Oil-Spotting Blimp Arrives In the Gulf

GAMP writes "A Navy blimp to assist oil skimming operations will be arriving to the Gulf Coast Wednesday evening, according to the Unified Command Joint Information Center. 'The airship will operate relatively close to shore, primarily supporting skimmers to maximize their effectiveness,' said US Coast Guard Capt. Kevin Sareault."

Comments

Mmkay

[digitalunity]

That's nice, but will reporters be allowed on board?

Re:Mmkay

[Vintermann]

For sensor equipment, a stable platform is also usually an advantage. Airships are exceptionally stable.

The Zeppelin company had an airship in South Africa a couple of years ago, with sensors to detect gravitational anomalies related to kimberlite pipes - kimberlite is where you find diamonds, of course. Geological survey from an airship, how cool is that?

A blimp?

[oldspewey]

Why does this seem like something that would appear in the plot of a Simpsons or South Park episode?

Re:Wonderful

[ducomputergeek]

Blimps are cheaper to operate then helicopters or fixed wing airplanes. At least manned ones. Not sure if they are cheaper than drones.

Re:Fantastic!!!!

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Heh well I suppose you have a point... wouldn't it be nice if we could do a swap? Have Bush handle this disaster and have Obama handle 9-11?

Blimp details

[girlintraining]

The article doesn't mention that this is the MZ-3. It is currently assigned to Scientific Development Squadron ONE (VXS-1), based out of NAS Patuxent River, MD. It was being tested in Yuma, AZ until its recent assignment to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup efforts. Its crew are contractors from Integrated Systems Solutions, Inc. -- they have a website, but it's too crappy to bother linking here. The crew includes Commanding Officer Cmdr. Chris Janke, Burt Race, a retired Navy pilot, Chief Pilot Peter Buckley, second pilot Russell Mills, and up to five other positions available.

For those of you wondering if reporters are going to be on this blimp -- probably not. It is not a civilian vessel, and space for personnel is at a premium. As well, as a fully vetted and operating Navy aircraft, it also contains military communications equipment. Very little in the way of surveillance equipment has been fitted on the airframe; Weight is a major concern for such a craft.

Re:Fantastic!!!!

[adamdoyle]

People will read that as a troll but it's true, really. Bush is much better suited to deal with oil problems than national security. (he owns multiple oil companies)

Re:Fantastic!!!!

[mswhippingboy]

Bush is much better suited to deal with oil problems than national security. (he owns multiple oil companies)

Right. Oil companies are great at dealing with spills aren't they? I think Moe, Curly and Shemp could've done better than BP has.

Re:Fantastic!!!!

[blackraven14250]

Well, they would've succeeded at sticking their finger in the hole, and having some hilarious hijinks about it getting stuck.

so looking

[nimbius]

at this thing...it doesnt really exude confidence

why aren't we sending these? with much more advanced optics and sensor systems, and the ability to operate autonomously

Remediation Theatre

[bill_mcgonigle]

Why does this seem like something that would appear in the plot of a Simpsons or South Park episode?

Because they're not really trying to clean up the oil leak.

They've rejected the best available technology for cleaning up the oil because the water it returns, in situ, isn't quite pure enough for EPA regulations.

Instead, they're attempting to pump the Gulf of Mexico into ships and cart it to land, for storage and later processing.

It's so absurd it can't be due to ignorance.

Re:Remediation Theatre

[phantomcircuit]

And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained.

Can we please dissolve the unions now?

Re:Remediation Theatre

[nido]

As someone stated the other day in my thread, most of the cleanup efforts are little more than a Public Relations campaign. Skimming has, so far, collected a astonishingly small amount of oil.

Gulf recovery effort falls short of BP's promises: Skimming operations have removed average of less than 900 barrels daily

... In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.

As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

Skimming has captured only 67,143 barrels, and BP has relied on burning to remove 238,095 barrels. Most of the oil recovered -- about 632,410 barrels -- was captured directly at the site of the leaking well.

