Later tests found oxygen levels at about 7 percent -- too little to survive -- but that may be because the drill hole drifted as it was being bored, Stickler said.
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What they've done before the commercial versions is using, like, five-gallon buckets of this drill hole in the bottom, so they can plant through, put some dirt in and hang it up.
Curiosity has already seen plenty of evidence for past running water in Gale Crater and the results from the drill-hole analysis are expected to reveal further information about that wet history.
So, the command was given to drill a second hole that was deep enough to push some cuttings into the tool's sample acquisition chamber.
Either way it is particularly disappointing when you drill a dry hole such as happened to the partners in the Blueberry Hill side-track well (EXXI was not among them), which found nothing and required a write-down in the quarter, surely a factor in the price drop of the stock.
Last week, rescue coordinator Andre Sougarret said initially the Schramm T-130, would be used to drill a 12-inch bore hole down to the miners to enable rescue workers to deliver larger survival items for the miners, but he said if possible the same drill would be used to widen the hole to 28 inches -- sufficient to hoist the miners back to the surface.
"Most dentists are busy looking for a hole to drill and fill, " he said.
The drill would use that hole as a pilot and widen the diameter to about 28 inches, which officials have said is wide enough for the miners to be hoisted through.
The hole under way is the excavation hole, where the drill bit will be placed.
Officials said both efforts -- to drill a rescue shaft and widen a bore hole -- could be carried out concurrently.
That was as deep as one could look into the earth with the available geological tools--and also about as far into the ground as anyone knew how to drill a well and push pipe into the hole.
This pivot is best illustrated by the story of Theodore Leavitt, a professor at Harvard Business School who told his students not to try to sell customers a quarter-inch drill, but a way to make a quarter-inch hole.
This was followed in the week by the drill turning in the chosen rock to cut a shallow, 2cm hole.
The Plan A drill -- a mining drill -- reached 148 meters (486 feet), but the hole it was drilling would still need to be widened to 70 centimeters (27.5 inches) to accommodate the rescue capsule.
Having already spent a night at the Ark, a quirky Noah's Ark-like lodge tucked into the thick, verdant forests of Kenya's Aberdare National Park, I was familiar with the drill: one bell meant elephants arriving to the salt lick and watering hole that the back of the lodge overlooks.
It aims only to drill down to 1, 400 feet beneath the seafloor, then plug and seal the hole for reentry next year.
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