The world’s first massive deep sea mining vehicles will begin operations in 2018. A massive deposit of copper and gold was discovered 5,200 feet deep off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Nautilus Minerals, a canadian company, acquired the necessary permits and formed a partnership with SMD machines, a U.K. company, to solve the engineering problems associated deep sea mining. Nautilus estimates the massive deposit contains over 1 million tons of minerals and precious metals. Estimated yearly production could yield 80,000 tons of copper and 150,000 ounces of gold. There is enough copper there to last for the next 30 years of consumption according to Nautilus estimates. The sheer amount of material and its deep location underwater presented a unique engineering problem. Nautilus and SMD originally planned to design one undersea vehicle to do all the underwater tasks. After several in-depth studies were conducted it became apparent more specialized individual machines would…