FRONTIERS IN OCEANIC RESEARCH 69 



The purpose of this talk is primarily informative to give your com- 

 mittee a view of some engineering efforts to take practical advantage 

 of the sea today or within the next few decades. 



I should like to subdivide the field of ocean development into half 

 a dozen parts and handle each very briefly. These are ; naval weap- 

 ons, underwater transportation and communication, fresh water con- 

 version, mining or chemical extraction of minerals, food production, 

 and finally research activities. 



NAVY TRENDS 



I am sure that you are all aware of the revolution that is now tak- 

 ing place in undersea warfare. Nuclear propelled submarines and the 

 Polaris missile system are but two outstanding examples. Parallel 

 advances are being made in methods of detecting and destroying enemy 

 submarines, in underwater communications and navigation. The sig- 

 nificance of these developments is that the U.S. Navy is moving toward 

 operation in the full depth of the ocean, freeing itself from the 

 shallow zone of a few hundred feet to which it has been constrained 

 in the past. Development work directed and sponsored by the Navy 

 is of such scope and importance that I could not presume to describe 

 it all here today. Of course, most of the Navy budget, running into 

 billions of dollars, is devoted to operating in and on the oceans. 



TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION 



However, there will surely be many peacetime commercial and in- 

 dustrial activities which will gain impetus from the Navy program. 

 As one example, advances in structural materials, submarine hull 

 design and powerplants are steadily bringing us closer to an economi- 

 cal cargo submarine. The chief advantage of this type of craft 

 lies in relative immunity to heavy weather or destruction by enemy 

 submarines. Also, the drag of a submerged hull tends to be lower 

 than for a surface vessel, so that ultimately a lower operating cost 

 should be attainable. I can visualize a tractor-trailer combination in 

 which the powered tractor can be kept in continuous use, like a loco- 

 motive, while the trailer hulls are tied up for loading. This develop- 

 ment, in turn, will give rise to new kinds of shore facilities for effi- 

 cient loading and unloading. Although various studies of cargo sub- 

 marines have been made, I am not aware of any development projects. 

 The present studies do not justify this type of craft economically for 

 general cargo handling; however, I think it is only a matter of time 

 until vessels for special applications are developed. 



Another form of undersea transport is the pipeline. A study is 

 being made in Europe of a gas pipeline from North Africa to south- 

 eastern Spain. That project undoubtedly is the forerunner of a net- 

 work of pipelines across narrow seas and straits all over the world. 

 As one example, the Suez Canal will cease to be a critical bottleneck 

 to the free world if this technique is developed. 



We must not overlook the pipeline for human traffic — that is, the 

 tunnel. About a month ago, a formal proposal was made to the Gov- 

 ernments of Great Britain and France for construction of a tunnel 

 beneath the English Channel from a point near Dover to Calais, an 



