This morning an ROV found the tail cone and debris, indicating a catastrophic loss of the pressure vessel. All crew pronounced dead.

It's a ROV---the ship is called the Nautilus; the ROV is a bright yellow remote sub called the Hercules.

http://www.nautiluslive.org/tech

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About the title, this isn't the first footage from of the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. The ROVs Kaikō in 1996 and Nereus in 2009 both took footage and samples. But I'm sure Cameron has the most awesome footage to date.

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It sounds like someone left their indicator on. I bet there was a shark waiting behind the ROV, not passing it because it kept expecting it to turn at any moment... "Oh come ON! When are you turning?"

^Well, probably not so easy as I stated.

However, I think you may be over-estimating BP's desire to avert a PR catastrophy. The world needs oil, and they have oil to sell. It's not about 6000 barrels a day. That IS chump change. But bad PR isn't gonna cost them shit. The clean-up will. I'm sure BP beancounters have already calculated the costs of clean-up vs the cost of capping the well. That 100-ton funnel monstrosity they first tried, and the two more they have since tried, were never intended to buy time so they could cap it. They are buying time for the relief wells. It's always been about getting the oil and doing whatever they can to stem the flow WITHOUT capping.

But hey, I'm just pissed. Could be wrong. Happened before. The whole "we're getting 6000 barrels a day" stuff could be seen as PR or public mollification. But they have no plans to STOP the leakage any time soon. From the BP ROV page: "We may leave some of the LMRP cap valves open to ensure system stability - one is currently closed".

[redacted]

MaxWilder is 100% correct. BP CEO Tony Hayward made it very clear that the goal is a return to "production". Watching many of the BP ROV feeds the last couple weeks and it's obvious the main purpose of the "containment cap" is to get some oil into a damn tanker, not stopping the leak. "Containment" is NOT the same as stopping flow. If they wanted to stop it, they could have done it in a week, immho. Cut the bolts on flange currently just below the cap with that fancy-shmancy diamond blade, silver seal, tree, close valves. Take your sweet time with the relief wells. Easy peasy (although it may be not so easy-peasy a mile down).

The condition of the pipe directly above the upper flange of the BOP after the shear op made it virtually unsealable using the inflatable gasket within the cap as they had described. Reports of increasing oil capture rates mean nothing when thousands of barrels a day are still pouring out the bottom of the cap. We were told that as they close off vents of the cap, the rates of recovered oil will increase. Bullshit. The vents were wide open when they put that puppy on, and you couldn't even see the the thing because so much oil was leaking through the bottom seals. Closing off the vents may increase the pressure of oil heading up the pipe, but it will also increase the amount of pressure on the seal (5000ft of head notwithstanding). Seems to me the only way make the current containment cap work is if some super-duper pump is able to suck (I know... pumps don't suck; day one of "A" school) oil up 5000 feet of pipe faster than the oil is flowing out the top of the BOP.

I just checked the BP feeds (Skandi ROV 1, Skandi ROV 2, and Enterprise ROV 1), and the amount of oil flowing out the bottom of the cap is only slightly improved from when they slapped the thing on there.

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7062605

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