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Drilling Under the Sea
prof_peabody writes "The IODP (Intergrated Ocean Drilling Program) is about to get rolling in a couple of days. If you live in one of these countries then your tax dollars have contributed to the construction of the giant drillship Chikyu, which was launched a little while back (project timeline). The American contigent website is loaded with info and obligatory acronyms. The first leg of the IODP will investigate how water flows through rock formations beneath the seafloor during an eight-week expedition this summer to the eastern flank of the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of British Columbia. Some of you geeks with beards may remember the DSDP (Deep Sea Drilling Project) or the recently completed ODP (Ocean Drilling Program). The real advance in the new program that will cost well over a billion dollars is the IODP riser drill ship that 'will provide a way to drill into continental margins where oil and gas deposits can cause drilling safety concerns and into regions with thick sediment sections, fault zones, and unstable formations.' A good overview of the IODP can be found here, and the necessary references to Megalodon and none other than The Core."
first post
FP!!!
--JC
suck my cock please!
Wow, it's so awesome to know that my money is going towards a ship that can drill holes in the middle of nowhere.
Is it completely necessary to reference The Core? It makes me remember it all over again. My poor, feeble mind will implode if I even try to comprehend the physics behind that film, let alone the acting. Oh god, the acting...
What if there really are big diamonds like in The Core? It would be odd seeing a forklift wheeling out the back room of the jeweler's bearing a single engagement ring.
42
So, does this finally count as the U.S. Government spending a decent chunk of change on education?
If america wants to have greater freedom and security they should invest in offshoring drilling. If billions of american dollars doesn't go to the middle east then families like the bin ladens wouldn't have the billions for their son to exort them.
making a deal with the devil is bad. offshore drilling will allow america forgot about the middle east. osama doesn't like america because of their middle east polices and the fact that they are in the east. america can't pull out of the middle east because of the oil.
http://www.eternalconflict.co.uk/dave/
Hey, I'm so old I even remember Project Mohole.
Under the sea
Under the sea
There'll be no accusations
Just friendly crustaceans
Under the sea!
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
not intergrated.
Thank you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I do not believe I am familiar with these beard-wearing varients...
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
How do we not know these vents contribute to increase the temperatures in our oceans?
if i'm not mistaken the center of the earth is pretty hot and we only explored like less then 10% of our total oceans?
david suzuki says global warming is melting the ice caps. could he be wrong, could the ice really be melting because of these hot vents?
visit my hermion shrine
But check out 'Hack the planet!'
:-)
Possibly the worst (or best?) casting as the pants sniffing dog-loving guy out of road trip as a hacker who hacks the planet.
I am just suprised that they didn't send a virus to the center of the earth to fix everything
A guy has a laser that can cut through rock, in a blast of dust, but without causing huge flames.
When they hit the molten rock, how did they not just fall through it? gravity man, or do they float in molten rock?
aaaah whatever.
Why isn't a robotic drilling submarine used ? It could operate in any depths and the drilling operation wouldn't depend on local weather condition.
How many calories a day would a Megalodon have needed, and where would it have obtained them? A predator that size seems hugely inefficient
http://www.jamstec.go.jp/jamstec-e/odinfo/sdsrepor t.html
-----------------------------
If you can't blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
Me being a dutchman I can only be happy with this. It has been known for ages the dutch can drill tunnels, build bridges and banks like no other nation can.
It's hard to believe anyone would pay us for drilling some place usefull for nobody but if we profit from it economically I guess I should cheer
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
here Curious, /. keeps putting a space between the r and t in report.. i.e. repor t.html
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
are you a flying dutchman?
I think it's great that we do all this drilling and practicing with submarines. After all if we're drilling up even more oil, we'd better get used to the under sea life.
The US does do plenty of offshore drilling, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and, to a lesser extent, off of California. However, most of the oil doesn't go into government stockpiles or the military, but does go into general oil use: mostly gasoline, but also chemicals, heating oil, and plasticis).
Here in Nigeria (!) we are developing deep space mining ships and your money will help us continue our secret space mining program...
Finally, a ship they can use to seek out and disturb R'lyeh...
There's simply not enough space to store the necessary equipment on board, esp. when you consider the need for bentonite coolant circulation etc. Assembling the drill string either through or outside the hull would be an interesting problem, as would the bouyancy/stability control as you dump a few hundred tons of payload overboard.
So a nice idea, but much more economical done from a big surface ship - even when it means waiting on the weather.
"Homer, your answer to everything is under the sea!"
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Chikyu (should be Chikyuu actually) is Japanese for Earth, as in the planet we live on.
Just in case anyone is curious.
