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334 HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM

Mr. WILEY. Right.

Senator MONRONEY. You may continue. 

Mr. WILEY. Thank you, Senator. I think that completes my remarks.

Senator MONRONEY. Do you have a price on the Navy barges that they use to carry airplanes on?

Mr. WILEY. No, sir.

Senator MONRONEY. Someone mentioned that in the hearings yesterday. It sounded like a good idea for places like Detroit where you have a river, places even like Baltimore, where you have a river and a harbor to land. 

If these Navy barges are in surplus, I would think a deal might be worked to let you keep them in surplus and use them while they are anchored. They are better in the water than out of water.

Mr. WILEY. There is one being used, Senator, in New York. I think it is at 23d Street in the East River, at a facility which is operated by the Department of Marine Aviation, the City of New York, a small itinerant heliport at 26th Street in the East River.

Senator MONRONEY. Those are what-about 400 feet long?

Mr. WILEY. As I recall, this is about 200 feet long by about 30 feet wide, or 40 feet wide. 

Senator MONRONEY. This would make a satisfactory heliport.

Mr. WILEY. For a small heliport.

Senator MONRONEY. Because of your crowded and congested areas of the big cities, particularly along the water, I would think even Chicago might enjoy a downtown heliport on a river if you could persuade the Navy to lease these barges for a very small amount on a caretaker basis.

Mr. WILEY. We found, in our particular area, for example, when we developed the downtown Manhattan heliport, that it was more expedient to take an existing pier which was there and which happened to be available, and rehabilitate it in that particular case.

Senator MONRONEY. That is fine if you have it. What I am trying to do is get a do-it-yourself kit so that we can get this helicopter business airborne and sweat out this 5 years which I think is necessary before improvement in the technology of the state of the art on equipment comes in-so that we can have machines, such as we see over here, picking up a capsule which has been preloaded, hitching on to it, lifting it out, not to the airport, but with the preticketed passengers who are ticketed as they boarded the capsule, to hoist them out and let them walk just right off the capsule and into the plane. 

Mr. WILEY. We think, as you have indicated in your thinking that it will be a shame to quit when we are so close to success.

Senator MONRONEY. You are close to the threshold of something. I think the threshold of a great STOL-VTOL breakthrough. We saw evidence of that in the vertical riser of the fixed-wing plane. We will see more and more attention as the American ingenuity creates and breaks through this barrier that heretofore has limited air transportation to long hauls and long runways and multimillion-dollar airports. 
When we get these, it will cost even the great city of New York $500,000 in capital investment, or $718,000, and you are on your way. 
Maybe from this great heliport, for example, we may learn a lesson