CHAPTER SEVEN— CONGRESSIONAL CONCERN WITH 

 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF MOHOLE 



I. Background of the Mohole Issue 



Early in 1957 there arose in the scientific community an imaginative 

 proposal to explore through the earth's crust to the heavy underlying- 

 layer by drilling. Although this feat was judged infeasible from a 

 continental drilling site, it seemed more likely to be feasible in the 

 deep ocean, where the crustal depth was much thinner. This proposed 

 undertaking was called Project Mohole, from the scientific term 

 "Mohorovicic Discontinuity," signifying the interface between the 

 crustal surface and the mantle beneath it. 



Preliminary experiments with a newly developed tecluiology of 

 offshore drilling in deep water from a dynamically positioned (un- 

 anchored) fioatmg drilling rig were successful. However, the techno- 

 logical difficulty presented by the more ambitious goal of penetrating 

 in even deeper water to reach the mantle through some 6 miles of over- 

 burden, was vastly larger than that overcome in the initial experiments. 

 Some of those who entertained this ultimate goal do not appear to 

 have assessed it realistically. It was gradually revealed to require a 

 much larger organization, considerable further development in the 

 state of the drilling art, and investment in a large floating platform 

 capable of maintaining stability and life support during a 2y2-year 

 drilling campaign. The alternative approach of proceeding step by 

 step to deeper penetrations was not favored, perhaps in part because 

 of the persistence of a belief that Russian and U.S. scientists were 

 engaged in a race to reach the mantle. In the latter stages of the project, 

 the emphasis began to shift, somewhat from that of a one-time project 

 to a broader program, involving planned use of the large drilling 

 platform, and other rigs, to conduct an exploration of more general 

 scope into the ocean floor. 



After considerable investigation, some investment in the develop- 

 ment of drilling technology, and an initial outlay for work on the 

 platform, the National Science Foundation abandoned the project at 

 the instruction of the Congress. The instruction took the form of an 

 explicit denial of further funds for the Mohole project. 



This chapter examines the sources of information provided to the 

 Congress concerning the latter stages of the project. The decision 

 to terminate it, taken in the summer of 1966, was preceded by a sub- 

 stantial volume of testimony from the scientific community, almost 

 all in support of the project. However, the termination was fore- 

 shadowed by expressions of dissent from several disaffected scientists, 

 mostly on the grounds that the project had not been permitted to evolve 

 on a deliberate, step-by-step basis, and that a legitimate scientific quest 

 for important new information had been supplanted by a try for a 

 spectacular stunt. 



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