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.
______________
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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DCC says: June 3, 2010 at 5:04 pm:
“Louisiana officials have begged the federal government not to ban drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in waters deeper than 500′. There have been enough job losses already.”
Well, this a “recovery” we’re in, where unemployment, as the MSM says, is not really an issue.
I can speculate a few reasons for this ban. Given it’s total lack of rationality…
1) Oil is “too cheap”. By halting these operations until “plans are sorted out” (like a car salesman going to “talk to the boss”, eh?), oil might rise? Something like this might actually stand a chance of budging prices higher. No incidents in the oil industry has done so thus far. Call this an OPEC tactic.
2) Boost the broader stock indexes? It is possible that companies not spending money retain value (hence why falling employment and pay started or sustained the bear market rally). This would be true if oil rose with the “lockdown”. As we know, stock markets world-wide are having some trouble because Europe went ahead and went broke. Call this the “oh shit, we gotta do something to make this last!” tactic.
3) To break them entirely. Maybe oil prices won’t rise (I suspect they will not no matter what, at least not enough to spare the industry from the relentless deflationary environment), and the shutdowns will force market to revalue oil companies so that the government can take them over, buying them up cheap. Call this the “We’re FED UP with any resemblence to free markets” tactic.
I remind, this is just me thinking out loud. But these are dangerous times we live in, and thinking the unthinkable is at least an exercise in healthy cynicism and wisdom. Given the broader trend of government power, and in light of the current admin, there is certainly much to worry about.
I should clarify this point, as I left out something important in the O/P…
“2) Boost the broader stock indexes? … ”
If oil companies are forced to not spend, that would have a chain-reaction throughout the market, much the same way unemployment dominoed to account for the bear market rallies over the past year and a half or so.
It’s a stretch to say that this kind of effect would have an impact on European markets, but again, these are dangerous and strange times, and markets have proven themselves thus far to be, well, bizare. Case in point is the supposed recovery we’re supposed to be in. This is not an idle and obscure remark that tries to make sense of things…
Ben Bernanke has said he will keep interest low to help/speed the recovery. What these interest rates mean is that zeroing-interest bleeds out liquidity. In hitting the economy in a place like energy production, it’s like a paper-jam, with the initial result being a rise in the market. This of course has it’s limits, as one would expect. If overall production is reduced for the want of spending, then depletion of supply would at some point drive prices up.
Yet, this will not occurr. Instead, nervousness (greed quivers when it sees no more potential for numerical growth) will drive the mini-bubble into Treasuries and other government debt (here and abroad), whereupon it will be trapped by zeroing interest, thus bleeding out what Bernanke sees as excess liquidity from the market (which he sees as hindering the economy).
The end result will be more depriciation of assets, and more money given over to government through Treasury loans. Again, if now be the time, government could easily buy up assets on the cheap(ening). I’ve no idea at what point they would do so, but I see that as their ultimate goal. One should note that it doesn’t matter who the president is. Under all admins, this has been in the making. At no point in any admin or Congressional majority did the trend of zeroing interest ever halt, let alone reverse. The plan has proceeded regardless of politics. Electing out Obama and the democrats will not be enough to save this country.
WOW!!! I want Dr. Schmitt to run for President. I’m guessing he won’t though since it appears he is too smart for the job. 🙂
Excellent, but sad, commentary on the state of our Country and the response to this crisis.
Kick ass article, nice to see someone prepared to speak the truth
No one should be allowed into politics without a proven and real business background.
At least GW the goon he was, managed to run a sports team and an oil company, and so what if he almost went bankrupt a few times, what good businessman hasn’t.
Here’s a final thought for all you socialists out there :
If humanity is so corrupted we need all this over sight and government nanny state, then who will run that state ? won’t it be the very humanity that is so corrupted in the first place ?
Don’t be scared of everyday people, or even entrepreneurs and speculators, they built everything good about the world. Be scared of those that want power over you, lest they become yur jailor.
“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”
Wow. If this guy really believes this statement, then he has lost all credibility with me.
Also sad to see an otherwise great site being turned in just another place to grind right-wing political axes.
JohnP says:
June 5, 2010 at 10:24 am
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/01/the-chasm-between-apollo-and-the-gulf/#comment-403681
Perhaps I’m not qualified to comment, being a UK citizen.
When Obama was elected, I was truly astonished. I just could not comprehend how someone who so clearly hated America & all it stands for could actually be chosen for the post.
Just my tuppenceworth.
DaveE.
RE: Claude Harvey: (June 3, 2010 at 9:52 am) “The fundamental failure of the well stems from a loss of casing integrity far down below the failed Blowout Preventer.”
