[3] Led by a group of scientists called the American Miscellaneous Society with funding from the National Science Foundation,[3] the project suffered from political and scientific opposition, mismanagement, and cost overruns.

[6] During discussions at the end of a panel reviewing proposals for Earth Sciences at the National Science Foundation in March 1957, Walter Munk, a professor of geophysics and oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, suggested the idea behind the Mohole Project: to drill into the Mohorovicic Discontinuity and obtain a sample of the Earth's mantle.

Hess was one of the principal proponents of sea-floor spreading[8] or plate tectonics at the time,[9] and he saw the Mohole Project as a means to test this theory.

[3] The idea for the project was initially developed by the informal group of scientists known as the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC), including Hess, Munk, Gordon Lill, Roger Revelle, Harry Ladd, Joshua Tracey, William Rubey, Maurice Ewing, and Arthur Maxwell.

[4][3] Lill, who headed the Geophysics Branch of the Office of Naval Research, had formed this whimsically-named society to assist in processing a disparate variety of proposals (of a miscellaneous nature) for funds in the earth sciences.

[7] Hess had approached Lill with the Mohole idea, and they eventually decided that AMSOC should submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation to develop the project.

The proposal resulted in a $15,000 grant in June 1958 for a feasibility study of Mohole, and Willard N. Bascom, an ocean engineer, oceanographer, and geologist,[11] became the Executive Secretary of AMSOC.

[4] On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite that initiated the Space Race and a revolution in science and education in the United States.

[4] Led by Bascom, Project Mohole contracted with Global Marine of Los Angeles for the use of its oil drill ship CUSS I.

[15] With William Riedel as chief scientist, initial test drillings into the sea floor occurred off Guadalupe Island, Mexico in March and April 1961.

[3] The many factors that proved fatal to Mohole included the human element, differing views of the engineering and scientific goals, political improprieties at the governmental level, complexities of managing such a large project, and escalating costs.

Some viewed the more modest initial approach as developing essential engineering and drilling techniques that would later be required for the deep bore hole.

Hollis Hedberg, a geologist from Gulf Oil Corporation and professor of geology at Princeton University, chaired the AMSOC Mohole committee from December 1961 to November 1963.

Bascom and his associates formed a corporation, Ocean Science and Engineering, Inc., expecting that they would continue the work demonstrated in the CUSS I test.

[19] In a decision that was widely viewed as political, NSF selected the construction company Brown and Root as the prime contractor for the project in February 1962.

[19] Brown and Root had no experience in drilling, and its home in Houston was close the congressional district of congressman Albert Thomas, chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

"[4] The contract made clear that the goal of Mohole was to obtain a sample of the Earth's mantle, while many of the AMSOC scientists, such as Hedberg and Ewing, were strongly advocating an intermediate stage of drilling shallow holes in sediments.

I must also say that it can just as readily become instead only a foolish and unjustifiably expensive fiasco if there is not an insistence that it be carried out within a proper concept and in a well-planned, rigorously logical, and scientific manner ...."[20] After the president of the National Academy of Sciences Frederick Seitz reprimanded him for his testimony, Hedberg resigned from AMSOC.

[20][4] In January 1964, Lill agreed to become the director for Project Mohole at the National Science Foundation, and the American Miscellaneous Society dissolved itself.

The Brown and Root bid was for $35M plus a fee of $1.8M to manage the project and begin organizing the engineering efforts to build the Mohole drilling platform.

Highlighting the increasing, uncertain costs, the technical uncertainties, and the "unique administrative problems," the Bureau urged NSF to withhold further financial commitments.

[20] In the Fall of 1963 NSF's Senate appropriations committee began hearings on the mismanagement and possible political motivations behind the selection of Brown and Root as primary contractor.

[24] In February 1966 Representative Thomas, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and principal supporter of Project Mohole in Congress, died of pancreatic cancer.

[15] In early 1962 Cesare Emiliani from the University of Miami proposed a drilling vessel and program called "LOCO" for "LOng COres".

[15] Scientists from the University of Miami, Lamont, Princeton, Woods Hole, and Scripps agreed that such a program was of great interest and that it should be independent of AMSOC and Project Mohole.

In early 1963 an agreement called CORE for a Consortium for Ocean Research and Exploration was signed by Ewing (Lamont), Brackett Hersey [d] (WHOI), and Revelle (SIO) to carry out a deep-sea sediment drilling program.

[15] In June 1966 Scripps won the prime contract as the operating institution for NSF's Deep Sea Drilling Project.

The 1970 Doctor Who serial Inferno, which also deals with a scientific effort to drill into the Earth's crust, was inspired by Project Mohole.