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Geotechnical News June 2011
From the Moon to the Oil Sands
Vivian Giang
Land reclamation is a top
research priority for the oil
sands industry. World-leading
geotechnical
engineering
experts have been enlisted
to tackle the challenging
tailings ponds to ensure the
sustainable development of
Alberta’s oil sands. How far do
you go to find these experts?
The moon.
In 1969, at the age of 25 and as a
four-month veteran of NASA, Dr. W.
David Carrier III made one of the best
predictions of his life.
“We were trying to predict the den-
sity of lunar soil versus its depth,” says
Carrier, founder and Director of the Lu-
nar Geotechnical Institute, a non-profit
research corporation based in Florida.
“I briefed the Apollo 11 astronauts on
what to expect when they stepped on
the moon. They had been told many
things… like they would sink out of
sight into the lunar dust or that the dust
would cling electrostatically to their
suits in a thick layer, making it impos-
sible to see,” he chuckles. “Luckily, my
prediction was right.”
With limited data available about
the moon at the time, Carrier believed
that lunar soil was denser than the con-
sistency of “sifted flour” which most
people speculated at the time. In a 2002
interview with
Air & Space Magazine
,
Neil Armstrong commented, “We
found the predictions of Dr. David Car-
rier and the Soil Mechanics team to be
more persuasive than [others’].”
Carrier
instructed
Armstrong
and Buzz Aldrin to photograph the
undisturbed ground and then their
bootprints. As he suspected, the astro-
nauts’ boots sunk about one centimeter
into meteorite-disturbed soil and plant-
ed firmly into the moon’s dense surface.
Incidentally, the bootprint photograph
became one of the most famous icons
in American history. However, the
photograph served a greater purpose: it
gave Carrier insight into the trafficabil-
ity of lunar soil and was instrumental in
understanding the moon’s soil mechan-
ics on a larger scale.
How does all of this relate to oil
sands tailings?
“There’s a connection between the
lunar experiments and my tailings
work: predicting the density of the soil
versus its depth,” says Carrier.
“That is one of the characteristics
of David,” says Dr. J.D. Scott, Pro-
fessor Emeritus at the University of
Alberta, who has worked with Carrier
on consolidation testing. “He has the
big picture in mind and isn’t narrow in
outlook. He has a broad knowledge of
the geotechnical field, which allows
him to bridge his lunar work to tail-
ings.”
Carrier left NASA in 1973 and
worked as an engineer for over 20
years prior to establishing his consult-
ing firm Argila Enterprises, Inc. (“argi-
la” is the Portuguese word for “clay”).
As an engineer in the late 1970s, Car-
rier began investigating the disposal of
mineral waste materials and the design
of retention areas for phosphatic clays
in Florida. His densification (or de-
watering) work included theoretical,
applied, and laboratory research. Dur-
ing a meeting where Carrier discussed
advances in consolidation techniques,
Roger Wiley of Syncrude Canada Ltd.
saw the possibility of applying Car-
rier’s research to the oil sands indus-
try and immediately invited Carrier to
visit Northern Alberta. Carrier worked
extensively with Wiley, Bill Shaw, and
Bruce Friesen during that time and
more recently with Rick Lahaie and
Geoff Halferdahl.
“David brings a wide range of ex-
perience to bear on the consolidation
of fluid fine tails, and it’s that world-
wide experience and special ability to
operate empirically that makes him
Carrier working with one of the Apollo
astronauts on a drilling experiment at
the Kennedy Space Center in Florida
circa 1970.
