BP oil spill: 'Mystery plumber' may be brains behind containment cap

BP oil spill:

www.csmonitor.com

Six weeks ago, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, received a late-night call from an apologetic "mystery plumber." The caller said he had a sketch for how to solve the problem at the bottom of the Gulf. It was a design for a containment cap that would fit snugly over the top of the failed blowout preventer at the heart of the Gulf oil spill.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on July 17th 2010 by Daughter2]

Something about this story doesn't make sense.


Why would a plumber want to keep their identity a secret? He called at night, so I'm thinking it was at his home or cell, how would he get that number?

Don't you think engineering experts would also know about plumbing? Besides, I don't see anything about the cap that's novel.

Perhaps they are using some type of tech which they don't want released to the public.

www.csmonitor.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Haha.

I laugh because there is a chance that this was actually the Prof's own design.

Perhaps he wanted to help but did not want to do so using his own name (with all the risk that implies; especially for failure) - so he concocted the mystery plumber story.

Or something.

or the plumber, who's idea it was, realized that he did not have the CLOUT to bring his invention to manifestation... so he gave it to the professor to put a PhD behind it before submitting.

Sri Oracle

this dude. he usually works in the shadows, and out of the spotlight.

It was JOE THE PLUMBER
from Ohio.

Originally posted by Daughter2
Why would a plumber want to keep their identity a secret?

Maybe he had an idea that he really thought would help but doesn't like a lot of attention? I would do the same thing.

He called at night, so I'm thinking it was at his home or cell, how would he get that number?

Robert Bea, engineering professor, University of California, Berkeley. (quick advanced google search (all these words)
Home Office:
Ph: 925.631.1587
Fax: 925.631.1587
Found here: www.ce.berkeley.edu...
That may be how.

Don't you think engineering experts would also know about plumbing?

No.
Do you know what engineering is? It's designing something that does not yet exist. If there's no plumbing involved in the final plan, why even think about it?
There are some good engineers out there, but there are no "experts" when it comes to engineering.

Besides, I don't see anything about the cap that's novel.

From the article: "BP has received 300,000 ideas from around the world for how to cap the well after decades-old methods failed."
I'm not an engineering "expert" and never will be. I'm also not currently a plumber. I do, however, have a mind toward engineering, and I have to agree, I also don't see anything about the cap that caught my attention, mainly because I've never seen one before, I didn't see the design specs. compared to previous designs, and I've never been asked to design a new one. But who's to say you need an engineering degree to come up with a good idea??? (Also, what were they paying those engineers for if they couldn't think of anything new for not years, but decades???)

Perhaps they are using some type of tech which they don't want released to the public.

Corexit???
I haven't yet read much on this, but I do believe its use has previously been banned in other nations due to them finding it's effects left them in a pretty $#!II^ situation.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that any problem one runs across, throw minds, not money, at it. One mind gives only one result. Many minds gives many results to choose from.

Who cares where they come from.

I still think we should have just gone with a Gulf-sized net!

If the eager beaver police officer and Harvard Law Professor, who fraudulently got arrested for breaking into his own home, can both have a few sit down beers with the President then I think Obama should bust open a couple bottles of King Louis XIII on an Air Force One trip to Hawaii for the Cal-Berkeley Professor and this so called "mystery" plumber.

If the containment cap is really their idea and if it withstands the crude pressure then I think the U.S. Gov, BP, and the entire dirty south at least owe these fine gentlemen a tip of the hat and a warehouse full of money. They just solved a problem worth tens of billions of dollars for planet Earth.

However, the source is “The Christian Science Monitor,” I wouldn’t put my faith in their heads… although I've never used the site.

What I'm trying to figure out is why it took them almost 4 full months to do something like this!?!?! Shouldn't this have been done in the first week? My dad is a retired plumber, and me and him both noticed right away that all they needed to do was remove those huge bolts, and put a new cap on top of it. At the time, everyone was saying that it wasn't possible, and yet they just did it??

What in the world were they thinking? Or were they? I still think there's more going on here than we're being told about.

TheBorg

TheBorg, I suggested just that in one of my posts, yet it was overlooked. Its as though people think metal can not withstand over 3000PSI for some reason and a nuke is a sure fire solution.

If you know mechanical Eng. you know plumbing almost by default.

if it is a plumber ?.
will he turn up on time to fix it if need be?.