Associated Press Says they started lowering the Containment Dome

man i hope this thing works

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if you've never seen the ROV's work, it's amazing the shite they can do subsea...this shouldn't be much of a challenge for them

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ive seen them do shite on videos, but never seen em trying to manipulate a 100 ton house onto a specific spot

hope it works though, im sure much wiser men than myself have this all figured out

how much thrust do the ROVs have?

How big is the typical ROV?

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How big is the typical ROV?

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most of the ones on rigs are a little smaller than a compact car, but some of the bigger intervention vessels and installation vessels have slightly bigger/more powerful versions. the stuff they can do as far as manipulating tools and flying around is pretty amazing.

they can't really "move" giant thing stuff like BOP's and this containment dome as it's lowered, but they can do pretty cool stuff in guiding it into a precise location.

the coarse movements are typically done by moving the rig/vessel at surface, then the ROV assists in making the finer adjustments.

while this containment dome weights 200k lbs, keep in mind that the typical 15k psi subsea BOP stack weighs btw 500-700k lbs, and ROV's assist in getting them landed on the wellhead all the time -- and it is a precise operation w/ very, very little clearance.

Please, dear God, let this work.

Also the image shows that the relief well will be drilled into the reservoir. I would be surprised if they go that route. No telling what sorts of depletion or pressure issues you have going onthere. Better to just target close to the last casing shoe which would just above the reservoir.

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but they also talked about trying to perhaps pump mud and concrete into the current leak to cap it off so they wouldn't need to actually do the relief well

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Seems like this has to be done eventually, the drillship cannot collect the oil from the dam for very long can it?

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All kinds of fail in most of the reporting on the whole mess

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Definitely agree.

I read a sad story about a guy who runs a fishing lodge WEST of the Mississippi and he said that he's had a bunch of cancellations and May is generally his busiest month. He said people are just scared to come down and the journalists that were staying in the area have gone on to the beaches of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida because they wanted to find some more interesting stories. But when they left they failed to make clear that all is clear west of the Mississippi at the moment.