Darren @ 90: They may have done this same procedure on other undersea wells and it worked, but that doesn’t mean it is a safe way to do things any more than the Space Shuttle taking off dozens of times before the Challenger exploded meant that NASA had a “safe” system.

But take that on an even larger scale. Maybe they and others have done this on thousands of undersea wells and it worked – without causing a geological catastrophe. And like the space shuttle – it will never be “safe”, no more than crossing the street is “safe”, there is always risk involved, and so it is not always culpable to act with risk. IOW, the worse the catastrophe, the less it might be BP’s “fault”. Y’know, like the supercollider and the odds it creates a black hole and eats the Earth.

Re golf, sure, everything’s a tradeoff and you always want what you haven’t got. I had great control going, so my next step was to swing harder. But swinging harder, lost the control. Yet, having control, my next step was – swing harder! Haven’t played for years now, tho, too busy yachting … joke.