Flying a Multi-Engine Glider

August 26th, 2010

If something critical quits working, switch to the backup, right?

If the backup quits, switch to its backup. So far so good.

If that quits, thank goodness you had Plan C ready to go.

So, what do you do if Plan C doesn’t work?

That was my dilemma today. The morning began with a discovery that the e-mail system at my office went offline during the night. Let me tell you about e-mail from the business owner’s point of view. I started out “hosting” e-mail on our own server computer in the office. We would lose e-mail when the power went out so I switched to a bigtime “hosting” company that promised 24/7 reliability.

They broke down bigtime overnight. A day later, still offline. Their emergency website says they are working “diligently” to  fix it. Deadlines come and go. But no problem, right? I still have my server. Plan B for Backup is to just switch e-mail back onto our own equipment.

At mid morning the power failed in our office. No, not our office, the whole building. No, not the building, the entire east side of River City. The power company reports it is working diligently to fix it. Deadlines come and go.

But no problem we have Plan C. We grab the laptops and everybody heads to my house. I have a wireless network. Our computers are configured to work anywhere. Off we go.

Thwarted again! The computers can all detect the wireless network at home but cannot connect to it. I call our I-T consultant who actually drives over to the house. Even he is stumped. We try one computer after another, delving deep into the innards of wireless configurations and properties.

By now we are laughing. What else can you do? The problem is finally solved by installing a new wireless network router. My old one apparently stopped working. The smallest things can make the biggest difference.

So here it is 3:45 in the afternoon and we can finally get some work done. Check the e-mail. Hmm, no joy there. Oh well.

But here in our house with the team tapping away there is a high, happy spirit. We popped and downed a bowl of popcorn and made what progress we could do against extraordinary odds. Three, independent systems failed on the same day. What are the chances of that?

Non-pilots think that multi-engine aircraft carry the extra powerplants as a backup. If one fails, the other one picks up the slack (so people imagine.) The truth is that each engine typically provides enough thrust to keep the plane in the air for a while but the aircraft needs them all in order to be fully maneuverable. When one goes out, it is time to start heading toward an airport with maintenance facilities.

When they all lose power then you are operating a multi-engine glider. Time to pick out the smoothest place you can see and go land there.

We felt like salmon swimming upstream through swift, opposing currents, waterfalls, and hungry bears. What did we do with our powerless day? We landed, got out, had a laugh and some popcorn, figured out something to do.

That’s what you do when all plans fail: get your feet back on the ground and go from there.

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TravelCat

July 18th, 2010

We just completed a ten-state driving tour with our cat, Savannah. Learned three things:

  1. Make reservations ahead of time with hotels that do accept pets.
  2. Cats will “hold it” a long time in a car. Like ten hours.
  3. If they really need to go before you stop (like, sixteen hours,) they will use a litter box in the car. Thank goodness.

We equipped ourselves with a collapsable cage that folds out to the size of an efficiency apartment regrigerator. In hotel rooms where we stayed for several days, we put her in the cage when we were out of the room. That way the housekeeping staff could clean the room without fear she would escape.

We provided her food and litter box in the cage at all times so being in there did not inconvenience her. When we were in the room we let her out of the cage and put a pillow on top of it with a view out the window. She liked to lay up there.

It was our first time to travel with a cat. Won’t be the last.

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El Ka-Bomma

June 9th, 2010

The U.S. president went on American television Tuesday morning to show how tough he is. The famous quote from that interview has him musing aloud concerning “whose ass to kick” over the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hardly presidential-level terminology. That phrase could well stick to him, in that special place presidents have for sticky phrases like, “I am the Decider” and “…the meaning of Is…”

By the end of the day Wednesday it was pretty clear that he was targeting the oil company in charge, and going after it with the full force of destructive political prosecution. A vendetta against the largest employer in the U.S. energy industry, orchestrated at the highest levels of government.

It is an overwhelmingly alarming thought. I so hope I’m wrong about it that I sought solace in caricature. I picture the president as a character in those old Hanna-Barbera cartoons on prime time TV in the 1960s, “El Ka-Bong”.

This jaunty, well-meaning figure traveled the byways of yore with an out-of-tune acoustic guitar. Whenever he accosted evil-doers he would cry, “Ka-Bong!” and bring the instrument down on their heads in a clang of jarring notes.

