Back in the day (approximately 1952-1964) gleeful eccentrics walked the Earth. And I mean that in the best possible way: I would have enjoyed having a few beers with these guys if I had been around back then.
Some of them were interested in earth science. So they formed a group called the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC, because I’m not going to keep writing that out).
AMSOC’s biggest and most famous venture was Project Mohole.
Now, when you were a kid, you probably wanted to dig a hole to China. Or at least thought about it. Project Mohole was kind of that on a larger scale. Specifically, AMSOC’s idea with Mohole was to drill a hole through the earth’s crust and into the mantle to bring back samples.
Not that kind of samples. They were especially interested in the Mohorovičić discontinuity, the boundary between crust and mantle. (Hence the project name.)
But there was a problem. No, they were not looking for audiophiles who needed high quality cassette tapes. The problem was that the earth’s crust is really thick on dry land, and you have to drill down a long way to reach the mantle.
But! If you drill at sea, the crust is a lot thinner there, and you don’t have to drill as deep a hole!
But! This was the late 1950s – early 1960s. Drilling technology, especially deep sea drilling technology, wasn’t as advanced back then.
But! This was the late 1950s – early 1960s. Sputnik! Space race! We can do anything!
And so, with funding from the National Science Foundation, Project Mohole began in 1961.
Phase 1 was kind of cool: they used a drillship called CUSS 1, and developed “dynamic positioning”. That allowed the ship to hold a position within a radius of 600 feet, which, in turn, allowed them to drill in deep water. Their deepest hole went down to 601 feet under the sea floor, in a depth of 11,700 feet.
Unfortunately, stuff happened. AMSOC really wasn’t set up to manage big projects like this, so they turned the management over to the NSF. The various institutions involved didn’t completely see eye to eye on the project goals, and there was some infighting over where to drill the next hole, and whether to drill shallow holes first or go for the gusto and try to hit the Moho.
The NSF took bids on who the primary project contractor would be, and they ended up selecting Brown and Root. Now, I have a sentimental attachment to Brown and Root (my dad worked for them) but it seems like they were not the best choice to run the project. B&R apparently wasn’t highly skilled in sea drilling. Costs went up and up and up.
Then Congress got involved. Technically, Congress was already involved: one of the big supporters of Project Moho was Albert Thomas, a congressman from Houston. (Thomas was also key in getting NASA to locate the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. His involvement may explain why B&R was chosen as the primary contractor. The fact that B&R was also a big donor to Lyndon Johnson might have something to do with it as well.) Thomas died in February of 1966, and the project was cancelled later that year.
And somewhere, I have a copy of Willard Bascom’s A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.
Short bonus video: this claims to be footage of a nuclear weapon being used to put out a massive gas well fire in the Soviet Union.
I’ve had this in my queue for a while because I’m not sure if it is real or fake. If it is fake, it is well done, and certainly suckered me in. I guess this is one of those “I report, you decide” moments.
Time for some more military geekery. And I think that’s appropriate in this case, because this covers two interesting areas of research.
“Holloman — Frontier of the Future”, a documentary about Holloman AFB in New Mexico and some of the work going on there at the time. In addition to missile testing and flight operations, Holloman has a long (35,000 feet at the time: it was upgraded to 50,917 feet in 2000) rocket sled track: this is where John Paul Stapp did his work, and he’s interviewed briefly in the film.
Holloman was also the home base for Project Manhigh (though the balloons were launched from other sites).
Bonus video: and now for something completely different (and longer). I have not watched this yet, but I’m bookmarking it here for reasons I’ll go into in a moment.
Ah, the Lockheed Electra. The L-188 version, to be clear, not the Model 10 Electra, which is what Amelia Earhart was flying when she was lost.
The L-188 story is fascinating. Lockheed started working on a similar aircraft in 1951, but couldn’t get anyone to buy it. They kept refining the design (going from two to four engines and stretching the plane for increased seating) and, in 1955, Eastern and American placed orders. The first Electra went into service with Eastern in January of 1959.
The second two accidents were a lot more complicated. Two Electras (one operated by Braniff and one by Northwest Orient) came apart in mid-air and crashed, killing everyone on board. Much of Serling’s book deals with the investigation and the controversy surrounding it. There was a tremendous amount of pressure put on the FAA administrator by Congress and even some airlines to ground the Electra completely until the cause of the accidents was determined.
Lockheed went to extraordinary efforts to find out what had happened:
Each day Bob Gross met with all Lockheed department heads and key engineers. Each day he asked the same question:
“Do you have all the people you need and all the equipment you need? If not, well get it.”
They took him at his word.
It wasn’t just Lockheed, though. Amazingly (to me) both Boeing and Douglas provided engineers and equipment to Lockheed as well, even though the companies were fierce rivals.
