Robert Ballard Interview (page: 6 / 8) Discoverer of the Titanic	Print Interview

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.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. 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.

You say working in darkness was a problem. How did you solve that problem?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. 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.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

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.

What other equipment did you invent that helped you do that?

Robert Ballard: Because I'm a visual creature, ANGUS has the capability to give me massive images. Initially, it was sort of a wind-up toy. You wound up this camera so to speak, and it could take 16,000 photographs at one lowering. I would drop it down, and then for 12 to 14 hours, I would tow it through the valley, bring it up, process all the film, and then look at all the pictures. All those images were my windows into the deep sea. But it was frustrating because the vehicle didn't have any intelligence, it just took pictures. If I came across something that was really important, I didn't know about it until 14 hours later, so the vehicle just kept on going, and took awful pictures that weren't much value. That's why I developed Argo. Which was "give it to me now." I want it in real-time. I want to make decisions now.

Science is very much like the game of Clue. Remember that? "The butler did it in the library with the candlestick." The game of Clue was to get the answer with the minimum amount of clues. Clues are expensive in science, and scientists have finite resources. Can you figure it out with the minimum amount of time and money, and get the answer? We want to optimize our clue gathering. So when we put our robot down we want to be thinking "No, stop. Turn left. No, turn right." We want to be in charge., because we don't want to just take a massive look. We want to do a surgical look and get the treasure. It's sort of like Dungeons and Dragons. Get in there, and find the treasure box, and open it before anyone else can. That's the game.

How does Argo do that? I mean, do you give the instruction?

Robert Ballard: With Argo, I have two advantages over ALVIN and ANGUS. ALVIN, I had to get inside of, and make this journey to work for three hours, with no friends along to say, well, what do you think? No person knows everything. No person can solve a problem alone. If it's worth solving, you need help. You want that help all around you, but they wouldn't fit inside the submarine. So you had to go back and explain things. It was very time consuming, very inefficient. So I built a window up on the surface where I could bring all my friends, and we could look through the window and say, "What do you think?" Not only could I have a lot of people looking through the window with me, I could look through the window 24 hours a day. It was cheaper and it was more comfortable. I had the computers, charts, all sorts of things at my disposal. I had a library behind me, to go and look for facts real quick if I was stumped. I had a video archive. I could call up images and say, "Yeah, that's it." You can't cram that inside a little submarine.

ANGUS couldn't react in real time, there was a big lag. Argo has the staying power of ANGUS, but it has the human presence of the submarine, so you can sit there and, as you are going along and you are just about to lose it, you go "Turn". You can control the robot and get it back on track, so its very efficient. The problem is, it's a data monster. It works 24 hours a day, and you have to go sleep. You have to devise a team that can work together so there is a corporate memory and you don't repeat one another. That's the excitement we are in now. How do you handle a machine that's like HAL in 2001,. How do you handle something that is almost smarter than you are? That's where we are right now.

Is that a real possibility?

Robert Ballard: We're there. Our machines are working harder than we are. They don't have the element of human frailty. They don't sleep -- I do. They are impatient machines. They say "Get up! Wake up, I've got all sorts of things I want to talk to you about."

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