AS A NASA engineer and ex-US navy submarine man, Clinton Cragg is used to confined spaces. But designing a capsule to bring the 33 miners trapped in the San Jose shaft in Chile to safety may have been his tightest squeeze yet. The rescue was about to start as New Scientist went to press.
Chilean authorities gave Cragg’s team two dimensions for the escape pod: a height of 4 metres and a width of 50 centimetres. Within three days, Cragg and his colleagues had built a capsule containing a safety harness, an oxygen tank, a video and audio link, and just enough space to move to…
