Robert Ballard Interview (page: 3 / 7) Discoverer of the Titanic	Print Interview

You've invented new systems to make these discoveries. Would you list those among your accomplishments?

Robert Ballard: There are two aspects of my life as an explorer. You want to go explore, but you need the tools to explore. In my particular field, you can't go down to Sears and Roebuck and buy them. General Motors doesn't build my robots. I have to develop my tools myself. So half of my life is exploring, and the other half is building tools to do it better the next time.

The major innovation that we have developed is to move away from manned exploration, to teleoperated exploration, or remote presence. There has always been this debate in space: do you send an astronaut, or do you send an unmanned space probe? We send a hybrid of both. It's not manned and it's not unmanned. A teleoperated system is robot-controlled, on a second-by-second basis, by human beings. But the human isn't physically there. The average depth of the ocean is 12,000 feet; 50 percent is deeper, 50 percent is shallower. The Titanic, for example, sits at 12,000 feet. It took me two and a half hours to get to the Titanic in the morning, and two and a half hours to get home at night. I had to commute five hours a day to work, and I was only allowed to work for three hours before I had to go back up. What we've done is develop robots that can go down and stay down. They are connected to humans, by a fiber optic tether, and that permits us to explore 24 hours a day. That's been my major technological contribution: to develop the first full remotely operated robotic systems for deep sea exploration.

Lets start with your first project. This was the one where you explored that mountain range. You found a new form of life down there. It was a very important expedition. Who did you have to go to, to talk to, and convince?

Robert Ballard: I'll never forget that day. Deep submersibles were evolving as a technology, but they hadn't been accepted yet. The geophysical community, the big gurus, viewed it as a toy, a plaything that couldn't possibly do anything important, because it hadn't done anything important up to that point. I remember that the National Academy of Sciences, which is a pretty high-falutin' outfit, had a meeting in Princeton in the early 1970s review our understanding of our planet. The plate tectonic theory had just blasted all over the countryside. It was exciting, but they needed a new phase in higher detail.

I was a graduate student and K. O. Emery, my mentor, had me present to this august body. Very scary. My knees were knocking. These were all the big gods of the earth. I don't know if you've ever been to Princeton, but they have the old classrooms that are just like an operating pit. You stand there and you look up, and it's sort of intimidating. I got done and a very preeminent scientist -- I won't say who he is, because he is still very preeminent -- stood up and said, "That's cute, but tell me one significant thing a manned submersible has ever done." We hadn't. I didn't have an answer. I was standing there frozen, and another colleague stood up, and he said "That isn't the problem. The technology is not at fault; we haven't dreamed of a way of using them." Out of that came Project Famous, and the first manned expedition.
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Your dream encompassed the kind of equipment that you were developing. Right?

Robert Ballard: Manned submersibles are a part of the total thing we had to work on. You can't run around the planet with a manned submersible and a flashlight. You have to go to just the right spot, one where the questions are very important. And if you can answer your questions there, it explains thousands and thousands of square miles of real estate. That's what we had to learn how to do: to focus that technology on the right spot.

How did you sell your ideas? Did you tell scientists who might be interested, "You may have thought you couldn't get down that far, but I've got an invention here, that will allow you to do that."

Robert Ballard: Salesmanship is a critical part of accomplishment in any field. You have to look people in the eye and not blink when you say you can do it. A really good leader, a really good manager, a good decision maker, doesn't know the details, can't necessarily follow a specialist through a labyrinth of explanations, but they listen. They get a feeling about whether people are educated and know what they're doing. Ultimately they have to look the person in the eye and say, "I think this person can do it." You must be able to transmit to them, through body language, through whatever, that you are confident, you've thought it out, you know what you are going to do, and you will take the risks, professionally.

The more you build your reputation, the more they know how much you are putting at risk. "He wouldn't do this if he didn't think he could do it." The first time is difficult, because you don't have any track record. They say, "Who is this person?" I gave my presentation, we went and we did it, and then we went and did another one. Finally we built up a reputation.

What had you invented that helped make that first expedition successful?

Robert Ballard: Back in Project Famous, I made my first major scientific contribution.

Geologists had learned how to map on land. They learned how to do their thing mapping that part of the planet that sticks above water, and they had been doing it for hundreds of years, and they had perfected it. It's called field mapping. But no one had ever applied it underwater. It's a totally different planet when you go underneath the sea. You are going to another planet that is more hostile than Mars and the moon. You can't get out, you can't walk around, the pressures will kill you. The temperatures are freezing, and it's totally dark. It's a lot easier to walk around on the moon and work than it is down there. So you had to take that way of doing things and "marine-ize" it, and make it work underwater so that people were comfortable with the quality of the data that you were collecting. And that's what I did. I was the first scientist to field map underwater.
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You say working in darkness was a problem. How did you solve that problem?

Robert Ballard: Fortunately, I can visualize in three-dimensions. I think any good field mapper can look at a map and see the Grand Canyon in three dimensions. You conceptualize, because you can't see more than 30 or 40 feet under the ocean. So you must have a complete sense of reference. I don't know whether that's a gift, a compass that's built into your brain, like a bird's ability to migrate. I can know where north, south, east and west is at all times. I can remember where I was, and I can integrate it all in my mind. So when I go down there, I'm not lost. I'm very comfortable in total darkness with just a flashlight. It's like working in the Rocky Mountains at night in a snowstorm from a helicopter with a spotlight. You can develop that skill. Certain people have that three-dimensional skill set.
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What about ANGUS, the Acoustically Navigated Geological Underwater Survey? Wasn't ANGUS a way of taking pictures down there?

Robert Ballard: ANGUS was the first vehicle I built with "staying power." Fundamentally, I'm an observational scientist. I look, I think about what I look at, and I explain it. I'm not a numerical scientist, although I use numbers. I'm basically relying on a Mark I eyeball. Sixty-five percent of the brain processes visual information. We are visual creatures. I look and I try to think about what I see, and explain it. Imagine standing on the moon, and beginning a trip towards a small object in this mountain range. First you see the earth, then you see the continent, then you see the ocean, and if you go under the ocean you see a mountain range, and you are homing in. You have to have all of the technologies that can zoom in, and not get lost each time you change the power on the microscope. You make that transition. So finally, when you get down there in total darkness, and you are looking out your window, you know exactly where on the planet you are, and why that is the key thing to look at. That's what I do.

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