I'll Fund You to Go to Sea if You'll Do Some Things for Me

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i went to admiral thunman, and he said, i'll build, ill pay to test your technology if youd do some stuff for me. He was having me do things for him. So then sometimes we didn't have a national emergency, there wasn't, i said, what'll we do when there isn't something awful that year? Well, we'll dream up something. We would like o you to go out and see what those reactors are doing to the environment. And number two, in the case of the scorpion, it has nuclear weapons, and we don't like leaving them around. It turns out that it trickled through the food chain up to john

In this conversation about his memoir and National Geographicspecial on his life, Robert Ballard takes us along his many journeys to find the Titanic, the Lusitania, the Bismarck, Nazi submarine U-166, the USS Yorktown, JFK’s PT 109, and two missing nuclear submarines under the cover of searching for the Titanic. Ballard is also a scientist, and he recalls his many important discoveries that include 750°F hydrothermal vents, undersea volcanoes, black smokers, and the confirmation of the theory of plate tectonics. Now the captain of E/V Nautilus, a state-of-the-art scientific exploration vessel rigged for research in oceanography, geology, biology, and archaeology, leads young scientists as they map the ocean floor, collect artifacts from ancient shipwrecks, and relay live-time adventures from remote-controlled submersibles to reveal amazing sea life. For the first time, Ballard gets personal, telling the inside stories of his adventures and challenges as a midwestern kid with dyslexia who became an internationally renowned ocean explorer. Here is the definitive story of the danger and discovery, conflict and triumph that make up his remarkable life. Among his many honors he holds the Explorers Club Medal, the National Geographic Hubbard Medal, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Medal.