There is no valid analogy between the Gulf spill and Apollo 13
I am honored to present this guest post by Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Dr. H. Harrison Schmitt – Anthony
President Obama’s Administration and its supportive media repeatedly say our 1970 Apollo 13 experience is analogous to the effort to contain and cap the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Not hardly!
The rescue of Astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, after an oxygen tank explosion on their spacecraft, illustrates how complex technical accidents should be handled, in contrast to the Gulf fiasco. Nothing in the government’s response to the blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath bears any resemblance to the response to the Apollo 13 situation by the National Aeronautic and Space Administration and its Mission Control team at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.
“Failure was not an option” for Gene Kranz and his Apollo 13 flight controllers and engineers. In contrast, failure clearly has been an option for President Obama and those claiming to have been on top of this situation “from day one” in his White House and in the Departments of Interior, Energy and Homeland Security. With no single, competent, courageous and knowledgeable leader in charge of a comparably competent, courageous and knowledgeable team as we had with Apollo 13, the Administration has been doomed to failure from the start. The President, without any experience in real-world management of anything, much less a crisis, has no idea how to deal with a situation as technically complex as the Gulf oil spill.
Whatever may be the culpability of British Petroleum and its federal regulators in causing and dealing with the accident, it has been left to BP engineers and managers and to Gulf State officials to respond as best they can in a regulatory environment that is politically charged, incompetent, fearful and hesitant.
Absolutely no reason exists to assume that any part of the Federal Government has engineering expertise comparable to the petroleum industry that can be applied to this or any future energy-related crisis. Certainly, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have no more experience in these matters than does the President.
Salazar’s empty threat to “push BP out of the way” has no basis as a realistic option and best illustrates the floundering of the Obama Administration. Indeed, from “day one,” the expertise of the entire U.S. and British drilling and production industry should have been mobilized to combat this spill, with a single experienced engineering manager in charge. It still is not too late to start doing it right.
A more appropriate analogy from the Apollo era would be the recovery from the tragic fire during a pre-launch test on January 27, 1967, that took the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. The Apollo 204 fire occurred in the clearly recognized crisis atmosphere of the Cold War, in which America raced to demonstrate to the world the superiority of freedom over the Communist oppression of the Soviet Union. The Deepwater Horizon explosion took place in the equally apparent crisis of America’s dependence on sources of oil from foreign nations governed or intimidated by our enemies or economic competitors. There, however, the validity of the 204 fire analogy ceases.
The NASA’s response to the 204 fire was to rapidly implement its previously well-formulated, objective investigation of its causes, both technical and managerial. Managerial responsibilities were identified, and George Low and his engineering team made appropriate changes without a prolonged exercise in finger pointing or the delays of another Presidential, buck-passing “commission.” NASA of that day moved forward and even accelerated the Apollo effort to its successful conclusion. Apollo 8’s Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders orbited the Moon less than two years after the 204 fire. Seven months after that, on July 20, 1969, Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, with Mike Collins in orbit overhead, landed on the Moon.
The lessons from the 204 fire were applied and we moved on. In contrast, President Obama’s and his Administration’s otherwise rambling response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has been to stop offshore oil exploration by the United States. How misguided and, indeed, how either ignorant or devious can our President be!?
President Obama has shown repeatedly that the best interests of the American people are a lower priority than his ideological goal of changing America from what it has been, to some mystical, socialist utopia with a renewable-energy-based standard of living equivalent to that of the late 1800s. As if the Administration could not make its ineffective, disjointed response to the Deepwater Horizon accident any worse, it did not even use previously established sea surface burn-off and dispersant procedures to minimize the effects of the spill.
In addition, it has inexcusably delayed approving and assisting in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s request to protect the state’s shores and wildlife habitats, by building offshore sand barriers – as unnecessary as having to make that request should have been. And this is the government that Congress and the President want to run healthcare, immigration, banking, carbon emissions, auto manufacturing, and everything else in American life?
The geologists, engineers, and on-site managers responsible for the Deepwater Horizon drilling effort understood that drilling to an oil reservoir through 13,000 of rock in 5000 feet of seawater would be very difficult. They knew that their geophysically defined target, typical of Gulf petroleum reservoirs, would be a complex mix of crude oil, natural gas and brine, contained in porous and permeable rock. Because of the rock and water depth, the reservoir also would be under very high pressure. In this situation, a reliable blowout preventer, a crimping device installed on the pipe near the floor of the sea, would be essential to reduce the risk of both a spill and potential explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.
