OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES 181 



Mr. Miller. I Ccan subscribe to what you say and that is one of the 

 things, frankly, that bothers me. 



Now, in this field, the Navy is concerned with one or two phases 

 and naturally that should be your prime interest. 



On the other hand, how about the biology of the ocean which you 

 are not concerned with but with which other people are concerned? 

 Yet, in doing this job if we do it on a cooperative basis we can get it 

 done on the whole cheaper than if we devote one part of it to the 

 defense angle and another part to the biology and another part to the 

 physics at sea in order to determine how we are going to send our 

 merchant ships across, and maybe through this committee we can 

 corae in with a program of how tliis can be done and done more eco- 

 nomically and with a little law, if it becomes necessary, than we can 

 do it independently. 



I am conscious of the fact, serving also on the Committee on Science 

 and Astronautics, of how we have the peaceful phases of space ex- 

 ploration and the military phases, but we have set them up and you 

 have NASA working hand in glove with AKDA in the Department of 

 Defense, NASA being the National Astronautical and Space Agency, 

 and ARDA being the Advanced Research and Development Agency 

 for the Department of Defense. So that we are bringing along in 

 that field the defense phases of it and the civilian phases or peaceful 

 phases in close cooperation. 



It strikes me that, because of the very importance of this in this 

 field of oceanography, that if we can lay the proper background we 

 can com.e out with something like the fine cooperation of the Navy 

 and other agencies where we can be assured of getting money to do 

 this job. As it is now, as I understand it, there is one oceanographic 

 boat that I believe is due for launching this year. How many others 

 are projected or the keels laid down? Do you have any coming up? 



Captain ]Metsger. Mr. Chairman, our program in that, will be cov- 

 ered a little later by Mr. Lill. 



May I respond to some of your fine, helpful comments, sir ? 



The great bulk of all the support of oceanography is made by the 

 Navy Department and indeed by the Office where I am. This really 

 turns out to be the most effective way to do it because this also is by 

 far the largest customer for oceanographic work. 



It strikes me, after some years in the Office of Naval Research, that 

 our greatest problem is getting the information which is produced 

 by science to the users. The best solution to this problem is to have 

 the scientists and the users as close together as possible administra- 

 tively and even physically. In oceanography we have happily 

 achieved this and this is one example of immediate feeding of results to 

 the user. This is because the scientific work and the users are inti- 

 mately associated in the Office of Naval Research. Mr. Lill repre- 

 sents both. 



Now, in other areas where there are several equal participants, it may 

 be that a committee structure such as you mentioned is useful. 



I respectfully submit that a question might be raised even here but 

 I would prefer not to raise it. 



In the case of oceanography we shall do far better bv keeping 

 everyone in the business in this greatest portion of it all together 

 as they are now, with the ex'='ting superb cooperation which we do 