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
Is that newspeak for "I can't use a dictionary"?
Your Kung-fu is not strong!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
in--tuhh--grai--tehd.
What this means is that if you can replace all gas inside your body with liquid then you would have no problems. If you could somehow replace all that and assuming you have already purged dissolved gases from your blood (you have been breathing helium), then you would have no problems. OTOH, like you say, it would be difficult to get rid of all gases.
See my journal, I write things there
That doesn't seem to be the case. This article on Slate argues that we are unlikely to achieve "energy independence" from the Middle East, and even if we do, OPEC will have plenty of new custom from China and other emerging economies.
It doesn't boil down to economics. It boils down to selfishness. By definition, it cannot be more efficient to invest in destroying non-renewable resources than to invest in techniques for harnessing renewable ones. The difference is that people get a 'quick fix' or an 'emergency loan' of sorts from fossil fuels, for which they don't have to pay, since they'll be dead, and it'll be someone else's problem.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/2 8/0046201&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=141&tid= 188
Fnord.
So far most of the posts here have been referring to oil. While oil is commonly drilled for, it is not the only reason one would explore the sediment and rock under the seafloor.
most notably, paleoclimate and paleocirculation studies use various proxies found the sediments of the seafloor. The oceans provide a much more continuous record than one can find on land. these proxies can be correlated with other methods and other locations. From these records everything from sea surface temperature to icecap volumes can be modeled.
The Russian sub they built the Explorer to salvage wasn't a particularly interesting design -- it was a "Golf" class, nothing new -- and we could have gotten basically all the worthwhile intelligence from the wreck by going in through the hull and retrieving the cipher equipment. Instead the CIA built a massive white elephant of a drilling ship, with a cover story about oil drilling, to pull up the entire sub. (It didn't work -- the sub broke on the way up.)
The popular book "Blind Man's Bluff" derides this as one of the CIA's most colossal sinkholes for money. It quotes a handful of deep sea salvage experts to the effect that there wasn't any point in even trying to perform the full salvage. (Not the best-edited book, but it's a pretty good telling of Cold War-era sub espionage.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Every night, electrical demand goes down, but the plants keep running. That electricty is just wasted. It is a HUGE number of megawatts. Some places will even give you a rate decrease if you buy your juice only at night, yet very few homeowners or businesses take advantage of the fact. One factory I worked at had their new building built with a thermal storage scheme for heating that used pipes embedded in the concrete floors. An antifreeze liquid was circulated while it was heated with the cheaper electric at night, it heated the concrete, which radiated heat evenly up through the floor during the day. This was up in massacussetts with cold winters, and it worked great.
Electrical cars would be cheaper if they were only/mostly recharged at night, and you had a smart meter or a separate meter for the charging. We could also have battery storage in more homes and businesses, like the alternative energy rigs use now, for use during the day. Just by using thisa wasted night time juice we could eliminate the need for a lot of the new plants proposed, and by switchiung to electric cars more, eliminate the need for getting additional petroleum products.
The government could also offer tax breaks to corporations and individuals for running a third shift at night as a standard instead of a normal first shift, just to take advantage of the wasted energy. Combined with the cheaper energy they could get then, it would be quite a deal in a lot of ways. If it was significant enough taxc breaks combined with cheaper utility costs, then a lot of businesses would switch, and it would become commonplace to have the third shift as normal.
And for longer range trips with electric cars, say on the weekends you want to go asomeplace camping whatever, or on vacation, etc, the solution is simple, you have small trailers that attach to the cars that contain a normal fuel tank and a generator. The trailers could be 1/2 normal cargo, 1/2 generator and fuel tank. The range of electrics now is fine for getting to work and back for millions of people, there's just not a lot of electrics to be had. The GM EV1 cars (more 100 miles range not 50) were a hit, the owners loved them, but GM only leased them and is destroying them now, despite thousands of owners begging to purchase them. By all accounts, what I have read and heard people say, they were roomy enough, fast enough, both from a stop and on the highway, could carry enough stuff, and were a no brainer maintenance-wise. They were cheap to run, and night time reduced rate charging would have cut those expenses in half, which were good to begin with. Heck, I live out in the country and an electric car with a 100 mile range would be good enough for our purposes, we only go to town once a week, and 100 miles is more than enough to get there and back, plus some. The battery tech is good enough now, I think that's a strawman argument. It's not a solution for every single application you use a vehicle for, but for millions and millions of people it could be, just with two pieces of legislation passed,mandated cheaper electric bought only at night-not a local electrico option but they are mandated to do so, and the tax breaks for night time business in general to help reduce peak daytime demand loads. And one other piece of legilsation would be very useful to save another untold billions a year in energy costs, no new construction that didn't adhere to R-50 or better insulation standards.