This is obviously due to the huge disparity between the size of a fishing boat and the vastness of the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm going to pimp my proposal again: Send the Enterprise, use the nuclear reactors to power air compressors that will pump air (oxygen) into the oil plumes in the depths of the ocean. The oxygen feeds the bacteria that eat crude oil.

The Enterprise would be stationed in the vicinity of the Macondo Prospect site (where the Deepwater Horizon went down). Bubble fences would circle the wellhead at, say, 1 mile and 2 miles, or would be concentrated in whichever direction the oily currents tend to flow.

And I was just thinking today: coastal communities could experiment with running bubble fences some distance from their beaches. These compressors could be powered by the grid. Booms seem to be a big joke - look what happened when that little storm blew threw.

All the cleanup efforts are experimental, so the President ought to order at least one aircraft carrier to the Gulf. If it helps, send the rest of the nuclear navy. :)

Re:Remediation Theatre

[Xest]

What do you do about the excess bacteria afterwards? Does the bacteria just magically vanish afterwards taking whatever product they convert the oil into with them?

This solution sounds like Australia's use of the cane toad to protect cane crops, only to end up with a major cane toad problem instead that's killing off the native wildlife.

Re:Remediation Theatre

[Xest]

It doesn't sound suprising. After Hurricane Katrina countries like Cuba offered to help the US too being experts in Hurricane releif seeing as they get them and get hit hardest by them more so than pretty much any other country in the world.

Of course, the US turned the offer of support down.

It's presumably either pride, or political, the saying "Cutting your nose off to spite your face" seems to sum it up best.

Re:Remediation Theatre

[priegog]

...Except by not actually introducing any new species, it is nothing like Autralia's toad problem. When the oxygen stops being pumped, the bacteria return to normal population levels.
Having said that, I somehow very much doubt that even if you shoveled tons of bateria down there and made oxygen readily available, they'd be able to metabolize the millions and millions of gallons of oil that are being released each day. A nice way to speed up ecological recovery once the well has been plugged? Sure. A real solution that will take care of the spill at the required speed when there are monstruous amounts of crude escaping that place every single second? No way. Not by a long shot.

I had being toying with the idea of oxygen bubbles, incidentally (hadn't thought about how to power the air pumps, thanks for that). But in a much more different scenario. Surround the leak with air pumps that inject enormous amounts of oxygen (as much as needed) to create a sort of oil/air/water emulsion, and set the damn thing on fire. After all, that's the way they deal with excess oil/gas in drilling sites on land, right? By just burning it?
I have NO idea how feasible this would be, but what is clear is that that hole needs to be plugged NOW. Why haven't we heard on the news of any new genious plans to make this happen? Do BP and the goverment plan to do NOTHING? Will they start to take the russian approach more seriously at some point (you'd think they have another plan if they are so quick to disregard the only people who have had to deal with with problem multiple times before)?
I'm sorry, but bringing a F$%"ing blimp is a JOKE. What are they doing to SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

Re:Remediation Theatre

[Ihmhi]

What do you do about the excess bacteria afterwards?

That's easy, you just send in oil-eating bacteria-eating bacteria.

Then after that's done, you send in oil-eating bacteria-eating bacteria-eating bacteria.

By the time we get up to needing cats all the mice will have drowned.

Re:Isn't it a little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 'British' oil company has around 60% of its shareholders living in he USA... this has nothing to do with geography of the HQ.

Besides, didn't ALL of the major oil companies have the same emergency plan?

Minor difference between AU and GoM

[zooblethorpe]

It bears pointing out that the cane toad was imported from outside the Australian ecosystem, whereupon it became a runaway success as an invasive species. Meanwhile, the bacteria mentioned here are already present as a natural part of the Gulf ecosystem, and they thus present zero risk of invasiveness.

