377 



At this point, I would like to expand briefly on these com^wnents 

 by showing you some charts of imaginative drawings of these items. 



If I may have the lights out, I would like to project the slides on the 

 wall. I regret that I do not have a screen. 



Mr. Downing. I think we can see them all right. 



[Slide presentation.] 



Mr. PiEKCE. [Slide.] This is a recap of the basic components I men- 

 tioned, of sea buildings, sea structures, fast surface and subsurface 

 transportation, ocean robots or ocean work horses, communications, 

 and primary power services. 



Now, these items here are comparable to the things that we have on 

 land today and consider commonplace. For example, buildings. There 

 is an infinite variety of buildings that we use in all areas of land 

 activity. 



•In transportation, we have again a wide spectrum from automobiles, 

 to buses, planes, trains, and so on. 



In workhorses, we have the cranes, the bulldozers and all the heavy 

 construction machinery necessary to industry today. 



In communications, it goes without saying that on land we are tied 

 together by wire communications, voice communications, messages of 

 record, television, and so on. 



On primary power, we have power packages from the tiniest bat- 

 teries on up to nuclear reactors on land. 



So, you can see that these components have been developed to a very 

 high degree of sophistication and we can do 'all the things you, see 

 today in our very advanced technological society. 



Now we are just at the threshold of ocean development. If we 

 expect to do substantive work and have man occupy the oceans, we will 

 have to make a start on these basic components. 



I am sure it will be many years before we will have all the facilities 

 in the oceans that we do on land but this is, in my opinion, where you 

 start, to develop the basic tools first and then go ahead with the spe- 

 cific programs and expand them into the complexity which I am sure 

 we will eventually see in the next 10 years. 



If we address ourselves to the effort of developing these basic com- 

 ponents, the other things that the Commission suggests will become a 

 reality perhaps a lot sooner than we think. 



Mr. Pierce. [Slide.] This is an imaginative concept of an ocean 

 building. In an ocean structure, the main consideration is in having a 

 stable structure that is decoupled from the surface environment where 

 winds of 100 knots and 50-foot waves, do not greatly affect the stability 

 of the structure so that man can work with relative ease in this kind of 

 environment, and where he is not pitching or heaving as you do on 

 surface platforms. 



Also, it is possible to hold the station or the building in position by 

 dynamic electronic station keeping without the use of anchors. 



This particular structure would be submerged a considerable dis- 

 tance below the surface where the water is quiet and the exposure at 

 the surface would be rather minimal, offering a possibility for a very 

 stable structure. 



Now, these would be very complicated, very expensive, and would 

 be somewhat analogous to a space ship in the ocean. These can be scaled 



26-563 O — 69 — pt. 1 25 



