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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dana_Jorgensen" data-source="post: 1101327" data-attributes="member: 12962">The Glomar Explorer cost an ungodly amount that a government could afford, but not a business. Even though Howard Hughes built it, he certainly didn't pay for it (what, a rich person spend his own money when he can spend someone else's?) Only one was built. IIRC, it cost either $100 million or $1 billion to build, and while the cover story was that it was to explore mineral deposits on the ocean floor, its sole purpose was to procure a sunken soviet nuclear sub, complete with its complement of nuclear-tipped missiles. The bottom of the ship's hull opened to lower an immanse rack of clawed brackets, which were then lowered over a mile into the water to scoop yo the sub and part of the sea floor. The sea floor quickly crumbled away, leaving the sub in a cage-like structure to haul it to the surface. Unfortunately, the claw wasn't strong enough to support the sub and several beams buckled, causing the dead sub to break in half, with much of it falling back to the sea floor. A small portion of the sub was recovered as well as several of its dead crew members who received a burial at sea. The Glomar Explorer could not be repaired at sea, so it returned to dry dock. While in dry dock for repairs to its submarine lifter, a reporter broke the story that the Glomar Explorer was not a scientific research vessel, but a CIA spy ship for stealing soviet submarines out of the water. After that, repairs were never completed, and the Glomar Explorer was eventually scrapped without ever completing its original mission.Getting rid of the ship was quite unfortunate. Had it been repaired, or better yet modified/upgraded, the government could have easily recovered construction costs by hiring it out as a submarine recovery vessel used to recover not only sunken subs for other nations, but smaller sunken surface vessels as well. The idea never struck me as so complicated that the ship required an american crew. I think a foreign crew could have easily been trained to operate it.The Glomar Explorer is covered repeatedly in a number of documentaries shown on the history channel/tlc/discovery channel cable networks. These documentaries are ones that either focus on submarines, the history of submarine warfare, or the cold war, rather than being specifically dedicated to the ship itself.</blockquote>

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