Show Date: August 10, 2005  
Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

Greetings and welcome to The Deep column and the deepest radio show on Earth. The Deep is the science talk radio program that takes you from the depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches of the universe. This week on The Deep, aired at 6:00 this evening on K-57, we’ll talk about a dramatic rescue at sea. Then we’ll take expedition calls from all over the world. We’ll also have science news updates and we’ll be taking your phone calls. Tune in tonight and join host Jim Sullivan, Pam Eastlick and our expedition coordinator Peter Melyan for the latest in scientific news! Then log on to www.thedeepradioshow.com for more information on all the latest and deepest news!

UP FROM THE DEPTH

	On the morning of Thursday, 4 August, a Russian rescue submarine, the Priz, was doing routine maneuvers in the Berezovaya Bay off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, north of Japan. Suddenly, the monitoring surface ship received notice that the sub could no longer move. It was the beginning of a nightmare for the seven people aboard.
The sub reported that it was at a depth of 620 feet and tangled in cables. Russian rescue teams were called immediately, but Kamchatka is extremely remote and the rescue teams didn’t arrive until Friday morning. Russian ships tried to drag the submarine closer to shore in an attempt to reach a depth where the crew could exit the ship, but they had only limited success.

On Friday, news of the sub’s predicament was released. The Russian navy had the specter of the Kursk looming over them. The nuclear-powered Kursk sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000 after two huge underwater explosions. All 118 crewmembers aboard perished in a drama that traumatized Russia and the world. The men aboard the Kursk could probably have been rescued if the Russians had asked for help earlier.

This time they didn’t wait. They notified their counterparts via the International Submarine Escape and Rescue Forum, set up after the tragic Kursk incident. The Japanese offered support ships and subs and both the British and the Americans offered Scorpio rescue vessels: Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) that are unmanned remote-controlled submersibles used in situations that are too dangerous or too deep to send divers. The Scorpios can operate to depths of 3000 ft (the length of its umbilical cable). They have three cameras and cable cutting equipment that can cut steel cable up to 3 inches in diameter.

The sub had enough food and water for five days, but; as it usually is for subs, breathable air was the limiting factor. The US Navy ROV arrived first, but the Brits were the first to get their Scorpio 45 into the water. Both ROV’s were flown in and then taken to the site by Russian ships. They arrived on Saturday evening. The British robot began its rescue on Sunday morning 7 August and worked for six hours, trying to cut the submarine free of the cables than entangled it while the clock for the trapped men ticked relentlessly away. At one point, the ROV developed a problem and had to resurface, but it was quickly fixed and the Scorpio went to work again.

Around noon on Sunday, the shiny yellow Scorpio finished cutting all the cables that tied the ship to the bottom. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, the most worrying moment of the entire rescue was when the cables were cut, but the Priz still wouldn’t rise from the ocean floor. Her rescuers suggested the crew blow a stream of pressurized air through the submarine's nose. The craft came free and shot to the surface at 4:20 p.m. (1:20 p.m. Sunday August 7, Guam time.) They had a maximum of six hours of oxygen left.

The crew left the submarine without help and said they didn’t need medical attention, but they were all checked aboard a waiting hospital ship. They had been underwater for three days coping with temperatures of less than 40 degrees F. and a dwindling oxygen supply. But doctors said they were in good condition and very happy to be freed. Join us on The Deep this week as we talk about this amazing underwater rescue.

GETTING FROM HERE TO THERE
“Beam me up, Scotty!” This phrase from the TV series Star Trek is familiar to all of us. And we are all eagerly awaiting the day when we don’t have to get into the car to go see Grandma or get on the airplane, but simply step onto that magic pad and emerge at our destination.

I’m forever fascinated by how science fiction shapes science. It’s as if an entire generation has seen it on TV and is out to make it happen in real life. There’s a group of scientists out there that are working on making transparent aluminum. Of course, if your car has a heated windshield (a real plus in stateside winters) you’ve been looking through transparent gold for years!

But the dream remains teleportation and scientists have actually teleported photons of energy. How close are we to teleporting people? Well, the real rub comes with the fact that with our current level of knowledge, the best we can manage is not the teleport, but the telefax.

Those photons of light are actually destroyed and their information transmitted to another location where they were reconstituted. This means that, as near as we can tell, when the Star Trek people ‘beamed’ from place to place, their bodies were destroyed and new ones constructed at their destinations from atoms there. And if just one of those atoms was just the least little bit out of place . . . . No wonder Bones hated the thing!

Whether we’re learning about submarine rescues, teleportation or the space shuttle Discovery, The Deep, hosted by Jim Sullivan with Pam Eastlick and Peter Melyan is the place to be on K-57 tonight at 6:00 p.m. Don’t miss it!