Not that it did any good, of course. El-K usually made things worse by his exertions. That was the butt of the joke.

Things are moving pretty fast now in the pursuit of the Gulf Gusher guilty. Our president declares himself out to clout somebody—the bigger the better—and soon!

Unfortunately, good things seldom result when people act hastily. I could suggest a whole bunch of reasons for him to cool it, starting with his sworn oath to uphold the Constitution with its right to due process of law. That, not revenge, is his overarching duty.

It weakens him to show how easily he can be drawn into hasty action out of indignation and political impatience. I expected better when I voted for him.

But there he goes, El Ka-Bomma with the Guitar of Government held high, looking to bash a global energy company. Not a pretty sight. Reminds me of Chicago-style politics, which is no surprise I guess.

What bothers me is that he risks breaking the company before it can fix the well. How would that help matters?

The oil company he seems bent on destroying is foreign-based. This means his actions could look more harmful than helpful in other countries, for example, Britain. There is a friend our country can ill afford to alienate. Do you know what Britain spends to keep its troops in Afghanistan? We should hope he thinks about that very carefully.

He sets himself up to look silly someday when some other terrible thing happens, perhaps an international incident, and he fails to pursue it with the same vigor. Unfavorable comparisons to his giddy Gusher gallop would inevitably follow. He might come to wish he had not instructed the world how easily to provoke his haste.

The oil well blowout caught the entire oil industry by surprise, and shame on them for that. Twenty-plus years of successful drilling without a major problem left the whole industry with neither a plan to deal with such a disaster nor the hardware on hand to stop it. They get it now—deep wells are dangerous—and it will change how they drill,  hopefully for the better.

But here’s an interesting question. In the global competition for investment capital, legal and political risk gets considered. If the U.S. adopts what amounts to a death penalty for oil companies that screw up a well, then what company would undertake to drill one here when many other opportunities exist elsewhere?

If drilling moves out of the U.S., then what does that signify for employment of U.S. oil workers in the near term, gas prices a few years hence, and American energy independence in the long run?

El Ka-Bong was a fun cartoon. El Ka-Bomma is in deadly earnest. I wish he would lighten up a little right now.

Posted in Gulf Gusher, Political | 1 Comment »

More Than a Lot

June 5th, 2010

Now that they have a seemingly reliable way to capture oil from that runaway well, we can begin to learn just how much has really been coming out of it.

At first, British Petroleum (BP) said it was 1,000 barrels every day. To put that into perspective, it would fill up a swimming pool twenty feet wide by sixty feet long to an average depth of five feet.  

 After a few days they revised the estimate to 5,000 barrels. So dig up the backyard and put four more pools in there.

Other estimates put the rate of flow at 15,000 barrels. That, by the way, would fill an official-size Olympic swimming pool, if the dimensions on Wikipedia can be trusted. Still others estimate it at twice to more than six times even that amount. We will soon know.

The first day they used the new cap to pipe oil to the surface, June 4th, actually brought up 6,000 barrels,  according to BP’s official web site.

I am happy beyond words to know that BP is now able to prevent 6,000 barrels of oil per day from polluting the Gulf of Mexico. That is truly a positive development. If only that were enough.

Look at the live video from the Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) available on BP’s site. Oil and gas continue to erupt out the top and bottom of the cap. That heavy thing jiggles around like the weight on a boiling pressure cooker. 6,000 barrels a day has not much diminished the apparent volume of petroleum and gas escaping into the water.

BP says it will now “optimize” the rate of oil capture. I imagine what they mean is to pump it fast enough to draw up most of the oil without sucking any water into the pipe. If water gets in it would likely freeze rapidly and plug up the works. That would be bad. So they will probably settle for part of it. I wish them Godspeed.

Another apparatus will be wrapped around this first one, if I am reading BP’s information correctly. That second structure will capture some of the oil that gets out of the first one. They might also try using the hoses from the “top kill” to draw more oil up out of the blowout preventer. That would give them three ways to fight the well until they can finally seal it off sometime near the end of summer.

I begin to hope that BP can soon reduce the rate of new oil flowing into the Gulf down to a small fraction of what it was the first six weeks. When they do, we will get a better estimate of how much really spilled into the sea. Based on what we already know, it will have been a lot more than a lot.

By the way, they also “flared off” 15 million cubic feet of natural gas that came up the pipe with the oil the first day. It means they burned it. I calculate that much gas would heat 18,750 homes like ours on a really cold winter day.

