Is this photo Deepwater's smoking gun?

reply to post by nikiano

Why would it have smoke around it? The metal of the deck would melt and burn, falling inward. The lighter area is the remaining exposed metal, the coating around the hole burned away from it.

reply to post by A-E-I-Owned-You


I guess I did presume it was leaking from the start, fueling the fire.

I was sleeping/working when this happened, so I was unable to watch it take place and such.

Having worked on ships for the last 15 years the worst thing you can do with fire on a ship is throw a lot of water at it. If that water doesn't drain off quickly it changes the center of gravity of the ship and causes stability issues. That's why it capsized. Look at the rig supply ships just pouring it on. Those water canons pump around 2000 gals/min x 5 and that's a lot of water.

These rigs have a lot of lube oil storage tanks scattered around the deck for various equipment it's possible one of those could be under the helipad and just melted it and the weight of the dripping aluminum made it buckle inwards.


That photo does lead to some interesting possibilities and conspiracies.

This will be an epic disaster there is no doubt about that. Fishing industry in the gulf will take a beating. Stock up on seafood now if you like it. Prices are going to shoot through the roof.

reply to post by spirit_horse


I see what you say makes sense. It wasn't a radio show, though, it was television news, and I think they verified or knew who the caller was, seemed they had spoken at times in the past.

But yes, I can see trying to save the rig. I wish I had been able to watch it live and know more about it as it unfolded.

I do have another question though. Didn't they say they were awaked from sleep by an explosion? How many men would have been awake and about? Half the crew asleep, the other half working, or...?

reply to post by DEEZNUTZ

Having worked on ships for the last 15 years the worst thing you can do with fire on a ship is throw a lot of water at it. If that water doesn't drain off quickly it changes the center of gravity of the ship and causes stability issues. That's why it capsized. Look at the rig supply ships just pouring it on. Those water canons pump around 2000 gals/min x 5 and that's a lot of water.

Right, that was one of the things the oilman from Canada said on the news, that the water actually caused it to capsize.

If the fire burnt the surface of the helipad, why didn't it burn the entire surface? Since when is fire so selective that it makes a hole in just one section and does not continue to burn a hole in the remainder of the material?

A laser weapon which burns through steel mounted on an aircraft. I wonder if these laser weapons could be mounted onto a helicopter as well?

Well, I suppose anything is possible until ruled out. The X-37B did have a classified payload and mission/objective......

reply to post by SphinxMontreal

Because the fire was extinguished in that area before it burned more of the deck?

The melting point of aluminum is about 660 degrees C and the vaporization point is about 2325 degrees C. Oil (refined fuel oil) has a burn temperature of about 2000 degrees C so I expect raw light sweet crude would be a little lower, say by about 10% (just a guess) so around 1800 degrees C.

www.engineeringtoolbox.com...
en.wikipedia.org...

If the hole in the helipad was directly above a combustion source, yes, the aluminum would have melted, but not vaporized.

However, if the melt temperature is 660 C, then the concentration area for the combustion would have been in a column (from the scale of the images) about 2 feet wide and 10 feet long to produce a melt area that large. It makes one wonder why there would be such a small area of intense heat and if it wasn't that way, why didn't the whole helipad melt?

Seems a bit odd to me...

Cheers - Dave

[edit on 5/2.2010 by bobs_uruncle]

reply to post by Libertygal


Yes, at $1.5 million a day, they work 24/7 so a shift was on duty working when the blowout occured. A blowout is caused when you hit a gas pocket, and in this case at at least 70,000 PSI it blew right through all the valves, blowout preventer, etc and the natural gas exploded when it hit the atmosphere and decompressed, oxidized, and probably there was plenty of sources of ignition around a rig of that size.

I do concur that the capsizing was probably a case of the water from them fighting the fire filling the ballast tanks. If you want to read about the pressures, etc of what they are facing, read the response to this article by Paul Noel for Pure Energy System News pesn.com...

reply to post by spirit_horse


Wow fascinating link, thank you for that!

