Deepwater Horizon to scale

[tongodeon]

I was reading about the Deepwater Horizon and was amazed at the size of the thing. Here's the rig itself, to scale. It's 97.4 meters tall, with 41.5 meters underwater. But there's also 1260 meters of water to the bottom, and the actual oil is at -10685 meters.

Comments

unit confusion

[mopti]

Your text says 1260 feet but the picture says 1259 meters to the sea bed.

Likewise, your text says 10685 feet but the scale drawing says 10685 meters to the oil. Which did you mean?

Re: unit confusion

[fiddlingfrog]

This is why we can't have nice things Mars landers.

Re: unit confusion

[tongodeon]

They're all meters.

[matrushkaka]

I'm confused. Does it float, or is it attached to the sea floor?

[catbear]

The platform floats, and is position stabilized by GPS/autopilot to not move around much relative to the sea floor. However, at the time of the explosion there was a heavy metal drill pipe connecting it to the well. When the platform sank, it took the pipe down with it, bending it all wacky; the original leaks were from several places on the bent pipe.

[talldean]

Similar graphic:

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/infographic-tallest-mountain-to-deepest-ocean-trench-0249/