Oil cap

Somebody on the news said it's a shame we can go to the moon but can't
cap on oil well. Now that I've though about that; we CAN'T go to the
moon any longer. The country has gone stupid and is no longer capable.



--
LSMFT

I haven't spoken to my wife in 18 months.
I don't like to interrupt her.

Somebody on the news said it's a shame we can go to the moon but can't cap
on oil well. Now that I've though about that; we CAN'T go to the moon any
longer. The country has gone stupid and is no longer capable.


News article last week - Indian Engineers are returning to India depriving
NASA of a main source of technical talent. For a brief period the US
actually produced a major group of Engineers and Scientists that along with
the recruitment of those running from the Nazis and Soviets made us great.
Today I see textbooks with introductions that say things like - this edition
removes all the problems that required calculus and is thus more friendly to
the student --- etc. Grade school teachers don't want to bore the children
with the multiplication tables, and kids that creatively mispell words are
thought of as forward thinkers, he replaces an s with a z - most kids don't
get into z's for another year.

And let's look at the economic picture - take four years of calculus and
you'll always be looking at a reasonable salary, some unpaid overtime and
the next cut back. Learn long division, get an accounting degree and think
about the huge yearly bonus.

On Constellation, NASA engineers were taking Apollo hardware out of museums
to see how we solved the problems 40 years ago. Thanks to misguided liberals
most of the technical data associated with the Saturn rockets was
purposefully destroyed to end Apollo once and for all and make those funds
available for welfare programs.

Now with the oil spill, instead of rapidly assembling a group of real
experts to help the company that screwed up fix the problem - our government
is more interested in assigning blame, kickin a** and having photo ops on
the beach.

There, fixed.

Dave

David Spain wrote:
There, fixed.

Dave

When the investigation really gets going on this one, I have a distinct
feeling that we're going to see some eerie similarities to some other
spectacular failures (read Challenger/Columbia) in the way that
warning signs were missed or ignored.

The two biggest that come to mind so far, in the days before the explosion
on the Deepwater Horizon platform:

1. Ignoring the chunks of rubber coming back up the well pipe to the
platform, indicating that the blowout preventer was likely damaged
and inoperable.

2. After ignoring item #1, going ahead with a riskier form of well sealing
using salt water rather than the more expensive but tried and true
driller's mud. #2 may have contributed to the explosion regardless, but #2
and #1 combined led to the explosion and oil disaster we have now.

Accidents may happen, but a truly big disaster requires a degree of
careless precision.

Dave

On 6/14/2010 7:10 PM, Val Kraut wrote:


News article last week - Indian Engineers are returning to India depriving
NASA of a main source of technical talent. For a brief period the US
actually produced a major group of Engineers and Scientists that along with
the recruitment of those running from the Nazis and Soviets made us great.


Don't forget that a lot of our Apollo brainpower came from the post-war
collapse of the Canadian and British aerospace industries.
I don't think we got the Peenemunde crew due to their fleeing from the
Nazis, although they certainly were fleeing from the Soviets.


On Constellation, NASA engineers were taking Apollo hardware out of museums
to see how we solved the problems 40 years ago. Thanks to misguided liberals
most of the technical data associated with the Saturn rockets was
purposefully destroyed to end Apollo once and for all and make those funds
available for welfare programs.


The data wasn't "purposely destroyed"; the Apollo program moved forward
so quickly that a lot of information was simply never written down and
stored, but moved word-of-mouth from engineer to engineer. All the stuff
that was written down vanished into the vast "Raiders Of The Lost Ark"
NASA paperwork filing system, stored in cardboard boxes stacked in old
buildings with no indexing till mice ate it.
If there was a concerted effort to get rid of knowledge associated with
a Apollo-related technology, it was on NASA itself's part - to make sure
the Saturn V has dead forever due to the perceived risk it posed to the
Shuttle. If you can put up a huge space station with only a few Saturn V
launches, you don't have to do all those dozens of Shuttle launches to
build one incrementally, which was one way to make sure the Shuttle
program stayed alive, especially after the military and commercial uses
got dumped from the program.


Now with the oil spill, instead of rapidly assembling a group of real
experts to help the company that screwed up fix the problem - our government
is more interested in assigning blame, kickin a** and having photo ops on
the beach.


Who would know more about how to fix a underwater spill than a company
that drills underwater wells?
Unfortunately, BP are the "experts" in this field, and it's becoming
increasingly apparent that they never put any thought at all into what
they would do if this ever happened, but simply hoped it wouldn't ever
occur.

