It’s amazing how new technology is being employed to solve both every day and immensely complex problems. I read an article the other day about how a process called orbital welding repair was being used on underwater communications cable burrowed miles underneath the ocean’s surface. Essentially, a large, circular welding head is placed around a broken pipe and a computer-controlled flame seals shut the leak. It seems like something out of science fiction but it’s happening right now. I suppose it’s the nature of any profitable industry to keep pushing for further innovation. In this case, something that started as a manufacturing process in the aerospace field is now being used to fix underwater problems. Orbital welding managed to become a trade secret to something that’s now used for research in developing solutions for 21st century problems.

Thinking about it more I started to wonder how an intense flame sustained itself underwater. The question kept irritating me until I had to go back and find the original article I’d simply discarded a few days earlier. It turns out a hyperbaric chamber housed the entire head unit that did the repair job. You shouldn’t feel bad if you just had to look up hyperbaric because I did too. It means gas existing at a concentration or pressure that’s above what’s normal.

As to how large the device was, the article doesn’t specify, but I’d have to think it was pretty massive to hold the circular band, flame and enough gas to power it through the repair process.