Out of Our Depths

By Hedy Strange

Sadie and Jacob have won the opportunity of a lifetime - a chance to work in an underwater research station in the Coral Sea. Sadie dreams of becoming a world-famous systems thinker, and Jacob wants to save the planet with renewable technologies.

They are lucky enough to witness the underwater turbine that powers the st

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shoal Group
• Release date: Jul 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9780645177619

Book preview

Foreword

ON 20 JULY 1969, I watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take the first steps on the moon. Okay, I was only 5 months old, but the history and significance of the event makes me proud to know I could have watched it. Still today, that moment in time amazes me.

So how did NASA land a person on the moon?

In the 1960s, the successive NASA programs of Mercury, Gemini and finally the Apollo program progressively and successfully advanced technology to achieve the goal with Apollo 11. These technological advances were one success factor, the other was systems engineering. A strong capability in systems engineering, not then recognised as a separate skill, provided the solutions that enabled the NASA engineers to bring together the technology in the form of totally new launch vehicles, a new spacecraft, and new ground test and launch facilities — and so much more. All these technologies had to be integrated into a functional system reliable enough for human flight. NASA acknowledges that without the systems engineers they would not have successfully put a person on the moon.

In today’s world, systems engineers have much to offer, as we face some significant challenges. The United Nations has identified 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a call to action to all countries to promote health and wellbeing while protecting the planet. These goals require some big thinking, collaboration across countries, and can only be achieved by finding solutions that work together in our complex, changing and interconnected world. This is an invitation to systems engineers to flex their skills and deliver the integrated and cross-technology solutions the world needs.

Like the systems engineers on NASA’s Apollo program, Sadie and Jacob, the heroes of Out of Our Depths, flex their systems engineering skills. Faced with impending doom in their underwater research station, Sadie and Jacob use their knowledge to deal with the complexity of systems and provide the skills to engineer solutions.

Reading this novel could be your first step in becoming a systems engineer and applying your skills to change the world. Whether it is putting a person on the moon, saving an underwater research station or solving climate change, as a future systems engineer, you will have the opportunity to advance our human endeavours and solve the most complex challenges facing planet Earth.

Kevin Robinson, Chief Engineer, Shoal Group

July 2021

A Note of Thanks

SHOAL AND ITS STAFF are dedicated to advancing the field of systems engineering and have a goal to grow the future generation of systems engineers. As Shoal’s Chief Engineer, I believe that this novel is a valuable contribution to that goal. For this reason, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to write the foreword to this book and offer my thanks. The author Emilie Morscheck, the support team of Jawahar Bhalla, Lyndal Sterenberg and John Furness, and other members of the Shoal team have done an amazing job bringing this book together. On behalf of Shoal and the broader systems engineering community, thank you.

Kevin Robinson, Chief Engineer, Shoal Group

Chapter 1 Sadie

SADIE COULD HARDLY believe she was over a hundred metres under the surface of the ocean, and all that was between her and the crushing weight of the water was a few centimetres of glass. She’d been living in the underwater research station for two weeks, and every morning she came to the observatory room, with its great glass dome, to watch the first rays of sunlight filter down through all the layers of the ocean. It was different to watching a regular sunrise as the bright reds and yellows didn’t make it down so far.

Much closer to the surface, a school of fish, hundreds of individuals in size, moved through the ocean currents as if they were birds flying in the air. Sadie loved the way the collective shape of the school changed as they swam, but the fish always stayed about the same distance from each other. Just as she was examining the dynamics of the school, a large object plunged past them in the water, sending many of the fish scattering.

As the object descended, the shape became clearer to Sadie. It was the submarine transport from the surface, bringing the last of the researchers and technicians to the station. Today was the day that they switched on the new tidal turbine and ran the station entirely on renewable energy. Sadie stayed a moment longer to watch the school of fish reform before she raced off to the docking bay.

The docking bay was a large rectangular room surrounded by a corridor with many small windows.  A single tunnel connected it to the rest of the station. Everything was bolted down to the sea floor, including the emergency submarines that lined the outer walls, their metal hatches looking like insect pods. They were just big enough for three people to squeeze inside, unlike the main submarine which could carry ten.

At least twelve other people were looking through the small windows in the wall of the docking bay as the capsule-shaped submarine entered through the open roof, and Sadie joined to watch. A dozen magnetic restraints clicked onto the outside of the submarine, holding it in place. There was a loud clunk and whoosh as the roof closed and water emptied from the docking bay. The submarine rocked as the water was pumped away.

Sadie held her breath, waiting for the hatch to open. She was to take the new junior technician, Jacob, on a tour of the station before the launch ceremony for the turbine, after which the base would be self-powering. He was fifteen, just like her, and had also won the scholarship to do work experience in the station during the school holidays.

Slowly, like a clamshell opening, the door was lowered. A ladder automatically slid out from the submarine and down came the new station staff. Six jumpsuit wearing women and men emerged into the docking bay, big grins on their faces.

Jacob was the last to leave. Sadie knew it