Current information indicates that BP installed a defective blowout preventer and did not have a deep-water, robotically emplaced crimping technique as a backup to the blowout preventer. Essential to the prevention of future accidents will be an objective, complete technical and managerial investigation of why a geological and engineering situation of known risks spun out of control. The primary question is, will such an investigation be possible in the politically charged, adversarial “boot on the neck” atmosphere created by President Obama and his team? Imagine if such an atmosphere had surrounded the 204 fire investigation and recovery.
Responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon accident ultimately lies with the chaotic regulatory environment for petroleum exploration created over recent decades by the Congress, courts, Department of the Interior and environmental pressure groups. Will we learn anything about regulatory overkill from this tragic loss of eleven lives, extensive environmental damage, and disruption of business and employment in the Gulf?
Elimination of access to most on-shore and near-shore oil production prospects has driven American exploration away from more easily discoverable and producible resources – and into the much more dangerous and technically challenging deep waters of the seas and oceans. Even then, drilling and production accidents are exceedingly rare, in spite of the geological, engineering and weather-related difficulties that explorers and producers face as a consequence of these misguided restrictions.
Long-term, history reminds us that naturally and accidentally released oil in the oceans disappears due to bacterial action. Remember that the fuel oil which blackened the world’s beaches as a result of World War II ship destruction disappeared after only a few years, and ocean life survived. The Gulf oil spill will not be this Nation’s most serious environmental crisis: World War II tops it by orders of magnitude in more than just this respect.
If America and freedom are to survive indefinitely, the next Congress must begin to restore sanity and intelligence to national energy policy. Until economically competitive alternatives become fully feasible, fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of our economy. Our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil has become one of our greatest national security vulnerabilities, and only domestic production can solve it in the next 50 years.
The 2010 elections thus become a critical starting point to bring rational, constitutional, America-first thinking back into the Federal Government.
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Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New Mexico, as well as a geologist and former Apollo Astronaut. He currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a member of the new Committee of Correspondence.
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BTW, returning to Apollo 13 oxygen tank explosion. Which was the cause of it?.
What was the cause of the more recent Air France Airbus accident? , a plane built like a flying capacitor: aluminum inside and outside and a dielectric composite in the middle.?
An electric discharge in both cases?
Dr. Schmidt has written an authoritative and precise commentary on the situation in which we find ourselves. The lawyers will never hold the responsible parties liable; these include all of the environmental organizations and all of the feckless members of Congress. We have no energy policy. We have no persons in positions of authority able to do simple mathematics. Add up the number of persons in the United States. Compute an average energy use per person. That budget cannot be met by wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, or any other “ecologically friendly” method.
Ask the following about any energy source: how many acres are required per million BTU per year? How much water is required per million BTU per year? What chemicals are released into the atmosphere per million BTU per year (think construction of solar panels)? What ecological destruction (think birds for wind power, sea life for sea power) will ensue?
We have a safe nuclear reactor, patiently performing hydrogen fusion, about 150,000,000 Km away. Use it. Orbit giant solar reflectors, generate microwaves, and beam them to microwave farms. Do not bother with orbiting rockets; get busy on extruding bucky tube cables and build a skyhook. Arthur Clarke told us about this three generations ago! Or more than one. Or build an accelerator belt (Lofstrom Loop).
Forget about ethanol from corn. Use invasive plants like kudzu, Virginia Creeper, and others, which grow even where they are not wanted. One hydrocarbon chain is as good as another when it comes to storing solar energy. This can hurt only one party, ADM.
Forget about this nuclear waste nonsense. Pursue with haste the development of optical computing devices, which will be far more resistant to radioactivity than silicon chip based computers. We need robots to do the separation work; nuclear radio isotopes are only waste when we have not found a use for them yet. And they cannot be put to use until they are separated out. And they are HOT.
Build new fluidized bed reactors. Upgrade the current power grid. Press forward with all of the superconductor work, being carried out around the world. Invent layered cable which can decrease the energy loss incurred in transmission (it cannot be eliminated, but we can probably cut it down a lot).
Use all that superconductor technology to build more efficient turbines, which can change coal heat into electricity. Again, entropy will keep us from using all of the energy, but I am certain that many improvements remain to be made. Waste heat is like nuclear waste: it is only waste heat when it is not put to use.