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ROV Gets a Grip

June 3rd, 2010

I managed to catch the big moments in BP’s oil gusher campaign the past couple of nights. Tuesday evening, June 1, I stayed up to watch the “CUT” robot hack into the giant “riser” pipe with its diamond-studded band saw. I stayed with it from before it started until it got stuck.

A sense of perspective is in order here. The outlet at the top of the blowout protector is a bit over 18 inches in diameter on the inside, that is a foot-and-a-half or about half a meter. The steel walls make it bigger yet, approaching 21 inches in diameter. You try sawing through a 21-inch steel pipe sometime! Not trivial.

From much experience sawing fallen trees into firewood I learned to drive wedges into the slit the saw makes as it cuts down in. The wedge keeps the slit (called a “kerf”) from pinching shut. Round things like logs and pipes tend to do that. It jams the saw so it will not cut and you cannot get it out. As the saw worked its way farther into the pipe I kept saying to the screen, “Put a wedge in there!” They didn’t, and sure enough it jammed.

It just added to the delay and frustration that has characterized this drama. But I am glad I got to witness the attempt.

BP spent all of Wednesday and the daylight hours on Thursday getting the saw out and removing the pipe by other means.

This evening, June 3rd, Andrea and I watched the remotely operated vehicles (“ROVs”) position the latest contraption designed with hopes of capturing most of the escaping oil and drawing it off to tankers on the surface. If it works it may significantly diminish the pollution going into the Gulf waters.

The thing is a tight-fitting cap with a funnel on top connected to a pipe. It has hoses on it to supply hot water or antifreeze to (hopefully) combat the ice crystals that choked the first crude version of this same idea. It also has a rubber seal around the bottom to reduce leakage and giant valves on top.

Andrea explained to me that they will start with those valves open. Oil and gas will shoot out through the valves. Then, if the pump is able to pull oil up through the pipe, the ROVs would begin to close the valves. More and more would go up the pipe, not into the sea. Seeing the ROVs closing valves would be a clue that the plan was working.

The cap actually went on fairly quickly. Oil and gas squirted in every direction. Then it began shooting out through those valves. Now one of the robots has clamped its mechanical grabber onto the handle of a valve, ready to start turning as soon as the word is passed.

To see the cap in place and the ROV gripping the valve gives my heart a lift. Even if it does work there have been so many disappointing false starts that it will be a day or more before anyone will allow themselves to believe any claim of progress. Yet hope stirs a little at the sight of that daunty ROV gripping that valve.

Now would be a good time for President Obama to pause his incessant gusher of accusations and blame, point his finger at those ROVs and the people operating them, acknowledge their round-the-clock efforts and ingenuity, and remind the world of its positive potential. Time for him to say once more those true and magical words, “Yes we can.”

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Back to Windows

June 3rd, 2010

I try periodically to switch over to using Ubuntu Linux instead of Windows. The attraction is a low purchase cost (linux is “free”) and a desire to learn the technical skills it requires.

But as longtime readers know, I keep bouncing back to Windows because it “just works” better. Once again, boiing! I abandon the free-and-new for the tried-and-true. At least for desktop applications like web browsing and office work.

Linux may be good for server applications, and I will continue learning to use it for that. But too many things just don’t quite work right in the open source software world. Here is an example.

The “OpenOffice.org” (“OOo”) software package is a pretty good substitute for Microsoft Office—up to a point. For basic word processing and spreadsheets you really can’t tell the difference between OOoWriter and Microsoft Word, or OOoSpreadsheet and Excel. I am basing this comparison on OOo 3 and Office 2007. Unfortunately, the presentation and database components of OOo lack considerably compared to PowerPoint and Access. The comparison deteriorates even more rapidly from there if you want to write “macros”.

Microsoft Office provides extensive support for macros via its built-in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), which I find fairly straightforward and easy to use. The built-in “Object Browser” makes all the moving parts accessible in a consistent and straightforward way. By contrast, OOo’s macro-writing language is much more difficult for a non-professional programmer to grasp. There is extensive documentation for it, and I can understand what it says. However, OOo’s own documentation acknowledges that getting the needed level of detail to actually make a workable macro is not possible without the aid of certain “helper programs”.

Because VBA helps me know what I need to do and OOo does not, I Word and Excel anytime I need to incorporate macros into my work. For that reason, Windows wins with me.

