On Mon, 3 May 2010 06:54:46 -0700, "Lobby Dosser"
wrote the following:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
On 5/3/2010 6:42 AM, Han wrote:
"J. wrote in
:
Or maybe calmer heads will prevail and instead of looking for excuses to
create new boondoggles or axe the blameless, they'll figure out what
went wrong and fix the design of the BOP so that it doesn't happen
again.
I'm a cynic. As long as the BOP gadgets are mechanical, a large enough
explosion will render them useless. Redundancy can only be carried to
the
nth degree.
Bingo. There is no machine that cannot be broken. Never has been and
never will be.
But what went bust this time can be allowed for in future designs. Which
means that next time it will go bust in some other way.
I'd venture to guess that when the real causes of the disaster have been
pinpointed, more redundancy and remedial actions will be taken. I'm
neither in favor nor totally against drilling, but this disaster
shouldn't
happen again.
Not sure how you can do redundancy though--have two BOPs stacked? Bring a
second manufacturer into the game so that they are completely different
designs with different points of failure? What will happen then is that
one will break in an unanticipated way that blocks the operation of the
other.
And then there's the possibility of deliberate sabotage.
One good thing may be that in the armer Gulf more of the sticky and toxic
components will evaporate before getting into the ecosystems. (I can
hope,
can't I?).
Nahh, when the volatiles evaporate, that's when the sticky stuff gets
_real_ sticky. And if you've lived in that area you'll have experienced
slowly sinking into a paved road if you stand still too long.
When Drake sailed up the west coast, he reputedly mentioned an oil slick
more than a hundred miles long off what is now Santa Barbara. Nature will do
quite well on its own:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/1...ez-oil-spills/
"Why aren't enviros out there sucking it all up?" I wonder.
I remember getting tar on my feet in Oceanside, CA from the 1969 Santa
Barbara oil spill. It was a nuisance for over a year.
--
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
-- Raymond Lindquist