The celebrated rescue in October of 33 miners trapped a half mile below the Chilean desert was not just a compelling human drama but a historic feat of applied medicine, psychology, and engineering.
Simply digging down to find where the men were trapped was a 17-day challenge; any miscalculation could have sent the drill drastically off course. (It was “like trying to shoot a fly from 700 meters away,” Chilean topographer Macarena Valdés told the CBC.) That hole, along with two others, became lifelines through which water, food, medicine, and clothing—including socks lined with bacteria-fighting copper oxide fiber—were sent, plus a fiber-optic cable for communication.
Bringing up “los 33” from the depths of the copper and gold mine required breadth and depth of drilling more ambitious than in any mining rescue ever before attempted. For this, a giant Schramm mine rig made in Pennsylvania drove an innovative pneumatic hammer-driven drill ...