Where safety begins, competition ends, for public confidence is the pillar supporting all commercial aviation. Any unsolved accident is a challenge to every airline and every airframe manufacturer, no matter what individual carrier or individual aircraft is involved. Buffalo and Tell City not only were unsolved crashes, but disasters that raised doubts about the industry’s very system of designing and testing new planes. Lockheed’s methods of developing and testing the Electra were almost identical to those used by other companies.
A man named Tom Harris was running Aero Design and Engineering at the time: they made the Aero Commander, a very popular general aviation aircraft. While on the road, he heard people talking about how unsafe and not airworthy the Electra was. When he returned home, he wrote a memo to his staff:
When we have completed an aircraft, and are satisfied that we have produced a safe and airworthy vehicle, we must of course secure this government certification. These two things accomplished, we go to the public and do our best to persuade potential customers that this is the machine they should buy. How well we succeed depends on how effective our persuasive efforts are. We ask for no help from others. We do expect, however, that to the extent our reputation has substance, and to the extent this government certification is valid, that others in the industry will respect our claim for airworthiness. We ask no praise from competitors, but in fairness and in behalf of total industry growth, we believe under this circumstance other members of the industry should not attack, criticize, or infer any unsafe situation with regard to such a product…
It has developed that some of our own people have opinions that the airplane is not safe to ride as presently being operated by the airlines; that it has an inherent defect which has not been determined or remedied, and that to fly in it is foolish and unwise.
At this point, I should like to make it very clear that I do not intend to ask anyone in this organization to fly in any aircraft which he or she does not wish to fly in, either because of the opinions as to safety, comfort, or any other reason. The people of Aero Commander are free to exercise their own judgment and conscience in determining what aircraft, if any, they are individually willing to travel in.
Having made this clear, I feel impelled also to make clear that in my opinion, as responsible members of the aircraft industry, we also have the obligation to avoid making any remarks about another manufacturer’s aircraft that tend to destroy confidence in it, or impute any dangerous condition to such aircraft that would damage its reputation as well as the reputation of this industry, of which we are a part. No one is expected to make statements in praise of an aircraft that they honestly do not feel warrants praise, but an aircraft which has the reputation and experience of a sound manufacturer and the certification of the FAA should be talked about by others in our industry as being safe and airworthy, and if it cannot be praised by an individual, certainly it should not be run down.
If we cannot say something good about airplanes such as this, I suggest that we should at least remain silent.
They don’t make them like that any more.
The cause of the crashes was determined to be a little understood (at the time) phenomena called “whirl mode flutter”. What was happening was that the outboard engines could get into a mode where they’d start vibrating, and the engine mounts were not stiff enough to stop the vibration. Those vibrations could, in turn, be transmitted to the wings and set up a resonance, which would turn into a violent oscillation that only ended when it tore the wing off. Lockheed retrofitted the Electras with stronger engine mounts and engine mount supports, and thickened the struts, which resolved the whirl mode issue. But there were some other high profile crashes (for other reasons) and the public lost confidence in the Electra. Production ended in 1961, with 170 built. Many of them continued in use as cargo, rather than passenger aircraft, though some smaller carriers continued to use Electras on their routes. And Lockheed built a modified version of the Electra which became the highly successful P-3 Orion.
I enthusiastically recommend the Serling book. I don’t recommend that you pay what Amazon is asking for the Bantam Air and Space reprint, as it seems to show up intermittently at better used book stores for much less. But you can get the Kindle edition at a reasonable price, or for free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
Those two crashes were in Tell City, Indiana and Buffalo, Texas. Buffalo is about three hours from Austin: when we get out of jail, I may take a road trip up that way.
This one is for FotB of the blog Dave: Linda Cristal. She most famously played “Victoria Cannon” on “The High Chaparral”, and did a lot of bit parts on other series during the 1960s through to the 1980s. (Including “T.H.E. Cat“, “Search“, and “General Hospital”.)
Thomas Blanton. He was the last survivor of the three men convicted in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.
Unlike those books, this is not fiction: this is a how-to/things I wish I had known/lessons learned book from someone who abandoned suburban life, moved to a farm in the country, and maintains an active coding career while raising his own food and living as close to a self-sustained lifestyle as he can get.
I have personal reasons for backing this book. But even if you don’t plan on moving to a farm, there’s almost certainly something in it that will justify the $20 you spend on the e-book: stuff about meat and meat processing, recipes, workshops and workshop tools…well, there’s a table of contents on the Kickstarter page.
Mr. Corcoran probably doesn’t need my help, though I’m happy to provide it: we’ve had friendly correspondence in the past. The Kickstarter is already at $25,000+ out of an initial $2,000 goal. But I’d like to make sure that everyone who can get any sort of benefit from it has a chance to kick in and get early access.
