RIASSUNTO
Drilling in Space
The oil and gas industry is today drilling in environments that 50 years ago were viewed as extreme. Drilling fluids and equipment—including pipe, bits, motors, batteries, collars, MWD/LWD tools—as well as jars, fishing tools, wireline tools, cement, and hydraulic fracturing fluids, routinely tackle bottomhole temperatures up to 180°C, pressures of 10,000 to 15,000 psi and more, depths greater than 25,000 ft, and matrix permeabilities in the range of 100 nanodarcies. The oil and gas drilling environment remains inherently extreme, with dangers attached to managing flammable liquids and volatile gases under high pressure. However, huge leaps in knowledge, experience, science, and technology have increased safety through procedures and automation, increased certainty through modeling and real-time sensing, and increased reliability through research and development leading to sophisticated testing and ruggedized materials.
But while many fields today are drilled, re-drilled, or stimulated within the industry’s conquered range, the frontiers keep expanding. However, there are other environments—including space, geothermal, and deep Earth scientific drilling—whose frontiers have always been more extreme. Humankind’s desire to push physical limitations has led it to delve more deeply into outer space and within our planet. Drilling in these extreme environments is helping drive advances in the oil and gas industry and/or presents analogs that can be mined for insight. One such type of drilling is extraterrestrial drilling.
Designing Curiosity’s Actuator Electronics
According to the technical article, “Engineering Systems for Extreme Environments,” by Guy V. Clatterbaugh, Bruce R. Trethewey Jr., Jack C. Roberts, Sharon X. Ling, and Mohammad M. Dehghani, most of whom are members of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), “Extreme environments in general can typically be categorized as involving abnormally high or excessive exposure to cold, heat, pressure, vacuum, voltage, corrosive chemicals, particle and electromagnetic radiation, vibration, shock, moisture, contamination, or dust, or extreme fluctuations in operating temperature range.” The authors point out that “These situations are made more extreme when, upon deployment, the system is no longer available for maintenance or repair.”