![]() Pilots and scientists received special diving training. It could withstand twice as much pressure and extended Alvin’s diving range from 6,000 to 12,000 feet. ![]() “The preliminary work (for Project FAMOUS) resembled the kind of planning, detailed study, simulation, and training that goes on before a major space mission,” wrote Bob Ballard in his book The Eternal Darkness (Princeton University Press, 2000).Īlvin’s steel sphere, which enclosed its human occupants, was replaced with a titanium sphere in 1973. A full-scale effort to lay the groundwork If you fail, Ewing told Ballard, we’ll melt down Alvin’s pressure sphere into titanium paper clips. As the meeting came to a close, Maurice Ewing, one of the giants of oceanography, wagged his finger in Bob Ballard’s face. In the end, the major decision-makers in the community of oceanographers agreed to fund a research program that was called Project FAMOUS (French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study). Would the information they collected be worth the big price to operate them? Many scientists preferred to devote limited funding to other research pursuits. Could they withstand the difficulties of deep-sea work? The submersibles also could not cover much ground in the dark depths. The new submersibles had not really been fully tested in the field. At the time, many scientists had doubts about how useful submersibles might be. National Academy of Sciences convened a meeting of international earth scientists at Princeton University to discuss the proposed expedition. But it needed support and funding from U.S. Robert Ballard, Emery’s protege, replied enthusiastically to the idea for a joint French-American expedition to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Alvin was only seven years old and still being tested to see what it could do. had the Navy-owned, 15-ton Alvin, developed by engineers at Woods Hole. The French had the 200-ton bathyscaphe Archimède and were building a smaller “diving saucer” called Cyana. In 1971, Xavier Le Pichon, head of the French Centre National pour l’Exploitation des Oceans (CNEXO) wrote a letter to Woods Hole geologist Ken Emery and proposed a joint U.S.-French expedition to explore the Mid-Ocean Ridge with human-occupied submersibles.įew research submersibles existed at the time. Two years after humans landed on the moon, the time had come to try to send humans to the seafloor. (Photo by Emory Kristof, © National Geographic Society.) WHOI’s Bob Ballard nervously monitors pilot Jack Donnelly’s efforts to free Alvin, which became stuck in a seafloor fissure during Project FAMOUS. (Photo by Frank Medeiros)Ĭlick to enlarge » Alvin pilot Jack Donnelly (middle) is flanked by two divers. The Alvin group prepares to lift the sub to R/V Knorr’s fantail for the trip to Project FAMOUS’s Mid-Atlantic Ridge dive sites. ![]() (Photo by Emory Kristof © National Geographic Society)Ĭlick to enlarge » Alvin and its former mother ship, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s R/V Lulu. ![]() LIBEC collected 5,250 seafloor photos, which were fitted together and laid across the floor of a Navy gymnasium in Washington, D.C. The LIBEC system shot 120-foot-wide sections of the seafloor that were pieced together. Navy’s LIBEC camera system, which suspended high-intensity electronic flash lamps well above the ocean bottom. (Courtesy of Scripps Institution of Oceanography) Heezen and Marie Tharp)Ĭlick to enlarge » Alvin is refitted with its new titanium sphere to double its diving range to 12,000 feet. (Physiographic map of the North Atlantic Ocean by Bruce C. Project FAMOUS explored the Mid-Atlantic Ridge crest between 36°N and 37°N. (Courtesy of IFREMER)Ĭlick to enlarge » Alvin is photographed from Cyana’s viewport on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during Project FAMOUS. (Courtesy of WHOI Archives)Ĭlick to enlarge »The French submersible Cyana took part in Project FAMOUS. ![]() (Courtesy of WHOI Archives)Ĭlick to enlarge »The 200-ton French bathyscaphe Archimède was one of three submersibles that participated in Project FAMOUS. Emery of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution received a letter from French scientist Xavier Le Pichon proposing a joint U.S.-French expedition to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. ![]()
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