176 



assured, was under study. Ail witnesses were agreed that the task of 

 reaching the mantle was difficult and expensive, but all were confident 

 it was feasible, within at least 5 years. Possibly spokesmen for the 

 petroleum drilling industry might have expressed a more pessimistic 

 assessment of the feasibility question. Several years later, a petroleum 

 geologist. Dr. Frank B. Conselman, in a letter in Science magazine, 

 wrote with asperity on this matter. The achievement by AMSOC, he 

 said, had been a "stunt" which "in all probability could have been 

 accomplished by private enterprise in less time, with less expense, and 

 with infinitely less fanfare." He suggested that it would "* * * take 

 more than press releases and self-serving propaganda to effect the 

 transition between a wine-breakfast inspiration and an extremely diffi- 

 cult if not virtually impossible engineering accomplishment." ^^ 



While these two sets of hearings in 1961 identified many of the prob- 

 lems that later became troublesome, they were not judged by either 

 the witnesses nor the committees as sufficiently serious to warrant spe- 

 cific action at that time. A sense of urgency overcame any latent in- 

 clination to defer further teclinical decisions until the promised studies 

 had been completed. If the witnesses turned out later to have been 

 unrealistically sanguine, at least their knowledge and experience in 

 the subject at hand was collectively as adequate as could be expected. 

 Even more important, it was all mutually consistent, with few hints of 

 contradiction. Uncertainties remained, but the impression left by the 

 witnesses was that these could be resolved in due course by careful, 

 objective, deliberative processes. 



C ongressional review following Mohole contract placement 



The decisions made in the early part of Mohole's second phase con- 

 trolled its destiny to the end. The decision to emphasize the spectacular 

 rush to the mantle imposed a need for an accelerated program. The 

 difficulty in achieving the goal imposed the need for a contractor with 

 special skills in an unprecedented kind of marine construction. Both 

 of these requirements added to the cost of the ultimate achievement. 



As soon as NSF had received its appropriation for the fiscal year 

 1962, the Foundation j^romptly began the process of selecting a con- 

 tractor to manage the second phase of Mohole. The growing magnitude 

 of the prospective undertaking underscored its attractiveness as a 

 contract, and some 80 organizations were represented at the initial 

 bidders' briefing session, July 27, 1961. Members of Congress took a 

 considerable interest in the proceedings that followed; this was an 

 occasion of doldrums in the aerospace industry, and many large com- 

 panies were searching at the time for new market areas as opportunities 

 for diversification. Among the companies that entered the competition 

 for the Mohole contract were Aerojet-General Corp., General Electric, 

 General Motors Corp., Melpar, Litton Systems, Inc., General Dynam- 

 ics, Texas Instruments, and Minneapolis-Honeywell, as well as a num- 

 ber of oil companies. Among the not-for-profit corporations in the 

 competition were the University of California, System Develop- 

 ment Corp., Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, and Battelle Memorial 

 Institute. 



Subsequently, NSF received 12 proposals. After a protracted screen- 

 ing process, Brown & Root of Houston was chosen as the contractor. 

 This choice elicited adverse comment from some Members of Con- 



^ Dr. Frank C. Conselman. Letter to the editor. Science (vol. 143, 1964), p. 994. 