Pat

On 6/14/2010 9:27 PM, David Spain wrote:


When the investigation really gets going on this one, I have a distinct
feeling that we're going to see some eerie similarities to some other
spectacular failures (read Challenger/Columbia) in the way that
warning signs were missed or ignored.

I was thinking Chernobyl actually, but that was the end result of a
really stupid test, not something that was done to save a few bucks and
few hours.


The two biggest that come to mind so far, in the days before the explosion
on the Deepwater Horizon platform:

1. Ignoring the chunks of rubber coming back up the well pipe to the
platform, indicating that the blowout preventer was likely damaged
and inoperable.


I was reading up on that; apparently even when the blowout preventer was
working just as it was intended to, its success rate was around 20% at
best if a blowout really occurred.


2. After ignoring item #1, going ahead with a riskier form of well sealing
using salt water rather than the more expensive but tried and true
driller's mud. #2 may have contributed to the explosion regardless, but #2
and #1 combined led to the explosion and oil disaster we have now.

Accidents may happen, but a truly big disaster requires a degree of
careless precision.


I'm keen to see what happens if they can't figure out _any_ way to shut
it down by conventional means, and the Soviet "You stay here...I'm going
to get nuclear weapons!" concept from "Splash" shows up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU
The nuclear bomb detonating underground was really something to see, but
in that case the shockwave went into the air once it hit the
surface...in this case it would go into the _water_, and considering
that under those pressures the water would be basically incompressible,
what happens next would be fascinating to see.
All the oil platforms in the vicinity would get slammed with a shockwave
moving at over 1,000 mph, and if that shattered the feed-pipes coming up
from the sea bottom to them, it would make the original spill look like
a slow leak in your car's oil pan by comparison.
No wonder BP decided its new motto would be "Beyond Petroleum" a few
years back...this mess might be the breakthrough moment when we decide
that maybe ten million windmills in the US and electric-powered cars
really isn't that bad of an idea. ;-)

Pat

LSMFT wrote:
Somebody on the news said it's a shame we can go to the moon but can't
cap on oil well. Now that I've though about that; we CAN'T go to the
moon any longer. The country has gone stupid and is no longer capable.


Of course we can go to the Moon again. How much money you've got?

Of course hopefully it takes less time to fix this oil well than it did from
Kennedy's words to Armstrong's words.


--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

Val Kraut wrote:
On Constellation, NASA engineers were taking Apollo hardware out of
museums to see how we solved the problems 40 years ago. Thanks to
misguided liberals most of the technical data associated with the
Saturn rockets was purposefully destroyed to end Apollo once and for
all and make those funds available for welfare programs.

Umm, not quite. Might want to try checking your facts.


Now with the oil spill, instead of rapidly assembling a group of real
experts to help the company that screwed up fix the problem - our
government is more interested in assigning blame, kickin a** and
having photo ops on the beach.

And where would you find such experts? I'll give you a hint they tend to
work for companies involved in deep-water drilling, like BP and Horizon.


--
Greg Moore
Ask me about lily, an RPI based CMC.

In article , says...

Somebody on the news said it's a shame we can go to the moon but can't
cap on oil well. Now that I've though about that; we CAN'T go to the
moon any longer. The country has gone stupid and is no longer capable.

Stupid isn't the problem. Lack of political support (i.e. money) is the
biggest roadblock. That said, the Ares I/Ares V launch architecture
chosen by Mike Griffin was the dumbest decision ever. Ares I
development as eaten up billions of dollars, to the point where the
Obama Administration wants to cancel it.

Jeff
--
The only decision you'll have to make is
Who goes in after the snake in the morning?

Jeff Findley wrote:
In , says...

Somebody on the news said it's a shame we can go to the moon but can't
cap on oil well. Now that I've though about that; we CAN'T go to the
moon any longer. The country has gone stupid and is no longer capable.

Stupid isn't the problem. Lack of political support (i.e. money) is the
biggest roadblock. That said, the Ares I/Ares V launch architecture
chosen by Mike Griffin was the dumbest decision ever. Ares I
development as eaten up billions of dollars, to the point where the
Obama Administration wants to cancel it.

Jeff

That's what I said. Stupid politicians, stupid electorate, stupid country.

--
LSMFT

I haven't spoken to my wife in 18 months.
I don't like to interrupt her.