Two months after the deep-ocean oil spill in federal waters off Louisiana, the immensity of the catastrophe is still growing, as the mass media reluctantly, but inevitably, permits commentary of how president Obama is handling the crisis. For weeks, there was nothing but official statements of blaming Bp (British Petroleum - "They will pay for everything!"); initially, a quick but unexplained firing of a woman, supposedly in payment of federal drilling regulations (some rumors of relaxed requirements for Bp's mile-deep rig); then - after complaints that "cool" Obama was too unemotional, some presidential cuss-words to show frustration.
However, week after week - the oil still gushes, tragic pictures of oil-covered pelicans are in the news; also of the massive oil slick as it comes ever closer to the east coast - meanwhile no solution is forthcoming on how to plug the leak. However, at long last, there seems to be some beginning governmental attempt to stem the inherent oil damage. Desperate pleas by the Governor of Louisiana for federal preserve to mop up the oil and block the slick were apparently ignored for weeks (claims of federal equipment, e.g. "booms" being unavailable, and that concerns about lack of an "environmental impact study" precluded relief efforts). In June, television-show hosts Hannity and Huckabee began using their Fox News programs to publicize innovative methods of minimizing the oil damage as suggested by the public - all apparently ignored by the Administration.
Damage History
The question is - there are two problems - of equal considerable and immediate importance: 1) plugging the leak (and studying and eliminating the cause); 2) minimizing the oil slick damage.
The time-honored recipe of attacking considerable problems is to assemble many experts; provide a forum for presentation and debate; institute unemotional evaluation by an experienced advisory panel; then decisions are made by qualified authority. Nasa, coping with the extremes of both human feel and danger (plus colossal national pride and cost), has advanced its principles of "Flight Readiness Review" to best achieve this. To add difficulty, the decision-maker (Nasa Administrator - who reports to the President), while experienced and knowledgeable in many fields (perhaps an Air Force General), may lack the detailed scientific, arcane knowledge at issue in a risk-assessment decision - but he must make the decision.
The Nasa mission in space is daunting, unforgiving of any error or oversight of human shortcomings: in engineering, design, manufacturing, quality control - or in predicting the supervene of complex Nature - or in taking the "best shot" when probing the unknown. And the rule is that the Nasa Administrator - whose areas of background expertise can hardly embrace all the discrete technologies of risk and concern - is required to make all considerable decisions. And since life-and-death, plus hundreds of millions of dollars in program hardware and costs are complex in every mission, how that is done is a unique advent to technical and administration problem-solving.
In essence, before each flight, Nasa conducts a Flight Readiness characterize (really a tutorial) - taking some days, where-by every inherent threat to a successful mission is fully examined and reviewed - in technical, educational information - presented by the best experts in industry and government - addressing the Administrator and his staff. The Administrator sits at the top center of a large "inverted U" table, department Directors at his sides; the major undertaker of a package deal Engineering officials sit along the legs, their staffs behind them; and, by video, hundreds of engineers at every complex Nasa department and undertaker of a package deal supervene the proceedings. Every technical or scientific issue is reduced to its fundamentals - questions asked, debated and answered by the many experts in each field in the room - so the Administrator (often a "layman" in the specific arcane field) understands the risks as best an arresting man can and makes the decision.
The presenter (at the podium on a large stage of the huge room) is either the Nasa's or contractor's top engineer in the subject field; alongside the podium are three giant screens, on which are presented any required graphs and text. The question presentation may take a half-day, prominent to a hint - for the Administrator to accept (or reject; if so, with requests for more tests). The issue - a major mission threat - is one with which most of the audience has been deeply involved, maybe for years. Discussions are often arresting - human knowledge and technology are wrestling with the unknown.
Take the question of "Re-entry" for the Space Shuttle. Early orbital flights and the Moon (Saturn) program handled the extremes and uncertainties of re-entry heat by employing very conservative thicknesses of ablative material on the underside of the re-entry capsule - which landed in the ocean. For the Space Shuttle, the view was an airplane-type vehicle, which would land on land (although lacking motor propulsive power, like a glider). The re-entry heat question was (theoretically) solved by the straightforward view of "insulation vacuumized tiles" (six by six inches, thicknesses about an inch) - providing insulation via the quality of a vacuum to block heat transference.
The tiles, a improvement of Nasa and Hughes Aircraft, were fabricated of fibrous quartz, filaments stuffed in the tile, double-vacuumed, and covered by a thin glass exterior. (Note: the inside of a tile looks like straightforward styrofoam.) The processing improvement was highly difficult - as evidenced by the cost: each tile (there are 30,000 per Shuttle - photos of the Shuttle showing "black" on the underside of wing, fuselage, tail and the nose are these thousands of 6 x 6 tiles) - ,000 each in 1981; after the most recent Shuttle disaster, the newspapers cited the "volume-production" cost as 00 per tile. While the costs are high and the tiles delicate, their function is wonderful - although the surface of the tiles are exposed to re-entry temperatures of up to 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (no man-made material can withstand such a temperature), inside the Shuttle - only an inch or so distant (thickness of the tile) is the aluminum floor of the Shuttle, upon which the astronauts walk (80 degrees).
Considering the complexity of the manufacturing process of the tiles, the large amount of them, the fact that they made up most of the vehicle's aerodynamic and control surfaces' exterior, their fragility, fix techniques, and that the spaces in the middle of tiles sometimes required stuffing - the amount of Flight Readiness Reviews, wherein tile problems were one of the major mission issues, can be imagined. However - the problems were solved - the discrete Nasa Administrators during the decade or so of Shuttle improvement were each briefed (technically-educated occasionally) and made the permissible decisions - the program becoming a colossal success for the U.S. And humanity for roughly thirty years.
The oil spill disaster, now nearing two months, seems no nearer to having a definitive administration plan than at its beginning. Why does not the President prescribe man (perhaps the Nasa Administrator or a Navy Admiral) to convene a "problem review" symposium: the world's smartest and experienced citizen - one room - for as long as it takes - to gift and deliberate upon ideas - and institute a plan-of-action?
Oil Spill - Gov't Assets Unused (Control Ecology Damage - Not Politics) - Apply Nasa's Frr System!
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