The panel's hope was to find a consensus on several critical needs, 

 that is, several items on everybody's wish list, the lack of whose fulfill- 

 ment was choking progress, and then ascertain whether government 

 support liad a role to play and suggest how it might be done. 



FINDINGS: Sector Viewpoints 



We had expected that government, industry, and the research 

 community would exhibit needs common to their own sector but 

 reflect separate sector interests, and their viewpoints would therefore be 

 somewhat different. They are, and we will attempt to describe them 

 briefly (despite the obvious danger of generalizing about specifics) 

 because these viewpoints illuminate differing approaches to the specific 

 tasks mentioned. 



(a) Government tasks are so endless, the requirements for program 

 and budget justification so detailed, it was not surprising that 

 ready-made plans exist to take ocean engineering one more 



■ step in about any direction named. The price however is a 

 somewhat sluggish responsiveness to new problems and there 

 seems not yet to have emerged forward-looking definition of 

 what needs to be done, in the offshore zone in particular, with 

 regard to ocean engineering aspects of multiple use, regula- 

 tion, safety, environmental protection, and the like. 



(b) Industry exhibited a wider range and greater diversity of 

 approaches on what needed doing than did the other sectors. 

 This was reflected especially in the differences of opinion on 

 what industry would like government to do, and what it 

 wishes to reserve to itself. The oil industry has the incentive 

 and the wherewithal to tackle brute-force almost any ocean 

 problem it runs into, but it needs better environmental data. 

 People who build submersibles, on the other hand, would 

 like to see Government programs which use submersibles, 

 even if the direct results are somewhat intangible. Govern- 

 ment responsibility is apt to be defined broadly by most as 

 the need for a technological basis— materials research, for 

 example, or general investigations in soil mechanics, or struc- 

 ture loading, or sub-surface nuclear power, or in waste- 

 management in coastal areas. But the economics of it look 

 somewhat different from different vantage points. 



(c) The research sector, to lump the oceanographic and university 

 ocean engineering communities, are more of one mind. "With 

 only minor variations they stress the theme of continuity, 

 facility support, and receptiveness to a longer view than 

 immediate applicability. 



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