On Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:02:48 -0400, mm
wrote:


Today I heard on the radio, no discussion of when the cap was first
conceived or how long it took to make, or why it wasn't conceived and
made long ago, but that it was used last because methods that couldn't
make things worse were used first.

Conceived at or before the other top kills failed. It took weeks to
design and build -- from my observation and reading.

A) Even if this is a good reaso;n, there still seems to have been too
much time in between. Even more delayed afaict was bp's efforts at
cleanup. It seems they didn't even contract for most of the skimmers
until weeks or a month had gone by. They were "on their way" 6 or 8
weeks in, and not ships that were newly built. No one has said they
were skimming other oil leaks elsewhere.

Many boats, locally, were modified to work as skimmers. Even that
takes a little time. I see what looks like a shrimp boat doing double
duty as a skimmer. Not what they were built for.