Mind you, I'm not saying that guarantees there'll be no problems -- I certainly don't know enough to say one way or the other. But we can be reasonably sure that the oil-munching bacteria in the Gulf are safer than the cane toad, simply because they're already there.

Cheers,

Re:Minor difference between AU and GoM

[Xest]

"It bears pointing out that the cane toad was imported from outside the Australian ecosystem, whereupon it became a runaway success as an invasive species. Meanwhile, the bacteria mentioned here are already present as a natural part of the Gulf ecosystem, and they thus present zero risk of invasiveness."

Absolutely, but that wasn't really my fundamental point with the comparison- my point was that if you alter an ecosystem in any way whatsoever it can result in just causing a whole new set of problems.

The other poster responding to me below mentioned that when you stop the oxygen you stop the bacteria and things go back to normal, but that can't happen- the bacteria has to either live or die, if it lives you have an excess of it which may cause problems, if it dies then you're releasing massive amounts of whatever compound these bacteria release when they die into the ocean.

So effectively, whilst yes, bacteria may be able to deal with the oil, all you're doing is exchanging one problem for another (again, hence the cane toad analogy)- I doubt very much a sudden release of dying bacteria is in itself healthy.

Perhaps a better comparison would be with the algal blooms- these often occur when we get too much fertiliser run off from farming into a river, lake or sea, and whilst the algae may well be native to that body of water, the sudden increase in population is devastating for the other wild life there and can even be dangerous for humans- I suspect a drastic increase in oil eating bacteria would be exactly the same.

At the end of the day, unless we can really just turn oil into sea water, picking up as much of the oil as possible and bringing it in shore where we can use it in a slightly less harmful manner probably is the only way to handle the cleanup without completely screwing the environment, albeit in a different way than the oil would. It's a case of separating massive amounts of one substance from massive amounts of another, sure we can change one of the substances, but it's still likely only going to be to something equally problematic that still needs separating.

Unions not oil-soluble.

[zooblethorpe]

Can we please dissolve the unions now?

It appears that the unions are not oil-soluble. Perhaps if we add more detergent to the mix?

Cheers,

Cutting your nose off to spite your face

[zooblethorpe]

That saying works so well to describe American politics in large part because the nose being cut off generally belongs to someone else.

• Financial crisis: someone else's money -- check.
• Gulf crisis: someone else's real estate / livelihood / etc. -- check.
• Middle-east wars: someone else's money / country / population -- check.

This list could go on and on, but the basic idea is that, so long as the ones making the decisions aren't actually accountable and aren't themselves directly inconvenienced, they couldn't really give a rat's ass how messy or slipshod their proposed solution might be. So long as it keeps the gravy train running, it's all good, as far as they're concerned.

Cheers,

At least people ain't dying this time

[SmallFurryCreature]

A dutch marine vessel was not allowed to help during the Kathrine/New Orleans disaster.

The US government is very scared of allowing any foreign aid. The US survives on its people believing that they are the best. Seeing other countries flags displayed dealing with stuff the US itself can't dealwith could upset that.

It might get people to question whether they voted for the right guy or even worse, the right economic policiy. Nothing scares BOTH US parties more then the idea that some Americans might start think Socialism might not be totally evil.

Part of it is also the American attitude of "can do". It works when things are fine but fails when the shit hits the fan. That requires a more EU lookout "life is bleak and we are going to die horribly". Why do ALL EU countries have superior disaster equipment? Because we know we are doomed. The dutch dikes are better then the New Orleans ones because no dutch person believes god has blessed this country (From the weather he seems to be pissing on us most of the time).

What is odd that while the US goverment is always very reluctant to receive aid, they hand it out readily. When the dutch dikes did break in 1953, US helicopters were quick to arrive and start helping people.

US, learn to accept that accepting help is NOT a sign of weakness. Your children won't start smoking pot because some dutch engineers are walking your shores and thinking gay marriage is peoples own affair.

Re:Wonderful

[Vintermann]

I'd worry more about the helium that's wasted in party balloons.