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In my Facebook feed today someone had liked something like "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't stop an oil leak?"
But wait, -can- we put a man on the moon? America did it five times between 1969 and 1972. That's nearly 40 years ago now. So if for some reason we absolutely had to put a man on the moon, how long do you think it would take? The oil spill is in what, day 50-something. That fast?
At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities. It has been estimated in 2005 $US (which is close enough enough to 2010 that I'm not going to recalculate it) that cost about $170 billion. It was a -massive- project.
NASA was working on doing it again, but the program was cancelled earlier this year when President Obama said "we've been there before" and set his sights on Mars instead.
~~~
There is one similarity. 5,000 ft (1,500 m) below the ocean might as well be the surface of another planet for us squishy air-breathing surface dwellers, or be it an environment diametrically opposed to that on the moon.
~~~
In all this I'm still waiting to hear the outcry about the use of oil in general, or much attention given to the fact that there must still be about 4000 -other- oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gulf_Coast_Platforms.jpg (2006)
And from http://thes.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/gulf-of-mexico-oil-rigs/
But wait, -can- we put a man on the moon? America did it five times between 1969 and 1972. That's nearly 40 years ago now. So if for some reason we absolutely had to put a man on the moon, how long do you think it would take? The oil spill is in what, day 50-something. That fast?
At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities. It has been estimated in 2005 $US (which is close enough enough to 2010 that I'm not going to recalculate it) that cost about $170 billion. It was a -massive- project.
NASA was working on doing it again, but the program was cancelled earlier this year when President Obama said "we've been there before" and set his sights on Mars instead.
~~~
There is one similarity. 5,000 ft (1,500 m) below the ocean might as well be the surface of another planet for us squishy air-breathing surface dwellers, or be it an environment diametrically opposed to that on the moon.
~~~
In all this I'm still waiting to hear the outcry about the use of oil in general, or much attention given to the fact that there must still be about 4000 -other- oil rigs in the gulf of Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gulf_Coast_Platforms.jpg (2006)
And from http://thes.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/gulf-of-mexico-oil-rigs/
