INTRODUCTION "The Dumbest Idea in the World" The Deepwater Horizon was an oil drilling rig, a massive float- ing structure that cost more than a third of a billion dollars to build and measured the length of a football field from bottom to top. On the night of April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon was working in the Gulf of Mexico, finishing an exploratory well named Macondo for the corporation BP. Suddenly the rig