So, from what that website says, it is the pipe that is leaking, bent over, and has leaks in two other spots, so not directly from the seafloor itself? I think I understood that to be the case, so why not some of the suggestions I have heard, like the Canada oilman again suggested, filling it with cement or mud?

The idea of using a nuke would be crazy, IMO, especially if this reserve is as huge as they think it is, and goes beneath the southeastern seaboard of the U.S.

One would think that could set off a chain type of reaction undergoumd, and that would potentially be horrific. I do not pretend to know the first thing about how a nuke would react underwater, and in one of the largest reserves ever found, but it just screams rad flags at me.

I also heard this well wasn't producing/in production yet, so why would it have any effect on gas prices at all?

One last question, when I heard the news about them finding the biggest reserve ever found, in the gulf, this is the one?

Thanks again for the link, that's a great page.

Originally posted by SphinxMontreal
A laser weapon which burns through steel mounted on an aircraft. I wonder if these laser weapons could be mounted onto a helicopter as well?

Laser weapons require volume for energy storage and a generator. Most lasers at best are in the area 15%-20% efficient if they are supercooled to below -165 degrees C. Whether it's a chemical/gas laser or a semiconductor stacked heterojunction array (RCA Class IV type), they still require huge amounts of power. A single 1080 wprf Class IV semiconductor laser runs at 400v@25amps with a duty cycle of only 1% at room temperature, or 40% at < -200 degrees C. So, 10kw to get about 1100 watts or actually around 400w/sec. So, you see, huge power requirements. Now you have to be able to make the required power for a megawatt unit (1000 times more energy required or 10megawatts) and then you have to be able store that energy and deliver it within less than 1 millisecond to 1 microsecond depending on propagation delays and firing rates. So you can't use batteries for storage (to slow), you have to use semiconductor thin film super-capacitors made of material like barium titanate.

There is no way this would fit into a helicopter, you need something close to the size of a DC9 aircraft or larger to accommodate all the equipment.

There are some super-capacitors available with sufficient energy transfer rates, both charge and discharge, but then you also need a generator capable of generating those charge currents and voltages with equivalent delivery times. The technology exists but it is cumbersome. I've played with both very large laser arrays and 200kw continuous beam lasers/ring lasers (Litton Systems). With the Litton units, they are only 200kw, but cut right through 2" of metal no problem, the controls are stored within a few 19" racks that are 6 feet high, but the rub is the energy input. You have to be attached, if I remember right, to about 500amps @ 11kvolts (I didn't do the wiring I just fired them and looked at adaptive magnetics to spread the beams, we had two of them). Now that's about 5 megawatts, try and put that in semi with all the supercap banks and cryogenics (where required), let alone a helicopter.

BTW, anything over about 5-10 milliwatts / sq mm can cause retinal heating and blindness, so don't try this at home ;-)

Cheers - Dave

[edit on 5/3.2010 by bobs_uruncle]

someone at Rumor Mill has done a lot of research into aluminum helipads:

I did a search on
"can aluminum helidecks burn" and found that they do NOT burn......many tests have been done.

lots of links...

reply to post by loam


When dealing with the world's largest oil reserve and largest natural gas pocket, you don't need a laser or bomb.

The pressure was too much, they were drilling on the edge of this pocket of gas, when the explosion occurred. They have to get through the gas to get to the oil.

