The Mo-Hole Project

Science The original Mo-Hole project, an attempt at sea to bore down to and collect samples from the Earth's core, was conducted in the early 60s by a team of scientists and engineers, accompanied by the novelist John Steinbeck who was covering the event for LIFE Magazine.  His diary of the trip is now lodged at Google Books, a piece which includes atmospheric images from LIFE's great photographer Fitz Goro.

Steinbeck, himself an amateur oceanographer, doesn't seem to get much sleep, but he (predictably) captures the tension of humanity glancing briefly at one of its few mysterious frontiers.  It's the incidental elements which are key.  March 30th was presumably filled with incident, but the final six words tell you everything you need to know about the mood on board ship that that day.  Overall, it's a testament to how sometimes science is about great adventures, something which seems to have been forgotten recently.

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