Top Kill

Well, wasted all my time this morning responding to post comments, so no real post today. Just wanted to cross my fingers for BP's Top Kill operation. Hopefully this works, but if not, I will likely bust out my fluid dynamics book and submit a fix recommendation :P I really wish they published reports on why the first few attempts failed, and had more available data on the pressure, velocity, and volume being emitted. Would make it easier to propose a fix. It seems to me the problem is they're trying to overwhelm the oil with brute force, and not taking advantage of laws of fluid dynamics. If the velocity of the oil is the problem, then reverse funnel it, and use rods to make the flow more turbulent. If the pressure is the problem, do the opposite and use the fundamentals of hydraulic systems to stop it. If it's a combination of the two, then uses both techniques. I'm a fan of an hourglass shape filled with arrays of steel rods to first reduce the pressure (bernoulli's equations), then reduce velocity with the rods. Anyway, the brute force methods I've been seeing do not look to be very effectively using mechanical advantage over this thing. But much like the economy, it's easy to speculate from the sidelines. Good Luck BP!

Resisting the urge to do a point by point comparison on how this is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from the hurricane Katrina crisis. Simply put, Katrina was a failure to put the square block in the square hole, levee technology has been around since before Jesus! Obama's crisis is a failure to make somebody else do something that's NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE! Oh the incompetence.