NASA NEUTRAL BUOYANCY LABORATORY

The NASA Team operating the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory was very professional.  The NBL tests and certifies personnel and equipment for mankind's pinnacle engineering project - building our outpost space station on the next frontier.  For this mission, the NBL has one of the world largest pools holding 6.2 million gallons (200ft X 120ft X 40ft).  Testing at the NBL is the latest measure in bringing Maverick forth to meet the down-to-Earth task of inspecting aboveground storage tanks.

Our goal was simple, but the task was not.  How do you retrieve Maverick when it is entangled in an unknown structure such as a sump or a column at bottom of a deep large tank full of jet fuel?  The Atlanta Demonstration September 1-4 proved this was not a theoretical question. The Atlanta Demonstration turned out to be a success because we did retrieve Maverick from an unreachable snarl, beneath 100,000 bbls of  jet fuel.  On the spot engineering best describes the ingredients for this important work lesson.

Not even one month later, Solex Robotics with NASA NBL divers, simulated trapping Maverick and the umbilical at the bottom of the sump in the pool to test new procedures and retrieval devices.  At the NBL test, all the new designs and modifications worked. It was a  100% success.  The significant details, however, are proprietary.

Solex Robotics continues to set the world standards and is the only company trained, certified (Class I Division 1 Group D Hazardous Environments) and capable of in-service robotic inspection in tanks containing refined product, including fixed roofs, floating roofs and internal floating roofs.