Yes, it’s yellow, like the submarine in the Beatles’ song and film.
On Wednesday, Lockheed Martin rolled out its new autonomous underwater vehicle, dubbed the “Marlin” by employees.
The high-tech vehicle, which will be produced in Palm Beach County, is 10 feet long and can go 1,000 feet underwater to inspect structures and collect data. It is pre-programmed and carries no people, which makes inspections safer.
Previous technology used for underwater inspections, even robotic vehicles, “required divers in the water, which is very dangerous,” Dan McLeod, senior program manager for Lockheed said.
With the Marlin, workers sit on board a ship to program and monitor the vehicle.
“It keeps people out of harm’s way,” said Richard Holmberg, general manager of the Riviera Beach site.
The Marlin could be used to inspect offshore structures, such as oil rigs and pipelines, after a hurricane. The vehicle has optical and acoustic sensors that provide 3-D pictures. It can sprint at four knots and cruise for up to 16 hours, the company says.
Lockheed Martin is partnering with Space Florida to market the vessel for commercial use worldwide. “This is an exciting program, offering new capabilities to the oil and gas industry,” McLeod said.
The vehicle could be used to observe changes undersea that could have an impact on an oil platform operation or the environment.
No sale price is set for the vehicle, which has been under development for three years. But the company is already talking to potential buyers, McLeod said.
Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, said the state’s aerospace economic agency, is partnering with Lockheed Martin primarily to create jobs in Florida: 50 engineering and manufacturing positions will be added over five years. Salaries will be comparable for engineers in the area, in the range of $75,000 to $95,000, a company spokesman said.
Lockheed Martin would receive a combined $3 million from the State of Florida and Space Florida, if all 50 jobs are created. The remaining $5 million for the $8-million venture will come from third-party financing, DiBello said.
LiBello said aerospace company partnerships are important to revitalizing Florida’s space industry, which has been losing thousands of jobs since NASA’s Space Shuttle program was discontinued. The industry “will emerge from a three-to-four year period stronger than we came into it,” he said.
Boeing recently said it expects to employ 550 workers by 2015 on the Space Coast to develop its commercial space vehicle.
Lockheed Martin, which is building the second and third versions of the Marlin vehicle in Riviera Beach, will be testing the vessel in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
The autonomous underwater vehicle’s technology could have been useful during the BP oil spill in 2010, but the vehicle wasn’t available, McLeod said. There are about 3,900 oil platforms sitting on the seabed or above the water in the Gulf, he said.
Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., currently has 400 employees in Riviera Beach who work on underwater programs including manned submersibles and remotely operated vehicles. The plant site was formerly Perry Technologies, which was bought by Martin Marietta before it merged with Lockheed Corp. in 1995.
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