We don't have near as much an energy problem as most people think, we have a problem with how we use what we already have, and how much gets totally wasted. I've worked on superinsulated residential structures and seen the difference-absolutely no comparison with normal construction. Literally drops the homes major heating and cooling bills to like a fifth what they would be normally. And really, solar and wind are here now and work, they just aren't being pushed much. I've used it enough to know it's practical for a lot of people, generally speaking.
There isn't one single magic bullet, but enough solutions exist today to mitigate a lot of our energy needs using what is available NOW, not have to develop vast new infrastructure with totally new devices and processes.
Why?! Why?! Why?!
Why must we deplete more of the Earth's precious resources like this? Look, we know we're going to run out of oil sooner or later. That's a certainty. Why don't we just accept that now and get working on the alternatives, so we're actually ready for the day when the oil does run out?
The first phase should be to develop a "drop-in" replacement for petroleum fuels, manufactured from plants and waste products, and usable in existing engines with little to no alteration. The priority would be for public transport and emergency vehicles first, then private delivery vehicles, then private cars. Once such fuels are produced in sufficient quantities, petroleum exploration can be discontinued altogether, and we can add a statement to our foreign policy that we will not lend our support to any attempt on the part of a petroleum-consuming nation to wage war, if it is believed that the primary object of that war is to secure further supplies of petroleum.
The next phase will be to develop, in synergy, a range of fuels and engines which sacrifice backward-compatibility for greater efficiency. We then stop making the petroleum-compatible engines, and just produce enough "old skool" fuels to run all remaining petroleum-compatible engines into the ground.
All this can best be done under the framework of a nationalised industry (therefore no petty bickering, IP disputes, anti-competitive practices &c. as are so common in the private sector. All publicly-funded research would be licenced on a non-discriminatory basis so that private companies could enter a competitive market when the technology became established). We should pay for the replacement of petroleum by means of a tax on the use of petroleum -- and non-fossil fuels must be conspicuously exempt from such tax.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This is just another indicator that oil production is beginning to decline. To keep up with the growing market demand from increased population, developing countries, etc., oil companies are looking into new and dangerous ways to get the remaining oil on earth. For more information, Google "peak oil."
Work with me...I've got the Mondays...
LFS. Have you built your system today?
...let's go ahead and f***-up the oceans, BEFORE we understand them....just like the way we did the rest of our Earth.
so good I live in Europe where we have Euro and not dollars, so I don't have to spend my tax dollars for that.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Everything is better down where it's wetter. Under the Sea!
Did you even RTFA? No. The IODP is not for oil exploration. I'll let you do your own fsking research and figure it out for yourself. As a matter of fact, these research vessels take great precautions to AVOID hydrocarbons because of their lack of blow out prevention devices. Finding oil and gas is a hazard to these vessels. Your post seems interesting enough, but its offtopic and not even remotely related to the scientific research being carried out by IODP.
NMG
IODP does not search for oil - it is collecting scientific data. Don't bother bringing up any conspiracy theories - the oil companies have much better proprietary data in the areas that IODP is drilling than the open-source (i.e. IODP) ocean science community will EVEER have.
IODPs previous ships (or rather, ODP, its predecessor oceandrilling.org ) were not able to drill in areas of the continental margin that might have contained oil deposists. It is actually pretty dangerous - if you hit a gas deposit, the density of the water can be reduced to the point that the ship loses bouyancy and sinks - almost instantly.
As a result of safety concerns related to this, IODP was unable to drill in some very enticing (i.e. data rich) environments. This new vessel will allow them to drill pretty much anywhere, which should greatly increase the available database. IODP research is focussed largely on earth dynamics, paleontology, paleoclimate/climate change, and stratigraphy. Oil is near the bottom of the list - as previously mentioned, the oil companies already have better data. Researchers interested in oil are typically working elsewhere.
90% Professional Slacker
This is why I will ask you to VOTE GREEN TODAY.
This kind of immense subsidy of the destructive Oil-based economy must end.
The Green Party proposes a (modest IMHO) $0.10 per L (phased-in over 3yrs(again, very modest) to help ease canada away from an Oil-based economy to something more sustainable. Wind. Solar. Other(?) --- OR --- keep paying to subsidise the oil industry in THIS and MANY other ways... for instance, Hibernia and TerraNova were financed by the feds, how much do we spend a year on roads, hospitals treating road injuries, insurance, insurance litigation, air pollutin, sprawl, obesity, mining etc etc etc the auto industry and its partner oil industry require that we spend billions of dollars a year (in canada alon) of public money -- not to mention what you, the citizen spends on this behaviour -- for what? ultra convenient personal transport? un-f-ing real.
