Hopefully I can get through this Memory Lane piece without stirring up any controversy.
Once a week, back in the 1950s, school kids received a copy of My Weekly Reader, a news magazine for children. We liked it because it broke up the monotony of school and classroom. Launched in 1928, and discontinued just a few years ago in 2012, My Weekly Reader brought us kids up to date on the news of the world. It was how we kept up with the dawning Space Age: terribly exciting stuff.
But even more exciting was Project Mohole, a mind-blowing scientific experiment to drill all the way through the earth’s crust. I mean, who knew what would happen? In 1961 they started drilling through the sea bed in over 11,000 feet of water, and they drilled down another 600 feet before Congress killed the project in 1966 because of rising costs. But it was fascinating while it lasted!
It was an exciting time: Antarctic exploration, satellites, space travel–by mice, dogs, monkeys, and chimpanzees first, and then by humans–and Project Mohole. I could hardly wait for each week’s installment of My Weekly Reader. What was going to be coming out of that hole, once they broke through the crust? Monsters? A lost civilization underground? Alas, we never found out.
I shudder to think of what children in public schools are handed out, these days, by way of “news.”
But then we adults don’t have it so much better.
I did a study on the subject of what school children are being subjected to these days and actually for a number of years and it is appalling, absolutely sick and disgusting. I wrote my short article on just some of the trash they are subjected to. I received some pretty heavy criticisms which I would have laughed off in a heart beat, except the subject is of such importance there is nothing to laugh about.
I know what you mean. “You can be a boy one day and a girl the next, depending on how you feel…” And other stuff just as bad.
I loved the updates regarding the manned space program that came via the weekly reader. I was the space program expert in our family during those years. Amazingly, I still find it every bit as fascinating today and have read many books about Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.
I also,remember the Mohole project, but wasn’t aware of how it ended. Back in those days, they believed anything was possible and threw heart and soul into a number of daring projects. These days, I doubt that they could make or to the Moon if someone gave them a blank check.
They’d never make it to the moon, these days.
Indeed! The moon landing program was actually over ten years long, they were thinking ahead to that goal at least a couple years before the first manned flights into space. No one would ever be able to keep a project of such scope on track for that long anymore. It would be a lightning rod for criticism and blamed every time some social program wanted more money.
Considering the overwhelming loss of sanity that has invaded our world, don’t you wonder whether the Mohole Project was covertly continued until they dug right down into the abyss and let some of the demoniacs loose?
For 24 years the Russians drilled into the earth to the depth of 12 kilometers, the deepest hole yet called the Kola Superhole Borehole. What did they find? Water, plus all kinds of fossils. So why did they stop in 1994? It got too hot and began melting the metal. The result? They made it 0.002% of the way to the middle of the earth.
Cool! I never heard of that, I’ll have to read up on it. Thanks for the tip.
What a coincidence, I was just looking up the deepest hold ever dug and found out about the Kola Superhole. I also found this video which is pretty interesting. Apparently we have barely scratched the surface. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E39GIysMevQ
That is pretty interesting. The bottom line seems to be that we can’t get much farther down than Kola unless/until we come up with ne methods and even at that, we are far from being able to get to the bottom of the crust, which may be a good thing.