Engineering in the Ocean: A Report for the Secretary of Commerce

Date

1974-11

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

United States Government Printing Office

Abstract

Modern technology is creating a dilemma for engineering by imposing on it precise demands for information on, and understanding of, complicated physical characteristics without relaxing the practical constraints of economics, schedule, and purpose. This dilemma poses especially difficult choices in the oceans where a harsh environment offers severe technical and economic limitations to gaining this technological information. The civilian effort in ocean engineering both public and private appears to be undersupported in view of the rapid expansion of activities in the ocean and little or no reserve of technology to provide the technical alternatives to meet the requirements which thus develop. Use of the oceans is expanding faster than is the knowledge being provided to support it. While the difference in rates of growth may be temporary, it exists now, and creates a gap. That is why the lack of a conscious effort to do something about it on a national scale is troublesome. Recognition of this gap is not new, of course, as many previous studies have testified, but almost all these reports suffered from a skeptical reception because the ocean engineering needs were defined so broadly they promised to be costly without promising any obvious results. The panel determined to avoid the general and look for the specific. It is our purpose in this brief memorandum report to state the task as we saw it, describe our approach, recount what we found, and recommend a course of action we propose be followed.

Description

54 pages

Keywords

oceanography, marine engineering

Citation