Community Organizers organize communities. Leaders lead. There is an unsubtle distinction between the two. The Organizer can always walk away. The Leader cannot.
What if Michael Bay was asked what would be the worst case scenario of gulf spill?
http://xkcd.com/748/
Smokey… Apologies, I realize now that it was Feb, 2010, not 2009, so it did fall under Obama’s administration, although I doubt a project as complex as this did not have years of momentum (prior to 2009) behind it.
Still… this idea that the President of the United States is supposed to quickly, single-handedly undo every appointment, position and direction of the previous administration is ludicrous. Can you imagine the backlash in the current economic climate and the 2009 fuel situation if the U.S. government had refused BP’s request? Don’t you think a lot of this goes back to a political climate where one political party loves shouting “drill, baby, drill” at their rallies?
I stand by my reaction to your own position… knee jerk “Obama is the devil” positions are not credible.
Actually we want both: a government made up of people who know when to take charge, and when to get out of the way, and who are smart enough to know the difference.
If there are such people in the grossly bloated federal government that has emerged in the decades since World War II, their light is too often hidden under the barrel of obfusticating bureaucracy and political agendas that work only to reward time-servers, rent-seekers, and ambitious statists.
NASA in the Apollo years was an exception, because it had a mission and was staffed by people who knew how to accomplish it. By the time of the horrific Challenger explosion, the agency had apparently succumbed to the disease of oppressive bureaucracy and misdirection. Today without a JFK to lay out a clear mission, it is floundering, and has to turn to the Russians for rides to the ISS—a perfect metaphor for the confused response to the Gulf gusher.
/Mr Lynn
Bill Mahr recently did raise this question in an interview with a Cousteau scion. Unfortunately, rather than just saying it was a very good question and admitting that he had no information on it, the interviewee ducked the question and talked about the Florida environment instead. And Mahr let him get away with it.
NBC News did revisit the Exxon Valdez spill last (?) night, but Ixtoc is more on point because of the nature and location of the problem.
The Wiki site gcb links says that one thing that finally worked in the Ixtoc spill was stuffing iron and steel down the hole. At least these are heavier than rock, and so will counter the extreme pressure caused by the overburden of rock, unlike the ditzy shredded tire and golf ball proposal that has been in the news a lot.
Schmidt —
And in particular, President Nixon, for all his faults, did not pretend to “take charge” of the situation.
Dr. Schmitt said:
“If America and freedom are to survive indefinitely, the next Congress must begin to restore sanity and intelligence to national energy policy. Until economically competitive alternatives become fully feasible, fossil fuels will remain the mainstay of our economy. Our dependence on unstable foreign sources of oil has become one of our greatest national security vulnerabilities, and only domestic production can solve it in the next 50 years.”
————
Domestic production isn’t going to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Currently, Americans consume about 25% of the total oil produced in the world, but U.S. wells produce only 7% of the total, and our offshore wells alone produce less than 2% of the total. Increasing our reliance on domestic reserves could reduce our dependence on imported oil, but we don’t have sufficient reserves to sustain the reduction.
U.S. offshore reserves are estimated at 86 billion barrels, which is the equivalent to about 11 years of our consumption. In other words, if we stopped importing foreign oil, and depended entirely on those offshore reserves, the oil would be gone in 11 years and we would be more dependent on foreign oil than ever before.
Of course we aren’t going to find and consume all the offshore oil that quickly, and we will continue to depend on foreign sources as well as our dwindling land reserves. It would be foolish to not buy foreign oil, since deleting theirs is a better long-term national security strategy than depleting ours.
Would having the wells in place and capped, but not producing, be a way of assuring the oil would be available in a national emergency? Yes, but oil companies like a return on exploration investment, and there isn’t much return on finding oil if it’s left in the ground. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for the government to buy and store the produced oil, adding to the current amount being held for emergencies, but that would not reduce the American consumer’s dependence on foreign oil.
I fear that the only people who will pay attention are those who are already aware of how incompetent this administration is.
Even the most incompetent PREVIOUS president knew enough to leave disaster recovery and mitigation to the experts, all he did was put on the yellow boots and wander through Three Mile Island… and he WAS experienced in reactor operations! This current dolt has probably never even pumped his own gas.
It is beyond ignorant to point fingers at this point. Any fingers. This is when you deal with the problem… leave blame for the future.
I miss Red Adair. And it’s a sad fact that even in his current state, Red is more competent than The Big Zero.
