Why the Ramform Hyperion floating "iron" plows the ocean

In recent years, few people can be surprised by multi-deck sea liners, giant tankers and large-scale aircraft carriers, but the Ramform Hyperion vessel, dissecting the world ocean under the flag of the Bahamas, can puzzle anyone. Very few people can say offhand for what purposes this giant is intended, it is so unlike other sea vessels.

The huge Ramform Hyperion iron is a seismic survey vessel, 104.2 m long and 70 m wide. The cruising speed of the vessel is 16 knots, and the crew consists of 80 people, for whom 60 single and 10 double cabins are provided.

The floating miracle was launched in March 2017 at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Nagasaki, Japan.

For what kind of exploration is a vessel with such remarkable proportions intended? Ramform Hyperion is a unique floating laboratory whose main task is the exploration of minerals lying under the ocean floor. Simply put, the floating platform "irons" the world ocean and, with the help of ultra-sensitive acoustic sensors, searches for oil and gas deposits.

The shape of the vessel, with a very wide stern, is designed for maximum stability, which is the most important condition for the effective operation of Ramform Hyperion. The giant is towing hundreds of thousands of sensors covering an area of about 12 square kilometers and continuously "translucent" the thickness of the earth's crust under the ocean floor using acoustic signals.

Streamers are lowered into the water with the help of powerful winches according to a certain scheme in order to arrange themselves in the right sequence. Thousands of microphones receive an acoustic signal reflected from the earth's crust and transmit it to powerful computers for processing.The result is a high-quality three-dimensional image, according to which the availability of natural resources and the potential of deposits is determined. The technology of such exploration is called GeoStreamer and was developed by Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), which now owns the vessel.

By the way, Ramform Hyperion is not alone in the ocean — the platform has a twin, released a year earlier, in 2016, and having exactly the same dimensions and capabilities. There are also more modestly equipped workers in the Ramform family — Ramform Titan, launched in 2013 and Ramform Atlas, commissioned in 2014.

All vessels of this family were developed by a team of designers led by engineer Roar Ramde back in the 90s, but it took almost two decades for the first platform to come off the slipways of the Nagasaki shipyard.

To learn more about the unusual marine scout, as well as to see which part of the world ocean he plows, you can follow this link.