3 ms·
The idea is to go beneath the crust and into the mantle below. Some more pictures and content at [0]. I wonder how much pipe you have to trip to make it all th
by jihadjihad 1y ago
The idea is to go beneath the crust and into the mantle below. Some more pictures and content at [0].
I wonder how much pipe you have to trip to make it all the way down there? It's hard to see from the photos how much space they have for drill pipe. Assuming it's a typical ~30 foot length it would take over a thousand segments of pipe to get there.
0: https://www.science.org/content/article/china-s-dreamy-new-ship-aims-earth-s-mantle-and-assumes-ocean-drilling-leadership https://www.science.org/content/article/china-s-dreamy-new-s...
- hydrogen7800 1y agoAnd how do they manage the twist of a 7 mile drill. The torsional strain energy must be enormous; you can't just let it go. You would need to unwind that energy in a managed way. I suppose this is not a new situation for any oil drilling, even just a few hundred feet. This is one of those things a layperson thinks about in the first minute, and has been obviously been thought of and dealt with in a simple manner by experts.
- m4rtink 1y agoFor modern directional drilling they use what is called a "mud motor": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_motor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_motor You basically use the drilling mud that circulates through the hole anyway (providing counter pressure, cooling, lubricataion, bringing up cuttings) to run a motor that rotates the drill bit. This way the drill string does not need to rotate & you can even change the direction by manipulating the angle of the drill attached to the mud motor.