We Can Put a Man on the Moon. Why Can't we Close the Leak?

While the Gulf Coast and the entire nation are waiting for a stoppage of the BP Oil Leak in the Gulf, one question is being asked increasingly. We were able to send a man to the moon; why can we not close the damned leak?

Before we can attempt to understand, we need to put events into perspective.

In May of 1961, President Kennedy called upon US Congress to fund a program for landing the first human on the moon in an effort of trying to eclipse the feat of the Communist Soviet Union of carrying out the first manned space flight in April of 1961. The reaction was fast, well conceived, and was scaled to the job at hand. An enlightened and fully operative US Congress approved the necessary funding quickly.

Eight years later, two US astronauts landed on the Moon, while a third stayed in orbit with the space vehicle. The astronauts returned safely. In 2007 the NASA agency put the costs of the moon shot at $170 billion in current dollars. Obviously, it is impossible to wait for eight years before the BP leak can be stopped. The US also is in a severe budget crunch because irresponsible financial institutions have wrecked the US economy and have transformed US Congress with large-scale influence peddling.

Passage of stringent safety provisions were derailed by a feverish "Drill Baby Drill" campaign and by members of US Congress, who believe that US Finance and Energy businesses do not need to be regulated and cannot be bothered by strict rules for preventing financial meltdowns or avoiding safety related disasters in coal mines on US lands and on drilling platforms in waters along US coasts. It is difficult for them to argue that taxpayers must always pay for the sins of greedy and irresponsible business managements. After all, there are many industries that continue to perform admirably and who are hurt equally by the failings of irresponsible, greedy, and incompetently supervised business sectors.

It certainly is entirely inexcusable that easily preventable disasters are allowed to happen in deference to demands by lobbyists. In all cases, the costs of preventing the disasters are incomparably lower than the damages these catastrophic events continue to cause.

It is undeniable that comparatively moderate costs (2% of the NASA moon shot) could have significantly reduced or even avoided the BP oil spill. Grievous mistakes were made on the oil platform and BP proved to be entirely clueless of how to respond to its huge oil leak. The initial efforts of closing it were plainly incompetent.

There are a few lessons our nation and our government has to learn and remember in the future to avoid repetitions.

- Moody's Rule #1; if anything can go wrong, it eventually will.

- Never give an untrained human the chance to make a risky decision. Look to Las Vegas to appreciate that humans love to keep challenging unfavorable odds without restraints.

- Any risky business endeavor, which can result in major damages to the public at large, must be analyzed in great detail. Failure modes need to be defined, risks must be quantified, and countermeasures must be prepared for immediate and effective deployment.

- Firefighters are trained to respond to fire emergencies with responses, which were previously taught in repetitive exercises.

- The US Coast Guard or another, newly formed agency must train emergency deployment units that are capable to contain submerged leaks, close leaks, clean oil spills from surface waters, treat underwater oil plumes, protect beaches, close off marshes, and manually clean damaged shore assets.

Militarily deployed units must have ready access to equipment, procedures, and logistic backup for reacting to emergency calls within hours and for being ready to instantaneously begin deploying protective equipment, ships, and highly effective skimming devices.

Immediately responding to oil leaks and containing the spread of oil spills is by far the most potent and least expensive measure for keeping economical damages to a minimum.

Obviously, this conclusion was not reached by BP management, the US Coast Guard, or the Obama administration.