Plus, Microsoft supports its products better than the Linux world does, at least in ways that are important to me. Microsoft updates and service packs often actually upgrade the functionality of existing software installations, as when the older Office 2003 programs were upgraded to work with the new Office 2007 file formats. With Linux, the developers tend to put the improvements into the next version of the software. It forces a user to uninstall a program—or an entire operating system—and reinstall the new one in order to get a minor improvement. People will argue with me over what “minor” and “improvement” mean, of course.

One thing that previously drew me to favor Linux over Windows was the availability of programming languages and development environments. I like to write short programs for problem-solving exercise the way some people work crosswords or sudoku. Linux is a software developer’s playground. I always disliked that Microsoft charged big bucks for its programming tools, whereas Linux made them available for free. Then I learned about Visual Studio Express.

Free versions of Microsoft’s core development tools are available for downloading from Microsoft’s web site. These include Visual Basic , Visual C#, Visual C++, and SQL Server. You want to look for the “Express” edition. It’s incredibly easy to write short programs for Windows. It takes me all the way back in memory to my Apple ][ days, but with a modern look.

After a lot of years of displeasure with Microsoft products, I have to say that things have gotten much better. Based on how well they work and Microsoft’s ongoing support through online updates, the price for their operating system and Office software is worth paying, in my opinion. Never thought I would say that.

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No Joy in Mudville

May 31st, 2010

So. The “top kill” failed to quench the runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. What gripping video it was to watch through the camera of a robot submarine as great gouts of mud shot with volcanic force through gashes in that broken pipe. As noted below, they hoped to push enough of that mud down into the well at the same time to seal it off.

No such luck. After three days the decision came: stop the mud; try something else.

Anyone in the world with an internet connection and a love of the Earth has surely watched this drama unfold at some point the past few weeks. What hopes we have shared! What sorrow at the failure of what looked like such a sure-fire solution.

Yes, I know about the probability of failure given at the outset by the executives of British Petroleum (BP), the company responsible for this well and the damage it has done. They said it had a 60% to 70% chance of working. Let’s put that in perspective. Talk baseball for a minute. 70% chance of success means a hitter with a 700 batting average. We think 300 is good, which is just 30% success. They were talking 700.

So many eyes watching. Such confidence when the mighty pumps poured it on. So much hope that this play would bring the victory so earnestly desired by all! But after three days of spectacular fountains of costly mud, no joy. The opposite of joy.

These are the moments that God made poetry for. Thank Heaven, we have a poem for this.  It is that classic baseball poem by Earnest Thayer, first published 122 years ago this week, Casey At The Bat. You can read the whole thing many places online. Here’s a link to one of them: Casey At The Bat on the Baseball Almanac web site.

If you have never read the poem, you should. The Mudville Nine are at home against their arch rivals. They are in trouble, down four to two in the bottom of the ninth with two outs already. But hope rises in the hearts of the multitude. By some miracle they have a man safe on third base and the tying run on second. And now comes Casey, Mighty Casey, Home Run Hero, King Calm himself, to stand beside the plate.

He allows the first two pitches to go by—Strike One! Strike Two!—for no reason except he deemed them unworthy of his ferocious attention. Let the poet take it from there.

They saw his face grow stern and cold,
they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn’t
let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey’s lip,
his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence
his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball,
and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered
by the force of Casey’s blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land
the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere,
and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing,
and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville –
mighty Casey has struck out.

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Applesoft

May 31st, 2010

The name of this post harks back to the good old days when it meant how an Apple ][ computer worked. However we are here to remark on the future, not dwell on the past.

Unfortunately, I use the word these days to mean how Apple Corporation is turning into one of the heedless behemoths of technology it organized originally to compete against. It is becoming like Microsoft. Apple… Microsoft… blurring, blurrrrring, stirrrrrrrrrrring… applesauce… Applesoft!

In fact, on a recent day the total stock market valuation of Apple actually got bigger than Microsoft. When you multiply the number of shares of a company’s stock times the market price per share you get a very large number called “market capitalization.” Imagine if all of the company’s stockholders were willing to sell their shares at that same price. Then the market “cap” is how big a check you would have to write to pay for all those shares and own the whole company.

