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I believe that the design of the vessel we are discussing should be called 

 logical rather than radical. A freighter would not be logical if it were not 

 mostly hold nor \vould a carrier be logical unless it had a big flat deck. A re- 

 search vessel is as specialized as a merchantman or a warship and only in rare 

 cases is it practical or economical to convert one into the other. Also we must 

 remember that most of the individual features which we are apt to call radical 

 have been successfully used in vessels before, so it is only the combination 

 which is unique. 



I do not think our various requirements are particularly contradictory 

 or even so very expensive. They show that the field is broad and that a good 

 research vessel needs to be versatile. Experience has also shown that the ver- 

 satile ship nearly always has a financial backer while the special-purpose ship 

 is apt to sit at the dock for lack of operating funds. 



There are several ways of figuring the cost of a research vessel. The 

 usual one is the cost per year or per day at sea, but I believe a more realistic 

 one would be the cost of a working day, on station, with adequate facilities. I 

 will agree that the former gives the monetary outgo, but the latter determines 

 the scientific income and hence in the long run the monetary income. The days 

 lost when slowed up by storms, by low speed, by breakdowns, by loading, un- 

 loading, etc. , are just as expensive and far nriore heartbreaking than the days 

 spent working on station. 



The size of the crew is the largest determining factor in the cost of oper- 

 ating a research vessel and hence the design of the vessel should be such as to 

 keep this to a minimum. Fuel is usually cheap compared with food. 



The life of a good ship is at least twenty years so even $1,000,000 first 

 cost doesn't look so bad when amortized over a period of 20 years. Surely a 

 vessel designed for the job could do 25 percent more work than existing ships. 

 Another feature is that maintenance costs should be small for the first ten years 

 of a new ship. 



At the moment I believe the principal requirement for an oceanographic 

 ship is something a little larger and more versatile than Scripps' ATA, the 

 HORIZON. I say somewhat larger because I believe a vessel of 20 percent 

 greater size could be operated at about the same cost and with the same crew but 

 have nearly twice as much space available for scientific work. 



We should not rule out the coastal vessel of 80 to 100 feet because such 

 a vessel could be a great work horse for oceanography. At the momient how- 

 ever, it seems that the need for such a vessel is somewhat less and the design 

 problem is somewhat simpler. 



Neither should we rule out the large offshore vessel of say 250 feet that 

 can go off for long trips, fuel smaller vessels, carry its own supplies, machine 

 shop, etc. Such a vessel would permit carrying spare reels of wire, a shore 

 based lab to set up on small islands for a month or so. It could also carry a 

 boat on deck which could work in connpany with its mother ship. Such a ship 

 could carry and service many buoys. It could have several kinds of laborator- 

 ies set up on it all the time. Such a vessel need not have a crew of more than 

 25 or 30 and might be cheaper to operate than two of our present vessels. 



However, to return to the all around medium size oceanographic re- 

 search vessel, I would propose a vessel of about 180 feet long, 30 foot beam, 16 

 foot draft. 



