And as the scope of the unfolding disaster became more apparent, we reached out for additional scientists and engineers from our partners and competitors in the energy industry, engineering firms, academia, government and the military.

With the exception of the space program in the 1960s, it is difficult to imagine the gathering of a larger, more technically proficient team in one place in peacetime—all under the leadership of the federal government’s unified command structure headed by U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, with the active support of Energy Secretary Stephen Chu and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar…

We remain in uncharted territory—none of these approaches has ever been attempted in water a mile deep, where the extreme cold and the intense pressures require experts to carefully adapt proven techniques.

Specialized equipment must be designed, built and tested, compressing operations that normally last weeks or months into days or even hours. Remotely operated vehicle pilots must devise painstaking, step-by-step procedures to deploy the equipment. Like the astronauts aboard Apollo 13 who had to build a CO2 filter from whatever was available in their capsule under the direction of engineers back on Earth, we are forced to innovate in real time. The devices developed in recent weeks, such as the RITT and the LMRP cap, are cases in point.