The Oil/Auto Industries running our culture to make irresponsible/unsustainable/expensive/stupid decisions must end.
The first step: Making people recognize the unbelievable REAL costs of these two industries. Support the Greens, vote to RAISE gas prices.
...but the IODP is not about the exploration for hydrocarbons. Its about planetary research. One of the bonuses of this new vessel is that it can better withstand the elements of ACCIDENTALLY drilling into gas reservoirs making it better suited for exploration drilling on ocean slopes. This is definitely NOT about oil and gas. You mods should RTFA before marking up completely off topic comments about US energy consumption and oil as interesting and insightful.
NMG
In case some of you didn't RTFAs, I'd like to point out that these scientific drilling programs have almost nothing to do with finding oil (the marine scientists leave that to the oil companies for the most part). Instead they are about understanding geologic processes that take place on the ocean floor.
On land, you can usually find a natural outcrop or a quarry or a mine to walk up to and examine the history of the Earth's crust in that area. Sometimes you even get hints to what's going on deeper in the mantle. On the seafloor, deep sea drilling is one of the key ways to get at the same kinds of information. What are the different layers in the crust, and how would they look on a seismic profile? Where do the sediments come from? What can they tell us about past climate change? Did higher temperatures or different atmospheric chemistries get recorded in the shells of oceanic micro-critters? How does fluid move through the crust, and how does that affect the hydrothermal vent communities that live on mid-ocean ridges in extreme conditions (300 degrees C, wierd water chemistries)?
Scientific drilling has very very little to do with extracting fossil fuels and a lot to do with figuring out how the Earth works.
I lived with solar power and battery banks for a number of years. It's just not that hard and it can be costed out better. I've posted on it before several times here, like for instance, instead of buying the expensive batteries with SOLARPOWER labels slapped on them that most of the dealers sell, just go to the local forklift dealer and get a forklift battery pack. MUCH cheaper amp hours per dollar then..there's other tips and tricks, too, it's doable from a grand on up to any size you feel like.
Sorry about the inefficient design of your night time electrical purchase, it does sound like a bummer, but that's a design flaw particular to your instance, it doesn't negate the concept, and many places ARE suing the concept now, just not enough. Perhaps just an OFF switch might have worked in that design. It certainly sounds screwy though.
To get back to the nightime electric angle, the basic reality is true, at night all over the world power plants have excess juice,they don't just start up and shutdown plants on demand, that takes weeks to do that with new huge plants, they just fire em up and let em go basically, only shut them down for maintenance. Think of them more like servers, when at night they are just serving to dev/null instead of out to legit requests and it makes more sense. And we all PAY for that excess capapcity, because of our useage deamnds, which are totally skewed to peaks during the day. And in a lot of cases it's just pure wasted, because we have no widely installed ways to store that electricity to use during the day. I've mentioned several times here that it's a GREAT way to have a practical UPS system for the average homeowner, something that will run a lot of your normal stuff even besides your computers, and also give you a decent backup of power stored in case of temporary outtages from storms, etc. Just get a charge controller/inverter rig, tie it in with a battery bank, then see if you can get cut a deal from your local electrico to charge it at night, for a reduced rate. The controllers/chargers/inverters I have used have easily programmable settings, when to charge, how much, etc. And it's scalable, once you have a "smart" way to get and use your juice,instead of the normal "dumb" way like most people have, you can start adding on your own production, with wind or solar. Most alternative energy guys in the US use both, that's called a hybrid system, because in the winter you get more wind, in the summer more light, and using both of them gives you a nice spread over the year. And you still have the normal grid supplied, the first way, if you want it, that's 3 sources total. You can even add in a fuel generator to that mix if you want, so you have 4 sources of input. That's CHOICE, rather than remaining tied only to bigco/government monopoly and the dumb way of using it.
My bottom line is, we can complain, or do something about it. I choose to do something. I done did it. I don't own a plasma screen TV or a brand new game machine though. Choices.
As to the trailer idea, I haven't seen it, it might exist but I don't know, just seemed a completely obvious idea to me, but gas/electric hybrid cars are common now, I live out in the stix in southern bubba land, even here I see them now, dude down the street just got a prius I notice, it's sitting in his driveway. You can't wait for this "they" guy to do it, to actually gwet the stuff, "anyone YOU" got to do it before WE all do it and it's comon and we have helpoed solve the problems. It's just like early computers, if all of us waited for the other guy to get one, where would we be now? Wait for ther government version of the peecee, or just lease one from bigco? Nope, took actual humans just deciding that computing for the masses was a good idea, that they wanted to own and control their own computer. To me, "energy for the masses" is a good idea, and it's a good idea to help break up the monopoly, to introduce better ways of using the monopoly grid juice as it is now, and for having millions more points of prod
They're going to drain the sea by drilling holes through the bottom. Christ...this website is getting worse with FUD every day.
