308 OCEANOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES 



you are out at sea at all. Everything is so monstrous and large and 

 eveiything goes on just about the way it does on land. 



Here is a picture of the kind of bits [indicating] that are used. 

 This is on the bottom of this drill pipe and the mud is pumped down 

 through these at high velocity and then the pipe and these bits are 

 rotated in the bottom of the hole at several hundred r.p.m. and they 

 grind their way down. This particular kind of bit is only good for 

 making holes. 



This [indicating] is a diamond bit intended for coreing. As this 

 bit is put on the same piece of pipe it grinds its way down and leaves 

 a piece of the bottom rock standing up through tlie middle of that 

 hole. This bit is upside down, but these are diamonds, the little 

 black spots. It is possible, by putting what is called a core-catcher in 

 the bottom of the pipe, to trap this material from the bottom as it 

 comes into this thing [indicating] and when you retract the pipe, you 

 get a sample of the bottom back again. 



This is a picture [indicating] of the same ship doing another kind 

 of operation. This is setting casing. You ask, how big is the hole 

 going to be? The hole will be just as big as the outside of tliis casing. 

 As you are drilling, you slide the casing down the side, and I believe 

 this is 14-inch casing we are running here, but I am not sure at 

 the moment ; they are hoisting it into position with the casing elevator 

 and here they are setting it [indicating]. 



You can see that it is a pretty good sized operation going on here. 



At this particular moment, they are tightening a new piece of casing 

 on the old one and they are lowering it down and holding it in some 

 spiders and swinging up another piece and setting it on. It is possible 

 in the oil business to run as many as 10,000 feet in this pipe at one time 

 if the hole is that deep. 



Here is simply another view of that operation [indicating] and to 

 give you a little better perspective of the situation. The men are 

 dwarfed by the size of this rig. With Cuss and certain modifications 

 it probably needs a little bit larger draw works. 



That [indicating] is the hoist with the cable on it that I showed 

 you before and with some device arranged for holding it into position 

 at sea. 



We have studies going on as to how this might be done and there 

 are several possible ways that look promising. It would be possible 

 to make these modifications in a vessel like the Cims in a matter of 

 a few months. We are talking about maybe 3 or 4 months beyond 

 the design work and after that, our general plan, assuming that we 

 raise the money and are able to do that — the vessel is for rent at a 

 price of aj)proximately $5,000 a day, complete with everything, crew 

 and everything that goes with it. — we probably will take it in near 

 the shore off California and drill a few of these test holes in the bottom 

 just to see what i\\^ difficulties are. 



At this moment we do not know what the forces will be due to 

 currents acting on a string of casing like this. It will be 10,000 feet 

 long extending from the surface of the water down to the bottom, 

 and the only way we know to find this out is to try it out. 



There are many other things that have to be solved, such as the 

 question of how one cores in soft bottom, how you hold still in deep 

 water, how the wave forces are acting on it, and so on. Once we have 



