tween $35 to $40 million, it would be uneconomical to abandon the project. With so much of the most costly work already done or committed, I believe Project Mohole should be continued. It would be false economy to abandon this eminently worthwhile project.

Because Project Mohole has vast scientific value; because it has farreaching application for the exploitation of mineral and other resources under the ocean; and because it has outer space and defense applications, I strongly urge your subcommittee to restore in full the funds requested for Project Mohole for fiscal year 1967.

Thank you again for the opportunity to voice my support of this important project.

Senator MAGNUSON. Thank you, Senator.

We haven't held the hearing for the National Science Foundation yet. We will be hearing from them in the next few weeks, and we will be pleased to have them express their opinions on your statement regarding this matter.

Senator FONG. Thank you.

Senator MAGNUSON. The Senator from Colorado is very familiar with the funds already expended. We have to make a decision as to whether, as you suggest, it might be uneconomical to abandon it at this time.

Senator FONG. The National Science Foundation reviewed the problem very, very thoroughly last year and decided that we should proceed.

Senator ALLOTT. I have no questions.

Senator FONG. Thank you.

Senator MAGNUSON. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK E. MOSS, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE

STATE OF UTAH

RESTORATION OF FUNDS

Senator Moss, we will be pleased to hear from you.

Senator Moss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Allott. Senator ALLOTT. Excuse me, just a minute. Did Senator Inouye want to come and testify, too, do you know?

Senator FONG. I have not heard from him.

Senator Moss. I have listened to the testimony of the Senator from Hawaii and subscribe to all that he said. My testimony is much to the same effect. I am here to testify for restoration of funds for Project Mohole. The House of Representatives, as your subcommittee knows, upheld the decision of its Committee on Appropriations that no funds should be appropriated for the National Science Foundation to continue this project. I am here to urge you to restore the $19.7 million which President Johnson requested for Mohole.

PART OF INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM

Project Mohole is the name given to the U.S. program for deep drilling which is part of the deep crustal studies of the earth undertaken by a number of nations. The international program is known as the upper mantle project. The U.S. purpose is to drill through the earth's crust, and into the mantle, a layer some 1,500 miles thick that constitutes the bulk of the planet.

The scientific community places a high priority on these investigations. A recent report issued by fifty leading U.Š. physicists outlined a vigorous program of fundamental research to chart the largely unknown interior of our planet. The 1960 Helsinki Conference which first proposed the upper mantle project listed seven types of investigations with deep drilling at the head of the list.

SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF MOHOLE

The scientific value of drilling has been proved by the wealth of data gathered from the hundreds of thousands of holes which have been drilled in the United States.

All of this, however, has been comparatively shallow drilling or deep oil well drilling through sedimentary formations only. A deep hole will offer science two advantages: First, our physicists and chemists can take materials from heretofore inaccessible depths and formations into the laboratories for analysis; second, instruments can be lowered into the hole itself. Thus, we can determine mineral and chemical composition, temperature and intrinsic radioactivity, and density-all data which will help immeasurably in our understanding of the evolution and constitution of the outer portions of the planet.

But my principal purpose today, Mr. Chairman, is to point out the technological-rather than the scientific-advantages which the Nation will derive from Project Mohole.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES

What is now proposed is construction and use of a drilling platform which will cost $29 million and which will be capable of navigation and sustaining itself while on location.

The operation of this platform will make possible the solution of many problems which would otherwise take many years or would not be solved at all because of high research costs. According to those who have worked closely with the engineering aspects of Project Mohole, these problems include:

1. Designing a drilling platform which will be safe in hurricaneforce winds and sufficiently stable to permit year-round drilling, coring, and sampling operations.

2. Developing techniques and instruments for maintaining the freefloating platform directly over the hole in water too deep for anchoring.

3. Developing drilling pipe strings capable of withstanding dynamic stresses from wave actions and currents coupled with static drilling loads.

4. Devising instrumentation to telemeter information from the bottom of the hole to the platform as the hole is being drilled.

5. Developing a riser pipe system to run from just below the platform down to the ocean bottom.

I remind the subcommittee of the Nation's tremendous demand for minerals and fuels. In 1952, the President's Material Policy Commission noted that, even then, American consumption of most of the fuels and minerals had been greater since the beginning of the First World War than total world consumption for all the centuries before. Resources for the future tells us that projections indicate a tripling in our requirements for metals by the year 2000.

63-054-66-pt. 2-20

Such demands can be filled only if we conduct energetic programs of exploration, and such exploration must include the sea as well as the land. The engineering effort being expended on Project Mohole is developing new tools, techniques and equipment which will increase the depth capability of the oil industry from about 25,000 to 35,000 feet-an increase of 40 percent. Deep drilling is of interest not only to the petroleum industry, but also to the budding ocean mining industry which is engaging in deep ocean and Continental Shelf sampling and mining activities. New drilling technology developed for Project Mohole will find immediate application wherever drilling, coring, and sampling are done, whether on land or sea.

The May 9 issue of the Oil and Gas Journal reported an advance already made on this project. This advance is the development of a new bit and turbocorer which together may make it possible to change bits without withdrawing the entire coring apparatus from the ground. Gordon G. Lill, Project Director for Mohole, has stated that the bit will be field tested shortly. Representative George E. Shipley, of Illinois, declared such a bit could be "a great thing for the oil industry."

I am proud to be able to report that this bit is being developed by a firm in my State of Utah. If Project Mohole is continued, it will mean some $2 million in business through 1970 for a number of Utah firms.