I think that this is one of the most important aspects of this whole problem. If the casing integrity is compromised below the B.O.P, then it is, indeed, going to be very hard to stop the uncontrolled leak because oil can still flow through and erode the ground outside of the casing.
It would appear that everyone involved must have had a complacent mental blind-spot for this type of problem as there appears to have been no advance preparation for any such contingency. I think that a blowout preventer above a possible well-casing failure must be a B.O.P in name only.
Perhaps the top-capture and bottom-kill techniques are the only practical solutions for now, but I think we should be looking into the development of a better method for quickly handling such problems in the future.
With the oil spill out of control and no reliable end in sight to control the flow of oil is blowing up the leak a realistic option ? I would think the power and heat of the nuclear blast would fuze the rock thereby closing the leak. Has this option been considered ?
Hello, William
I don’t know, but I would think that a nuclear detonation would have unpredictable results. But yes, they’ve considered this. At least according to some unreliable sources here and there on the ‘net, though I of course can’t say that BP has put that on the list. I doubt they would ever do that, though.
What I wonder about is why they haven’t tried something like this…
Collection
Tanker
| | <– expandable tube, perhaps some kind of steel radial rubber
| |
*| Leak |*
I hope this posts right. Anyway, the * on the bottom of the sides are the anchors. Just drop the collapseable, weighted tube from the collection tanker, let it sink/expand itself. Once on the bottom (or just hovering over the area), the anchors will help hold it in place, and serve as a seal of sorts if it touches bottom. Won't be perfect, but since the oil shoots up they should be able to contain it more than not I would think. And they could collect the crude while the relief well is being dug, so it wouldn't be a total loss. Anyway, as the collection tanker filled, just have other tankers come by and transfer the load. They could also burn off the gas (which is basically what they were doing before, right?)
Of course I'm no engineer to say, but… Well, why not just go back to collecting oil as they were before? Is it really so impossible for them to do that? If so, then… what the hell are they doing out there to begin with?! Sheeze!
imo, The reason this is an environmental disaster is because BP/government want to treat it like one. But if they were to just treat it like a problem of collection, I think this would be well under control by now. Of course, what is their incentive to do so, when nationalization is the ultimate goal of this self-engineered disaster, which will serve as the background rationalization of the take-over that will occur because of what is really happening (egineered failure of markets)?
Source of the story is the confirmation of
schlumberger presence day of blow out and they only do
Cement Bond Log (CBL) test that was the final test on the plug that was skipped –
just testing–
http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-deep-horizon-hours-before-blowout/
“presence of Schlumberger employees was confirmed, as was their departure the day of the blowout, which in my view lends some credence to the rest of the story, especially given that the rest was basically not commented on by BP in this article. We’d need to hear from Schlumberger itself, in court”
Just a few disgruntled nobodies–
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/oil-june5.html
WAKE UP ARKANSAS !!! Put your thinking caps on !!!
Look what pond scum has raised the most money for Arkansas Lt. Governor Bill Halter’s Primary Challenge To Senator Blanche Lincoln…
Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America, MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees International Union, etc.
Now, I personally invested considerable effort to help make a more moderate democrat out of Blanche Lincoln and she has. Got her to back off several nutty liberal stances, such as gun and ammunition taxes and restrictions as well as to support Murkowski’s bill to overturn the EPA ruling on CO2 as a hazardous substance.
If you think Ms. Lincoln is too liberal, just you watch Bill Halter go to work trying to force you to ‘do without for the sake of the planet’!
It will make the republican ‘do without full time jobs with benefits, roads and the like for the sake of billionaires and love of war’ look like childs play.
There are some estimates that the number of young seafloor volcanoes exceed a million. What do they do but release noxious gasses, carbon & CO2 that eventually make it up to the surface and the atmosphere, not to mention the eruptions above above sea level contributing to asthma, etc. Man’s carbon footprint is like a forth of July celebration in a hurricane.
BP Well Bore And Casing Integrity Are Blown.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/226659
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/06/07/senator-nelson-says-bp-well-integrity-may-be-blown/
wellbore is pierced – now oil is seeping from seabed in multiple places –
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/senator-confirms-reports-that-wellbore-is-pierced-oil-seeping-from-seabed-in-multiple-places
“Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news.
If Nelson is correct in that assertion, and he is smart enough to not make such assertions lightly, so I think they must be taken at face value, it means the well casing and well bore are compromised and the gig is up on containment pending a completely effective attempt to seal the well from the bottom via successful “relief wells”. In fact, I have confirmed with Senator Nelson’s office that they are fully aware of the breaking news and significance of what the Senator said to Andrea Mitchell.
Furthermore, contrary to the happy talk propounded by BP, the Obama Administration and the press, the likely success of the “relief well” effort on the first try in August is nowhere near a certainty; and certainly nowhere near the certainty it is being painted as.