I shave my beard you insensitive clod!
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
"skrewyu"?
Huh?
We aren't going to run out. Yes, it will become more rare. And prices will go higher and higher. But we won't run out. The reason for this is that we can get oil from various places, but it is too expensive to be worth it now. Kind of like offshore rigs used to be too expensive but are now common. When oil prices go up you can expect oil to be drilled in very expensive places and for lots of alternatives to be developed (synthetic lubricants and things like biodiesel).
I really don't think that readers from Japan, Germany, the UK, or indeed most of the other countries on that list have had their "tax dollars" used to pay for this ship.
Their tax yen, euros, and pounds, perhaps...
hey,troll,YO, we use ALL of the above, or maybe you never been here to see it. We use nukes, coal, oil, natgas, hydro, wind, solar, and some others like methane cogeneration, etc. We got it all here, I'd just like to see more of the advanced designs and techniques become more widespread, in all aspects of how we use energy, and to have more points of production, because of several reasons, number one being it's better for national security, and it's better for the consumer to have more control and more choices. And we have a thriving and growing private alternate energy market as well. I got solar, you? What are YOU doing personally to help yourself and help your nation? Playing video games? Going to bars? Huh?
Just even reducing consumption (if that's all you do) doesn't go near as far as reducing consumtion AND adding to the overall energy pool. So what are you doing about it? Just sitting back with a thumb in your mouth and letting nanny government and daddy big company run your life, tell you what to do?
I'm the first one to cast a stone on some topics,including strange weird political happs in my nation and it's business and political leaders and processes, because I live here and that's part of civic duty and stuff, but I walk the talk, too, BEFORE I cast the stone, and I at least offer some alternatives to what I think needs to be changed for the better.
The USA is WAY to big to just think we are all "the same" here.
"Its thrillin' when we are Drillin'"
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Where are they when you need them?
Parent poster has no clue what he's talking about.
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Energy payback estimates for rooftop PV systems are 4, 3, 2, and 1 years: 4 years for systems using current multicrystalline- silicon PV modules, 3 years for current thin-film modules, 2 years for anticipated multicrystalline modules, and 1 year for anticipated thin-film modules. With energy paybacks of 1-4 years and assumed life expectancies of 30 years, 87% to 97% of the energy that PV systems generate will be free of pollution, greenhouse gases, and depletion of resources.
check it out:
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1
So you can imagine that when I had heard about Project Mohole (c 1960) to dig a really deep hole, I thought it had to be the neatest thing. Thing is, Brown and Root burned through all of the money and Congress pulled the plug. But I heard the Russians are into digging really deep holes.
Hope they have better luck this time.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fthagn n'gaa gl'abbwrng uglw. Gh-a lugmw'wu nchl'a-a elrg, naphlagg-wa gnpug'lna.
In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming o squid of negotiable affection. Suddenly he wakes up with a huge fucking metal rod up his tendril.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
Recent studies of forest materials in Alaska and the release of CO2 as a result of naturally-occurring forest fires have shown that a tremendous amount of C is locked up in this material, and released during these fires. This included 'peat' fires, which can burn large areas underground for years. Much of this carbon was locked up long before the dawn of the industrial age. Where did it come from?
As a geologist, I can tell you that there have been times in the history of the Earth when the composition of the atmosphere (and the climate) was very different than it is today. The Earth is dynamic, and the rule is Adapt or Perish.
And here's a company that is exploring oil alternatives: Green Fuel Project, quoted in relevant part: "Alaska's Beluga coal-field about 60 miles southwest of Anchorage, is believed to be the world's largest low sulfur coal-field located on year-round open tidewater with over 2 billion tons of proven reserves, which is ideal for Silverado's commercial scale demonstration plant. The application of Hydrothermal treatment to coal from Alaska's Beluga coal-field has already been demonstrated at a pilot plant scale showing that this coal can be converted into premium, stable liquid fuel with energy levels of over 7,000 Btu/lb on a cost-effective basis."
-cp-
Why do most of you focuss on the economic benefits of such an operation, instead of on the scientific aspect of it? The first deep sea drilling program was the trigger for the wide acceptance of the sea spreading and thus also the plate tectonics theory, which, at first sight, don't have economic value. But it meant a huge step for geological research and all kinds of prospection.