#1
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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. |
#2
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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. 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. |
#3
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Dunce Cap [was Oil cap]
There, fixed.
Dave |
#4
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Dunce Cap [was Oil cap]
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 |
#5
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Oil cap
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 |
#6
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Dunce Cap [was Oil cap]
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 |
#7
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Oil cap
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. |
#8
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Oil cap
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. |
#9
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Oil cap
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#10
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Oil cap
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. |
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