About five days ago, I responded to someone in comments with the following:
Yeah, but I am absolutely convinced there is such a lack of integrity, from pretty much top to bottom, of the well that totally plugging it at the top just creates the blowout of whatever remaining seal they have with the cement at the wellhead. I believe they have a total clusterfuck in about every regard and are just not admitting it:
1) BP used, if not substandard, then very close to it, casing that under the circumstances was inappropriate. It is fragile.
2) They did not install somehow or another at least one major casing segment seal, and the remaining seals are now either completely blown out or on their way to it and as a result oil and gas flow is not only coming up the inside of the casing, but the outside of the casing between the casing and well bore walls in the rock.
3) BP specified a light and fluffy cement and, additionally, there may be significant breaches and voids making the cement job weak and disintegrating.
4) Even at best, the cement is in the upper depths of the well bore where the natural geologic rock structure is the loosest, weakest, most porous and fragile (hell some of it may effectively be silt). The oil and gas, which has a natural well pressure of 12,000 or so psi is going to erode and corrode through and around the cement and the porous well bore rock.
5) Being attached to the Deepwater Horizon rig by the riser, and perhaps drill string too, when all hell broke loose and it exploded, shifted and sank, it put various pressures and forces through attachment to the BOP in turn attached on the well casing head. This action may have kind of reamed out and loosened that whole situation making it even looser and more susceptible to 2 and 4 above.
6) The BOP, to the extent it had restrictions present initially, has now been eroded and reamed out by the long term flow of gas and oil upwards and then the caustic flow of drilling mud the other direction from the attempted Top Kill. It is totally fucked way worse than it even was initially.
7) The reservoir of oil in Macondo is way larger than most anybody realizes and certainly bigger than BP will admit. It is a huge mother lode. Could flow forever.
8) Did I mention that the natural well pressure may be as high as 12,000 psi??
The Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf States and all of us are totally f***
As Sir Richard Mottram famously said:
We’re all f***
It’s the biggest cock-up ever. We’re all completely f
I may have been uncomfortably close to the mark. And the quote from Sir Richard Mottram was dead on the money; if Senator Nelson is correct about the breach of fundamental well integrity, the game is close to over for the Gulf of Mexico. We shall see where this goes from Nelson’s initial comment. But make no mistake, Nelson is a careful guy not prone to overt hyperbole, and he clearly understood the ramifications of what he was saying.
It also means, of course, that BP and the Obama Administrations continue to give the American public short shrift in the truth and honesty departments. How surprising.”
End of quote.
Until imbeciles are no longer permitted to
operate major industries
like the energy industry and the financial industry —
the imbeciles will continue to fix
elections to anoint imbecile politicians with whom
they can comfortably associate and manipulate.
If an imbecile is appointed to run the EPA
or the IPCC —
any action by the
congressional imbeciles will
only magnify any problem arising —
reason, skills, technology and science will always be supplanted by
cupidity and malice —
any new catastrophe is always
viewed only as just another
magnificent opportunity
to divert the media from the previous
catastrophes(lost wars in iraq and afghan,
economic black holes, and imploding infrastructures)
to the new disaster while another new catastrophe is in the making–
These imbeciles in the china shop love the sounds
of smashed porcelain.
There is no reason NOT to believe
that BP AND Halliburton
deliberately conspired to create this
catastrophe to expunge Obama and
replace him with
another bush poodle.
These imbeciles are like dogs locked in a
dog food warehouse–
the will gorge until they
explode–
unfortunately the imbeciles
are rupturing the the planet
before rupturing their
own intestines.
Mystery gray whale sighted again off Spain coast.
IT’S THAT WHALE AGAIN!
A mysterious gray whale sighted off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea has been seen again off the north east coast of Spain.
The second sighting, made 23 days and 3000km after the first, has continued to perplex whale experts.
Gray whales were thought to be extinct across the Atlantic Ocean, so the appearance of an individual within the Mediterranean Sea was a major surprise.
Now it is not clear where the whale is heading or why.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8729000/8729064.stm
Rather than believe this has anything to do with BP, I would far sooner believe that Obama and his buddies created this issue for two reasons.
1. create a smokescreen distraction from cap and trade
2. create a viable piece of evidence to point -= look here is why we don’t want to drill off Alaska.
They are wanting to put together charges of criminal activity.. since the Democrats are doing the same thing with this that they did with Hurricane Katrina, aka sit on their hands and wait until the damage was done, perhaps we should file charges against Obama for treason against the nation (plenty of reasons why we should) and file criminal charges against his cabinet.
How bout we focus on the real criminals Namely, Obama et al.
This article hits the nail on the head. Consider the fact that Apollo 13 was 30+ years ago, and the advances in tech since, and this looks pretty pathetic on our part.