I can't believe they can't stop the oil spill after more than six weeks. At this point it sounds like something intentional to me.
Don't they know about mechanical vices? As they have access to the base of the leaking pipe, a powerful enough mechanical vice can be used to slowly compress the pipe, until closing it. The mechanical vice will be remotely operated and put into place, of course. They can test the special equipment on the ground all that is needed, until satisfied, to be almost certain that it will work. I don't understand why they stick to using methods whose results are relatively unpredictable, instead of focusing in a single well designed method with a high probability of success from the beginning. Mauro On 06/03/2010 04:20 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Jon Stewart on the Daily Show quoted an interview > with BP managing director Bob Dudley, conducted > by George Stephanopoulos. Apparently, in the last > 3 years, BP's facilities have been cited by OSHA > for "760 egregious, willful safety violations." This compares to: > > Sunoco 8 > ConocoPhillips 8 > Citago 2 > Exxon 1 > > See: > > http://www.columbusalive.com/live/content/features/stories/2010/06/03/the-daily-show-the-spilling-fields.html > > This does not surprise me. When you look into the > history of severe industrial accidents and > catastrophes such as the Titanic sinking, the > Challenger explosion, and the accidents at Three > Mile Island or Brown's Ferry, you usually find > precursor events such as smaller accidents or > close calls. You find incompetence or criminal > mismanagement. You might say that accidents don't happen by accident. > > Here is an example of a close-call that should > never have happened, and an example of muddled > thinking in upper management. Before the > Challenger exploded, the o-rings on the Space > Shuttle tank partially eroded in previous > launches, something they were never expected to > do, or designed to do. Quoting Feynman, "What Do > You Care What Other People Think?," p. 244: > > . . . in flight 51-C, it was noted that the > erosion depth was only one-third of the radius. > It had been noted in an experiment cutting the > ring that cutting it as deep as one radius was > necessary before the ring failed. Instead of > being very concerned that variations of poorly > understood conditions might reasonably create a > deeper erosion this time, it was asserted there was "a safety factor of > three." > > This is a strange use of the engineer's term > "safety factor." If a bridge is built to > withstand a certain load without the beams > permanently deforming, cracking, or breaking, it > may be designed for the materials used to > actually stand up under three times the load. > This "safety factor" is to allow for uncertain > excesses of load, or unknown extra loads, or > weaknesses in the material that might have > unexpected flaws, et cetera. But if the expected > load comes on to the new bridge and a crack > appears in a beam, this is a failure of the > design. There was no safety factor at all, even > though the bridge did not actually collapse > because the crack only went one-third of the way > through the beam. The O-rings of the solid rocket > boosters were not designed to erode. Erosion was > a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not > something from which safety could be inferred. > > There was no way, without full understanding, > that one could have confidence that conditions > the next time might not produce erosion three > times more severe than the time before. > Nevertheless, officials fooled themselves into > thinking they had such understanding and > confidence, in spite of the peculiar variations > from case to case. A mathematical model was made > to calculate erosion. This was a model based not > on physical understanding but on empirical curve fitting. . . ." > > > [This gives empirical curve fitting a bad name . . .] > > - Jed > > >