RUSSIAN EFFORTS TO PENETRATE MANTLE

Our abandonment of this program to learn more about the crust of the earth and how to drill into it-would leave the field to the Russians.

An article from the Soviet Weekly, published this year, summarizes the U.S.S.R.'s deep drilling program. Apparently, the Russians have concluded that the recovery of samples from the earth's mantle justifies the cost of drilling. Further, the Soviet Union has already begun drilling the only country to do so of the seven that have deep drilling programs for the supper mantle project.

Experience has shown that projects of this kind are pursued with the greatest efficiency when they are continued at reasonable levels from year to year. Stop-and-start is always costly; and it appears that cancellation of Mohole now would mean a loss of more than $20 million already spent.

I regard it as certain that the United States will some day seek both the scientific knowledge and the technical capability that can be gained only through a project such as Mohole. I urge the subcommittee to approve this appropriation, so that we may make these gains in the next 5 years.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator MAGNUSON. Senator, you mentioned the amount of money that has been spent, and we have those figures available, but I am sure that yours are accurate.

COST OF CLOSEOUT

Senator Fong mentioned the closeout course. I presume that when he said closeout course that would be between $35 and $40 million, he is adding the amount that has been spent and the amount that it would cost to phase it out.

Senator Moss. I am sure that is right, Mr. Chairman, but the cost of just picking up and getting off is going to be a tremendous amount of money, and I am convinced, of course, as I say, right at the end here that we are going to do it some day and it seems to me that we throw a lot of money away if we quit now and just fold up for 5 years or some period of time and then start all over again putting this great apparatus together and starting to drill.

DELAY OF PROJECT

Senator MAGNUSON. Of course, the House wasn't critical of the project, as such, they merely said let's stop it now and do it some other time.

Senator Moss. And, of course, I appreciate the pressures there are on the budget and demands for money, but I think that is a wasteful thing to do, to stop it now. Maybe it can't go ahead at the same speed that we calculated it in the first place, but I think it ought to have a steady, long program and keep going.

Senator MAGNUSON. In any event, we probably shouldn't lose the benefits that we have to date.

Senator Moss. Certainly.

Senator MAGNUSON. We should not put the project in such a position that we couldn't pick it up and move faster.

Senator Moss. I agree with that, sir, very much.

Senator MAGNUSON. All right, thank you very much.

Senator Moss. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENT OF PROF. HARRY H. HESS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PRINCETON, N.J.

SCIENTIFIC VALUE AND TECHNICAL REWARDS

Senator MAGNUSON. We have additional witnesses on the NSF-Mohole project. Dr. H. H. Hess, Princeton University, Princeton, is here. We will be pleased to hear from you, Doctor.

Dr. HESS. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you. I would like to say that I am here as a private citizen, not representing any agency or organization.

Senator MAGNUSON. But you are connected with Princeton?

Dr. Hess. I am connected with Princeton University. I have long been interested in and concerned with the Mohole project. As a matter of fact, Walter Monk and I some 9 years ago were active in its initiation and convinced, even then, of the scientific value and technical rewards.

It seems to me that both of these aspects are very more clearly significant today. It would be tragic if, after all of this effort in the Mohole project during the last 9 years and after spending a considerable portion of the total fund required, it were now abandoned. The Mohole project tackles the most fundamental problems about the Earth as a planet-the nature and composition of the mantle, about

85 percent of the volume of the earth. It is a courageous project, and one that is simple enough in concept so that it is understood and followed by the general public in this country as well as abroad.

Having accomplished great engineering and design achievements with a clearly stated objective and with the eyes of the world upon us, can we now afford to stop and suggest the United States is not quite strong enough to do this and meet our other pressing obligations. at this time? Particularly at a time when the U.S.S.R. has just announced it is starting a 50,000-foot hole in the Kola Peninsula.

SPACE COMPARISON

As Chairman of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences, I have on previous occasions appeared before some of you to testify on NASA's scientific program. NASA will probably embark on a planetary exploration project in the next decade. It becomes vitally important that the complementary information from the Earth as a planet be available in the near future to guide our reasoning with regard to similar celestial bodies such as Mars, Venus, and the Moon.

How will we ever know about the interior of any planet except by very indirect and uncertain inference if we don't find out what is 32 miles below the ocean floor on earth?

Last week I was engaged in reviewing the experiments proposed for the Mars 1969 flybys. It is rather interesting to note that if these are successful I would guess that the scientific accomplishment which would be attained would be comparable to what might be expected from a successful Mohole. The estimated costs of the two projects are about the same $110 and $118 million.

In short, we are concerned with the frontier areas of science and technology, both in the Mohole effort and the exploration of the planets. There is a relatedness in these endeavors and what we learn in one project enhances what we will learn in the other. Therefore, conducting them in parallel is advantageous. At the same time, aside from scientific values, both efforts are important technologically, advancing markedly our engineering and industrial capabilities along new lines.

POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF MOHOLE

Some of the potential benefits from the Mohole operation are as follows:

Design and engineering work already accomplished greatly increase the Nation's ability to exploit petroleum and mineral deposits on the deeper parts of the Continental Shelf. Among the advances are development of (1) a stable platform capable of maintaining itself over a spot in the oceans on automatic pilot; (2) a practical turbodrill with the capability of obtaining cores, permitting a large increase in speed in drilling of holes anywhere; (3) suitable automatic pipe handling; and (4) a heavier equipment for drilling holes to greater depths.

The platform has the capability of being used for other purposes. That is the design might well be used for such purposes as a satellite tracking station in midocean, thus freeing us from the necessity of such stations on foreign territory.