When I traveled to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in 1986 tointerview for a job, the potential for adventure looked big: I had dreams ofbeing part of the cutting edge of science and engineering, exploring frontierspreviously imagined only in science-fiction movies.

What I got instead was a deep dive into"reliability engineering." As far as I could see, there were smart youngengineers whose primary job was to design multiple redundancies into everycritical space system. Why so many people working on something as seeminglymundane as reliability? The answer they gave me was simple and obvious, "It'sreally hard to repair anything in space."

So almost 25 years later, BritishPetroleum found itself struggling to plug a catastrophic oil leak 5,000 feetbelow the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. But as I write this, some two monthsafter the initial explosion, there is still no reliable solution to stop theleak or address the vast ecological challenge facing the gulf coast. As thequestions swirled about poor engineering, manufacturing, installation andmaintenance, the importance of that "reliability engineering" job came intofocus. I was aghast when credible news sources reported that one BP scenariocalled for plugging the well with golf balls and rubber tire shards. TheTitleist solution? Seems like something that an executive would think up, notan engineer.

The energy industry has invested vastamounts of research funding into rigs capable of reaching oil and gas through10,000 feet of water and 30,000 feet of sea bed. These are true engineeringmarvels, designed by some of the most sophisticated technologists andscientists working today. So why were these folks talking about golf balls?

Until we develop a new source ofenergy, we are going to be drilling for oil in places that make repairs reallyhard. The Obama Administration must bring a "failure is not an option"mentality to deep water drilling. Companies extracting value from our earthhave a responsibility to invest some of this value into increasing thereliability of these complex systems. And because no engineered system is everfoolproof, we better have a good back-up plan when oil is released into theenvironment.

Clearly, oil cleanup has been a lownational priority. Very little meaningful progress has been made since theExxon Valdez disaster 20 years ago. The Congressional Research Service reportsthat federal funding for oil spill research declined by half since 1993,falling to approximately $8 million in 2008. Where is the government riskanalysis for this trillion-dollar industry? It is just so easy to get complacent when things are going well, butthat is just when problems tend to arise.

"Apollo 13" stands as one of theall-time great engineering movies. It's shocking how closely the story lineparallels the BP leak - a major engineering disaster dominating the nightlynational news. One of my favorite exchanges in the film gets to the heart ofthe matter:
NASA Director: "This could be the worstdisaster NASA's ever experienced."
Gene Kranz (Flight Director): "With alldue respect, sir, I believe this is going to be our finest hour."

Apollo 13 ended in triumph for both theastronauts and engineers at NASA. The story in the Gulf of Mexico cannot endwell for BP or the federal government. There's just too much oil.