reply to post by Libertygal


Well, one problem if that it is almost a mile beneath the water line (5,000ft. approximately). No humans can work at that depth and they have been trying with ROV's. In that article, the sheer pressure, which is now fracturing rock and blasting it out of the pipe, would just blow out whatever you tried to seal it with. That is why they are talking about drilling relief wells, which could take weeks, to months, because they have to bring in another MODU and drill in the area and intersect the well that is leaking (I don't recall the depth they have to drill to, seems like 18,000 ft below the sea floor but I could be way off) and then inject heavy liquid to hopefully shut it down. And trying to use ROV's to work the wreckage of the pipe, etc is about impossible. They have been trying to close the valves on the blow out preventer for the last couple of days through a special port the ROVs can attach pumps to to hydraulically close the valves, but have failed at that task. If you ever see shows on TV using ROVs isn't very easy. When you push it also increases force on the ROV. It isn't like a shallower well where they can go down in suits and work. It is a real nightmare senario. One problem is that they were supposedly cementing in the casing. That is the wells steel liner. If wasn't complete and there hasn't been much time for the cement to set. With the pressures that are coming out of the pipe, which is now fracturing rock and sending it up the pipe blowing out more holes, it could theoretically blast the whole well casing out of the hole leaving a full open hole to the formation. Then all bets are off. If an explosion of some type didn't work, it could literally blast oil and gas out for many years killing all the oceans, and eventually probably the biosphere since the oceans play a huge roll in taking in carbon dioxide, water evaporation for rain etc. It is a huge nightmare with all the best scientists, engineers, etc working on it. However, as we can see, they are up against a wall because this wasn't supposed to happen at this level. When they tapped that formation so deep under the ocean floor, with all that water pressure bearing down, it came out at enormous pressure blowing up one of the largest rigs built. If the rock fracturing causes the pipe (well casing) to come out, the fracturing could eventually lead to a ocean floor collapse into the formation and that would be all she wrote. It may take a while to happen, and I am sure that they will escalate attempts to stop it untill they are at the last one or two choices, if it gets that far. Have a look at this map:
http://(nolink)/2010/04/30/oil-spill-hit-gulf-stream-east-coast/

[edit on 3/5/10 by spirit_horse]

Here is an article you should be aware of.
Leaked Memo Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 Could Leak over 1,000,000 Gallons Oil Per Day
http://(nolink)/2010/04/30/classified-document-gulf-oil-spill-2010-leak-1000000-gallons-oil-day/
Edit to add:

This was Thurs. now we are at 100,000 barrels a day or 4.2 million gallons a day if I got the math right on the gallons. But, it the article it states the "well is deteoriating rapidly". That is not good and why they are hiding reports already is a bad omen.


Edit to correct math

[edit on 3/5/10 by spirit_horse]

reply to post by CommonSenseRules

The testing seems to be for helicopter fuel spills on top of the the deck, not the kind of fire seen in the images.

To summarize the fire issue in simple terms: either you have a fire on top of the deck or below the deck. The Astech® Enhanced Safety helideck deals with a surface fire better than a steel or any other type of helideck does, as explained above. If you have a fire below deck, then the thermal response of steel or aluminum cannot be assumed merely by the extrapolation of generic data relating to small shapes in furnaces. If the fire is of a minor nature, it will not affect either type of deck. If it is of a major nature, then it is impossible to predict which type of helideck will suffer most.

aluminium-offshore.com...

reply to post by spirit_horse


Thanks again for the links, I had seen the memo link from the first page, it sure says a lot, doesn't it?

Also, thank you for your patience in answering my questions. I didn't intend to clutter the thread up, but it is hard to look at a pic like the OP and not have a million questions.

Hopefully there were other readers that you replies helped, as well.

So, in reference then to the OP, I guess I would ask who would use lasers, and why? To make a manufactured crisis? If that's the case, did it get way out of hand?

I can now understand all of the pressure behind the explosion, but it still doesn't explain the inward blown appearance of the pad.

Also, the claims about a supply boat with all new personel on it? Any substantiation to that claim? Did they get out alive?

The whole thing never felt right to me, from the start, so I am willing to look at all angles, but I guess I would like someone to expound more on the lasers thing?

who likes to inhale fumes
animals do not like

reply to post by spirit_horse


There really isn't a way to stop this kind of thing is there? So there we are, world destroyed by the oil. We knew it would eventually happen.