Tech | June 30, 2010 | 17 comments

End Gulf Oil Spill With ‘Mother of All Bombs’ (Updated)

source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/marine-techie-end-the-oil-spill-with-the-mother-of-a...

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Omnomynous
The Marine Corps’ most (in)famous technologist has a solution for the Gulf oil spill: Blow the crap out of it, with the Mother of All Bombs.

Over the past decade, no one in the Corps has been more creative, more persistent and more migraine-inducing in his pursuit of warfighting gadgetry than Franz Gayl. Some of his ideas were rock-solid, like small spy drones and bomb-resistant trucks. Eventually, the Pentagon bought tens of thousands of the trucks, due in large part to his agitating and whistleblowing efforts.

Other concepts of his were more fringe: oribiting troop transports, super-strength exoskeletons, laser guns that could roast insurgents alive.

Now Gayl, a civilian scientist (semi-) employed by Quantico, may have come up with his most dramatic idea yet: Use a 21,000-pound megamunition to generate a king-sized shock wave that would force those leaking pipes on the seabed shut.

Deploying the GBU-43 MOAB — known as the “Massive Ordnance Air Burst” or “Mother of All Bombs” — would be “proven, safe and ‘green,’” Gayl tells our pal David Axe, of War Is Boring. The bomb consumes all its own fuel, after all. And it’s not a nuclear weapon, like the one the Russians allegedly used to shut down out-of-control wells. If there are no MOABs to be had, Gayl adds, a Vietnam-era Daisy Cutter will do just fine.

Either one … can be enclosed in a simple pressure shell, that is augmented with several tons of liquid oxygen canisters, and lowered to just a few meters above the leaking well head. An oxygen-enhanced MOAB or Daisy Cutter detonated at a water depth of 5,000 feet will indeed have an interesting effect on all the well-related plumbing and equipment that is above, at, and slightly below the sea floor…. The exploding MOAB or Daisy Cutter would have an incredible implosive-sealing effect on oil plumbing within the immediate vicinity of the detonation.

Gayl’s active, active mind hasn’t stopped looking for ways to bring technology to bear to solve the most intractable problems. Nor does he limit himself by exploring the implications of those solutions. For instance: what would happen if the Mother of All Bombs went off-target at the bottom of the Gulf?

UPDATE: Gayl sends along this handy set of slides, depicting how the MOAB vs. spill operation might work.
  1. groups:
    Community,   News and Politics,   Tech
  2. tags:
    Gulf Oil Spill,  Solution,  MOAB,  End The "Spill" Now
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17 comments // End Gulf Oil Spill With ‘Mother of All Bombs’ (Updated)

  • iamaman
    • +2
      iamaman  

    • you are all naive!!! MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast) can't work under water!

      "Thermobaric explosives rely on oxygen from the surrounding air, whereas most conventional explosives consist of a fuel-oxygen premix (for instance, gunpowder contains 15% fuel and 75% oxidizer). Thus, on a weight-for-weight basis they are significantly more powerful than normal condensed explosives. Their reliance on atmospheric oxygen makes them unsuitable for use underwater or in adverse weather, but they have significant advantages when deployed inside confined environments such as tunnels, caves, and bunkers."

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon

      http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm

    • 1 year ago
  • TheEmpireGuy
  • Saladin
    • 0
      Saladin  

    • Someone please the explain the physics of this to me.

      You have a deep underwater chasm under enormous pressure that now has a hole in it.

      And....you're going to stop this hole....by blowing it right the fuck up? How does that "seal" the hole? Wouldn't it just obliterate the entire fucking sea floor and make the hole even bigger?

      Even if it did seal it, what guarantee is there that it can even get down there? Even if it could do that, what guarantee is there that a massive underwater explosion won't cause structural weakness somewhere else? Wasn't the problem with this hole that there were cracks that went unrepaired which collapsed? Wouldn't a 22 kiloton bomb cause some motherfucking cracks to appear?

      If there aren't answers to these questions, then the idea is fucking stupid. Dumber than anything suggested so far.

      If there are answers to these questions, then go for it I guess.

    • 1 year ago
  • cabinettags
    • 0
      cabinettags  

    • I'm no scientist, but this strikes me as foolhardy. Sounds like it would work - probably would. But my concern wouldn't be who to blame if it doesn't; my concern would be what happens if this makes it worse?

      Who to blame is a point. With our full cooperation, BP would be able to wiggle a little on the hook - spread that responsibility around a bit.

      But if this were to blow a bigger hole than the one we have, we could kill the ocean. We should think about this a bit.

    • 1 year ago
  • 2hellnwait
    • 0
      2hellnwait  
    • cabinettags:

      It's a runaway situation now. Without a physical means to actually get to the bottom to plug it with enough mass or to re-divert it into a capture receptacle that can channel the oil flow into a transmission pipe line, this could on for decades. . . if it does not work, I think we will be no worse off.

    • 1 year ago
  • cabinettags
    • 0
      cabinettags  
    • 2hellnwait:

      That this is major league bad is a given. But a powerful explosion to pound the leak with down pressure? I'm simply not competent to judge. How well does rock pound? Anybody know how much pressure we're trying to plug? If you think of this oil field as a big balloon with a hole in it, it makes a difference how big the sucker is. It sure sounds risky to me. Should we try chancy methods, or are they all chancy? I think we need to give some long thought before we try something that runs the chance of worsening the situation.

    • 1 year ago
  • 2hellnwait
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  

    • got nothin to lose right now, just do it, seal the gusher, end the worst enviornmental disaster since chernobyl

    • 1 year ago
  • Omnomynous
    • +4
      Omnomynous  

    • This would work, in fact I heard Bill Clinton I believe it was on "Democracy Now" yesterday giving an interview to some other news organization proposing a real similar if not the same solution.

      Science backs this theory, between the military and BP (who has the drilling equip) this could get it done effectively relatively quickly.

      Why Obama and his pet Nobel Laureate haven't come to this conclusion yet is beyond me.

      I'd hate to speculate but I'd be hard pressed to accept an answer other than continued greed as to why it's still leaking.

      Say what you will but the cleanup will be a little harder to accomplish than reforming Bush era policies, and I'm sorry fixing it has fallen on Obama's watch and he's beyond dropped the ball.

    • 1 year ago
  • KSirys
  • treewolf39
  • KSirys
  • liveroadkill
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  
    • KSirys:

      It seems to me that BP would be relieved of further liability and the American tax payer would then be responsible. This may be the case anyway. This is one bad science experiment!

    • 1 year ago
  • dragon1984
  • Omnomynous
    • 0
      Omnomynous  
    • treewolf39:

      Good point, and technically it's only a hypothesis.

      This is why we have physicists, mathematicians, & other scientists who could most likely figure out exactly how to do it with a way lower probability of failure than what BP is offering.

      Something could go wrong though, and it would be a high price to pay, but it already is a high price.

      It's just stressful, a lot of people are loosing sleep over this crap, myself included, and I believe all the risks could be calculated and this idea could work.

    • 1 year ago
  • treewolf39
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