drilling rigs we don't need., page-4

The interesting puzzle behind the Chikyu ship is, how was the A$1B justified in building it? (I know nothing more than contained in the BBC article.) Industry would have to find commercial value in it. Government can sometimes do it to 'advance civilisation', e.g. Putting a man on the Moon, placing the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. If it was a joint project the government would have to hear that detailed knowledge of sliding tectonic plates benefits the Japanese public significantly, e.g. Resource poor Japan might find megadeep oil reservoirs off it's coast, or determine exactly when the islands of Japan are going to be subducted (script to a good disaster movie?). The potential spinoff might be the gaining of a measure of the enormous localised heating in the neighbourhood of plate and mantle. The commercial issue becomes how then to tap such geothermal source. (Land based radiogenic granite slabs might be much easier.)

The greatest value to us would be in knowing how such a magnificently successful funding submission was written. Someone had the golden touch.

Juke