--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <r...@...> wrote: <snip> > Once the thing is cut and the oil is gushing out with even > greater force, I wonder how they're going to slip a cap over > the pipe. Seems to me the force of the oil would keep pushing > the cap away.
It won't be easy. Note, though, that the cap isn't designed to stop the flow, merely to channel it up to the surface. The cap will be attached to a mile-long pipe at the top, and the oil and gas will go up the pipe and be collected by ships. It's really fascinating to watch the live feeds of the robots operating on the apparatus. The technical skill of the guys on the surface manipulating the robots remotely is just amazing. It's a little like in the movies when the hero is defusing a bomb or performing some other complicated and dangerous maneuver, and the camera shows his hands in closeup. You have the same sense of tension even if you have no earthly idea exactly what the robots are trying to accomplish. All that's lacking is the suspenseful music and shots of the hero's face dripping with sweat as he works. This whole episode will make one heck of a movie eventually. Not to trivialize it, but the accounts of the blowout and explosions and the crew's escape from the blazing rig (or *most* of the crew) really do read like a movie script. And with all the footage of the robots, somebody could make a fantastically gripping documentary of the attempts to close the leak. BP's obviously too busy to provide a running commentary, but it could be written after the fact. The work the robot operators are doing is so exacting, requiring such concentration, I wonder if when their shifts are up, they have to mop them down, put them to bed, and give them massages, like Balinese dancers. I hope somebody like Charlie Rose snags them for interviews after this is all over. They really should get a lot of recognition. They must feel awful that so much of what they've been doing hasn't worked, even though it wasn't their fault at all.