By that measure, some people apparently think Apple is actually worth more than Microsoft. Maybe so, maybe not. This ain’t an investment blog so no opinions are expressed. Here’s another factoid: according to what I read recently Apple’s total sales of computers, phones, gadgets, music, apps, books, videos and so forth add up to almost as much as Microsoft gets for selling Windows, Office, XBox, search advertising and whatnot.

I make no point about anything in the previous paragraph except to note that Apple is not playing little hero David against the Goliath of Bellevue any longer. Apple has become Goliath in its own right. And it’s acting the part.

For example, consider Adobe Flash. It is a technology used by a very large number of modern web sites (you know those sites with that “Skip the Welcome Screen…” animation? That’s Flash.) Apple decreed that Flash shall not be permitted to run on its iPhone and iPad devices. Nevermind what the customers want, who shell out $$$hundreds to buy one. Apple, standing tall like Goliath above the shopping throng decrees it. Well, I can live without Flash.

But here is something that irks at a deeper level. Apple jawboned to raise the price we pay for so-called “e-books” by 20% or more. The story begins last year, when Amazon was selling its popular Kindle book reader with the proposition that books could be delivered in electronic form for about ten bucks. (Kindle books can be read on a wide variety of devices, including many personal computers, Blackerry handsets and iPhones.)

Then Apple let it be known the coming iPad would be a book reader to compete with Kindle, but with books in a different and incompatible format. Great! you’re imagining. Competition would drive down the price of books! Well, yeah, normally. But you’re forgetting how Goliaths operate.

Apple said it figured to sell a whole lot of iPads, and indicated that e-books ought to cost more like $12 to $15. The publishers would presumably get a big slice of that extra cheese. At least one publisher turned around and said to Amazon, “Look here. E-books should sell for more like $12 to $15.” And in a flash (so to speak) the price of e-books started going up. As I write this, three of Kindle’s top ten best sellers cost $12.99 on Amazon.

That, friends, is how a Goliath deals with his adversaries. Get bigger. Push people around. Grab more. Microsoft did it to Apple ‘way back when. Now, I always cheer for the underdog; unfortunately in this case Apple is turning from underdog into alpha dog into OverDog, and turn about is not fair play from the customers’ point of view.

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Ill Well

May 27th, 2010

That leaking oil well deep in the Gulf of Mexico held its own today against the combined best efforts of human engineering to force it shut. According to the New York Times, the consortium of companies trying to stop the flow was forced to stop its efforts instead.

On Wednesday they hooked up a 33,000-horsepower pump to a tanker holding one million gallons of “mud” and sluiced the heavy stuff down a pipe into the top of the well. They knew that much of it would go right out into the ocean. Sure enough, live video from one of the underwater robots showed huge quantities of goo flying up into the water through every hole it could find in the plumbing down there. I have not seen such spewing waste since the last time I watched Congress pass an appropriations bill.

Their hope was that they could pump it down faster than it would run out. The extra would then push against the oil and gas coming up from below. If enough mud pushed hard enough for long enough it would actually fill up that hole with mud and stop the oil.

On Thursday they stopped the pump for a while. It was not getting the job done. Oil kept coming up through and pouring out into the Gulf right along with all that costly mud.

Late on Thursday the New York Times reported they had started the pump again. A caring person obviously must carry two, somewhat contradictory thoughts in mind at a time like this. First, one hopes for the best. May Heaven grant these efforts success, so that it gets no worse and resources can be turned entirely to the cleanup.

The second thought is to insist that “it must be prevented from ever happening again.” Of course that same sentiment easily morphs into blame, condemnation, and retribution against the oil companies involved.

I want to look for a middle path to travel between hope and blame. This event must shape the global attitude toward energy sources and uses. But in voting countries the solution has to engage people at an individual level. What will it take for that to happen? Now THAT is a question worth pondering. Perhaps I should begin by asking the man in the mirror.

How many people in the developed parts of the world actually know how much fuel they consume individually during one year. That’s right. Nobody. How can “we” hope to “do something” about “our” use of energy if we do not pause to quantify it?

For sure we will not gain against the problem in any lasting way by simply pronouncing condemnation upon the business organizations that undertake to supply our wants. Cast them out we may, but then the supply would shrink and the price rise until it reached a point where some other enterprise would come in to sell us what we demand.

That deep water oil lying so close to the U.S. shoreline will continue to be the most strategically inexpensive source our country has for transportation fuel and raw material for myriad industrial products.

