Word: tethers
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...wake of Trieste's successful dive, the number of submersibles expanded dramatically. The American Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's workhorse, the three-person Alvin (still in operation), was launched in 1964. And the first robots-on-a-tether--the so-called remotely operated vehicles, or ROVS--were developed several years later. The Soviet Union, France and Japan began building their own submersibles, either for military or scientific reasons, and for the first time scientists could systematically collect animals, plants, rocks and water samples rather than study whatever they could dredge up in collection baskets lowered from the surface...
Center projects to be completed within the next five to ten years include tether systems which are analogous to satellites on strings, a device called Spartan which produces artificial eclipses, an infrared telescope and several specialized satellites...
...supposed to be another space spectacular, the kind NASA used to pull off like clockwork: astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis had plans to dangle a half-ton satellite on a 20.1-km (12 1/2-mile) tether, forming the biggest single orbiting object in history. But like so many of the space agency's ambitious projects lately, this one didn't quite work out. The Italian-made satellite rose properly from the shuttle on a 10-m (39-ft.) boom, but the astronauts couldn't pull out its auxiliary power cord. When they finally got the cord out and began unreeling...
...stretching the copper-cored, shoelace-thin tether within the earth's magnetic field, NASA scientists expected to generate up to 5,000 volts of electricity. Ultimately, such tethers could not only power spacecraft but also secure counterweights that could be set spinning to create artificial gravity...
...radar-balloon perimeter that the U.S. Customs Service has been trying to raise along the Mexican border to detect drug smuggling is not flying high. Last December one of the Texas-based gas bags broke loose from its tether near Eagle Pass and began drifting south, alarming federal officials with the prospect of an international incident with Mexico. A shift in the wind pushed the device back into Texas, where it was deflated by remote control. In April a balloon at Marfa, Texas, was buffeted on the ground by winds and self- destructed. Another balloon that...