getting to test everything, different scenarios, just running right in.
I'm still tired, but that was an unreal thing to try and get done.
I almost want to take a run at it again, except that we'd have to do it again.
There were too many new techniques and technologies we were learning
to sort out in a couple of weeks.
We learnt that it's insanely hard.
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll March 2017
Ripped & Corrected By mstoll Released on www.Addic7ed.com