The lessons of this disaster are turning out to be wearily predictable: a combination of human error and insufficient precautions. The first can be addressed through revised operating procedures enforced by vigorous regulation. The latter is an engineering problem, and the engineers are learning a lot from this. I actually look for progress on both fronts.

It has become fashionable among political shouters to invoke the name of Hurricane Katrina for this oil well disaster. I won’t get into the political calculations. But here’s my take on it. Brace yourself. It’s somewhat fatalistic.

This blog started the night before Katrina hurled its furious wind and waves upon the Gulf coast from the Louisiana Delta to the white sands of Alabama. That happened all in a night. They say that oil calms the waters. Maybe so, but this oil menaces the exact same stretch of coastline and it might be calmer in the sense of coming slow but that is all. I remember the satellite photo of the storm. It was huge. Eerily, the swirling oil covers the same waters to the same distant reaches. The comparison is striking when seen from Space. On the ground, history will record and compare enormous losses to people, businesses and communities from both events.

There is one more similarity. After both events the cry went up, “Never again!” But sure as the sun shines hot on Mother Nature’s southern seas, another hurricane will come ashore someday. And sure as human nature discounts long term costs for short term pleasures, we humans will spill more oil into the sea.

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The BP Top Kill Video

May 25th, 2010

As I type this I am watching the live video feed from British Petroleum as their underwater robots unscrew bolts from an oil pipe on their leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico. It is absolutely gripping footage.

You’ll need Windows Media Player. If you are on a Mac, you can still watch the video. Your browser will prompt you to install a free add-in if needed. Here is the link to the official BP video feed:

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html

Live, in real time, they are taking apart a connection between two pipes. As each bolt comes out, a plume of gas erupts from the hole. Whatever it is, the thing obviously connects to the well in some way. I guess they are taking it off so they can connect the hoses for pumping in the ingredients for a  “top kill.” The name refers to plugging a well from above by pushing a slurry of heavy fluids and shredded tires in through the wellhead under great pressure. Once plugged, they seal it with concrete. However, it does not always work.

Just to watch the robot line up an oversize Allen wrench and poke it into the hole on the end of the bolt is amazing. The work takes place in the foreground. Behind it, a gushing curtain of dark oil and bright gas bubbles rises swirling like a tornado in the background.

It helps that I am an amateur scuba diver. The view through the eye of a free-floating robot feels very authentic.  But the deepest I have gone is 140 feet, while this scene is down more than 5,000. There is no way a human could survive in the open water at such depths.

Now the robot goes over to grasp a rope. It pulls a large block out of the mud, a cube of something heavy. It swims back over to where they unscrewed two bolts. There is a platform around the pipe. The cube rests on the platform, the rope extending upward out of the picture. The cube has some cables attached. The robot picks up one of the cables and begins to manipulate it.

The show goes on and on. Will the bolts come out? Will the robot drop the special tool? At a critical moment a billow of oil clouds the screen dramatically. No one can see a thing. I pause to write this after 1 3/4 hours. No Hollywood script could possibly top this reality.

It is ‘way past my bedtime. But man! this is like watching those video feeds of the first Apollo astronauts on the Moon. I remember well the same feeling of exotic connection. (Yes, I am that old. I was already not a kid by then.) The same gee-whiz thrill of watching technology perform in a world impossibly far away from ordinary life.

Count me solidly among the many angry that this disaster befell and frustrated that it is taking so long to choke off the flow. Yet anyone watching this video with honest eyes must see that real effort is being spent to get it done.

BP says it could take two days to complete the top kill procedure — if it works at all. In the process, the flow of oil could actually increase. That means that even though things are happening the job will remain incomplete for another day and might look worse.

I wonder how the news will spin when the sun comes up Wednesday morning.Will it be “BP Making Progress” or “Latest Attempt Fails on First Day”? Both statements would likely be partially true, as far at they went. Trouble is that both would be incomplete. Watching the live feed shows how long things take. Two hours to unscrew four bolts. I’m actually amazed they can do it at all.

In those heady Space Race days we had plenty of worried moments. We are having another right now. The difference is that in those days TV Anchormen like Walter Cronkite were on the air live for every riveting moment. Today, you can watch the story unfold live and see for yourself. But you’ll need a computer and an internet connection because TV and the Anchormen don’t have time for it.

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