I take this as a hint we’re supposed to vote for republicans now…
Like BUSH and the lazy a$$ republicans would have done a better job… Ha Ha Ha
B rought
U s
S evere
H ardships
Then we get handed…
O ne
B ig
A $$
M istake
A merica
Thanks, but I’ll think for myself and encourage everyone else to do the same as I travel this big country and observe the weather. You have to get out and see this world, investigate, or your a frog in a well and anybody will tell ya any stupid thing.
I disagree with Mr. Schmitt that failure to stop the well leak is due to incompetence. The US government and BP executives are well aware of the situation so all they can really do is posture for public opinion at this point. The reality is it will be a few months before a permanent fix is in place.
America, you need the Canadians! We have plenty of oil to sell you. We also have the most experienced, renowned team of oil well emergency experts in the world. One of these professionals, Mike Miller, CEO of Calgary-based Safety Boss, recently spoke with the Canadian press:
“Mike Miller, CEO of Safety Boss, a company that helps prevent and contain oil well blowouts, called a top kill a “complicated operation” that could build-up pressure at the bottom of the well and split one or more of the other pipes.
According to Miller, officials will know the measure is working if the mud goes straight into the hole. However, if the mud flows out at the source of the leak, crews will be forced to move to another plan, such as a junk shot, which involves shooting debris into the well to plug the leak. They may also try to place another blowout preventer on top of the one that failed.
“Nothing that they’re doing has worked before in these kinds of water depths, which is the complicating issue,” Miller told CTV News Channel. “If this well was on land, this would be a two-week issue. But 5,000 feet below the surface is just like working in outer space.”
As the operation carries on, Louisiana officials and residents are growing impatient with the response to the spill.
While many hold out hope the method could stop the growing environmental disaster, Miller said the only “sure shot” BP has are the relief wells, which won’t be finished for another two months.”
I humbly suggest applying liquid nitrogen to the pipe upstream of the leak. Its boiling point of 77.36 kelvins is significantly lower than even the melting point of methane (91 K), the most volatile constituent of the spillage. This means that steady application of liquid nitrogen would inexorably chill the pipe to below the freezing point of the petroleum, forming a layer of frozen material on the inner surface of the pipe. This layer, growing, would shrink the available channel area of the flow, thus reducing the flow, until ultimately freezing solid across the pipe. At that point, it would depend on whether the flow pressure would be sufficient to dislodge the frozen plug and eject it.
I will admit that this process may entail complications (such as the formation of a minor iceberg around the pipe being cooled), but it uses basic physics in as simple a manner as possible.
How many greenpeace ships slurping up spilt oil are there in the Gulf at this moment?
“With no single, competent, courageous and knowledgeable leader in charge of a comparably competent, courageous and knowledgeable team as we had with Apollo 13,…”
I don’t know what Dr. H. Harrison Schmitt is on about.
We have our secret weapon……Carol Browner!
I’m sure she has read “vast portions” of the “contingency
plan.”
So Paul (June 1, 2010 at 9:35 pm) posed the question:
<cite="So someone tell me why we can’t just drop large boulders on the site, followed by ever smaller aggregate to fill in the holes? Seems easy to me – boulders sink even to 5000 ft and would diffuse the flow which could then be plugged by the smaller rocks and so on."
Essentially that was what the Top Kill was all about – pumping mud into the hole to see if they could control pressure via weight, then adding 'Lost Circulation Material' (ground up inert stuff of different buoyancy – like ground up golf balls) to plug the holes in the confined space of the wellbore. Apparently either the flow was too great or the holes too large. Same problem would exist on the subsea surface – only without the confining space. Would only retard the flow because of the pressure differential from the subsurface.
Wow what a load of C%#@P !
I am 70 years old and started in the oil patch in 1960, what BP is doing is right, if there was some easy fix don’t you think that as they are spending millions of dollars a day the easy fix would have got prime time ? Nothing in this world is duplicated, every micron is different, this blow out is unique, it has never happened before, so methods that have been applied to similar situations must, because of there success be tried first, rocket ship science is for rockets, of all the thousands and yes I repeat thousands of offshore wells drilled in the oceans of the world this is one that has gone wrong, and it is not the fault of BP !!
