Watching Some Good Friends Screaming

I don't listen to as much talk radio as I used to.

This is a good thing, according to my wife; my blood pressure also thinks it's a good thing (I have less exposure to stupid people, who make me want to rant). However, I feel less informed about the world.

Maybe I have not mentioned that my car (whom I've named Bridget, just so you know) has Sirius Radio in it. Well, it does, and it came with a six month subscription. I really only listen to about ten stations, of which all but two are music (one is sports, the other is "golden era" radio re-broadcasts).

So, it took me a while to hear all these people whining that we can send a person to the moon, and we can make a phone call around the world, but we can't plug a leaking well?

I started a list of things that would compare and contrast these accomplishments. How many years of aerospace engineering went into putting a man on the moon? From Kennedy's promise to Armstrong's words, just over eight. How long did it take to lay the first Trans-Atlantic Cable? Eight years of failed attempts before one worked, and even that one failed within a year and had to be replaced. From Marconi first sending a wireless telegraph signal, to getting a wireless signal across the Atlantic: six years. These feats were over time spans not comparable to the blown well.

Regarding the well itself: it took them several months to drill it, what would make a person think it can be plugged in much shorter of a time frame? Additionally, it is over a mile underwater. This is not an insignificant distance, considering that it's through water, straight down. The pressure at that depth is something like a ton per square inch (depth divided by 33 feet [to get atmospheric pressure equivalency], then multiplied by 14.7 psi, the pressure at sea level). Yet, the oil just billowed out of it, indicating that the pressure on the oil was that much greater.

Now, since it's been capped, and they are monitoring the pressure of the oil on the cap, it's something like 3-4 tons per square inch. So, in just under three months, they managed to cap a blown-out well at one mile underwater, containing pressure of 6000 to 9000 psi.

Time span and difficulty aside, this is a human-caused disaster that is unprecedented. Should they have had a better disaster plan ahead of time? Yes. Should they have used better-quality material in the first place? Yes. Could this have been prevented? Ehh...that's harder to answer. A bubble of the size they estimate ruptured the well would have exerted something upwards of 50,000 psi....and that's a lot of pressure.

Until another time,
Salt