BP is the operator, the equipment does not belong to BP, BP relies on its contractors to do the work, supply and see that the equipment is operating properly, when this is all over Obama and Co, will run and hide, BP did not mix or supply the cement, that was done by a contractor and surely they are now wetting there pants, the BOP (blow out preventer ) was not installed by BP nor is it owned by BP BP pays the bills, the contractors do the work, and supply the BOP, and in this case when the smoke settles there is going to be some awful big lawsuits instigated by BP !!!!!
Lets hope that the tobacco industry puts Obama in Hospital before he does more damage. ( why are all democratic Presidents smokers ? )
Benjamin says:
June 1, 2010 at 10:38 pm
“…Obama a green? Ha! There are no greens in government. To be a hippie tree-hugger is to be one of millions (billions, even) of used-up suckers, never mind our philosophical differences. A sucker is a sucker. Central bank-funded governments have always been red, and there isn’t a difference between “conservative” and “liberal”, “democrat” or “republican”. Neither side has a reputation for seeking the end of central banking, and that is how and why things are playing out the way they are today…. “
_________________________________________________________________________
AHHhhh someone else who has looked behind the curtain, although your take is different than mine.
One thing you missed though is the Big Oil/Central Bank/Environmental connection via Maurice Strong, father of the environmental movement – 1972 first UN earth Summit – Senior Advisor to the World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation Trustee and Canadian oil big wig. Strong originally worked for the Rockefellers in 1953 in Saudia Arabia before his rapid rise. He paid the way to the First Earth Summit for Greenpeace who receives funding through the various Rockefeller foundations.
David Rockefeller and family have connections to the Federal Reserve, World Bank and various oil companies.
Perhaps the US adminidstration doesn’t want a rapid and successful solution; perhaps they want the pollution to get worse and give them an excuse to “nationalize” the US oil industry – do a Chavez.
I’m not sure I see how international trade in oil is a crisis.
Is international trade in computers a crisis as well? After all, a lot of computers come from countries that are “economic competitors” of the US. Cars too. And sunglasses. And about everything else you can imagine. Do all of these need to be manufactured in the US in the name of national security?
Exactly – nobody is more competent than US government scientists and engineers, like Gene Kranz and his Apollo 13 flight controllers and engineers. Why do we have incompetent foreign corporations developing US domestic energy resources ?
A penny-pinching corporation with known safety issues should not have been allowed to endanger an entire US regions economic viability. What’s next, a Qatar corporation operating a 2 GW nuclear power plant near NYC ? Fishing and tourism on the Gulf are damaged for years, now. A US agency like NASA can tackle difficult technical challenges because they spend the money to do it right and don’t have to show maximum profit every quarter – a corporation like BP will spend as little as possible and hope for the best. Good thing a European corporation was not in charge of the Apollo missions.
Drill, baby, drill.
“As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days” – Senator McCain, campaign 2008
I wonder when Pemex (Mexico), Petrobras (Brazil) and Cupet (Cuba) are going to have their big deepwater drilling accidents ? American fishermen are already mad at their livelihoods being ruined by the British – imagine if it was ruined by the Cubans ? What if the Cubans bring in a Chinese company to do deepwater drilling near Florida and they have an accident like this ? Or the Mexicans ?
These accidents are going to get a lot more diplomatically difficult.
Puppets and puppeteers: In the old good days the puppeteers were in control everywhere in the world, as time passed, and the sun cycles changed, the puppets became virtual puppeteers. So, in the good all days, science was developed by scientists, now models have created virtual scientists.
A neat little chart.
Hmm, seems like a lot of folk here don’t have a high opinion of Barry Dunham. I personally think they are laying it on a bit thick, after all, it’s not like any POTUS really has any influence on the real world.
I continue to be impressed by the world’s ability to find men who are willing and able to undertake the kind of work required to “just plug the damn hole”.
The relief wells will eventually be drilled, the spilled oil cleaned up and eaten up, and the polimediaclasses can whine about something else. Which is the great thing about a carbon based energy system, as opposed to the heavy metal radiation based energy system. There is absolutely nothing great about the rotating propeller based energy system.
never let a crisis go to waste. why build sand dykes when you can show the world the evils of oil. nature will clean itself in 20yrs., and by then carbon markets will be 10trillion.
The incompetence of the Obama administration is stupefying. But, have no fear.
Obama’s next move is that AG Holder will apply for an emergency restraining order and preliminary injunction directing the blowout to stop flowing pending adjudication of rights and liabilities of all concerned. Obama will then walk on water out to the site of the blowout and serve the restraining order upon BP.
Great theater, eh?