Science question:

the xkcd comic yesterday just confirms an question I had on Monday.

They keep trying rigid containment systems on the gulf oil spill gusher. (top hat etc, talking about explosive charges to close the hole again...)

would some science-type explain to me why a flexible containment system couldn't be dropped over the top of the gusher, and then the oil directed specifically to some other containment rig? (I mean aside from the whole it's a mile down in icy cold ocean waters and the flexible material might simply freeze and break under all the pressure...)

I'm thinking of something designed like a ginormous female condom, with weights on the wide open end to drop over the gusher, a gargantuan hose (or hoses) at the end to funnel the oil, and for the container, some of those ocean-going bags full of fresh-water that some idiot was trying to sell to southern California a few years ago.

Why can't this mess be contained & channeled, at least part of the time?

(in other related news, I just had a memory of Gary Larson's mosquito-cartoon, where one mosquito is swelled up like a balloon, and the other mosquito says, "Gladys! Pull up, you've hit an artery!" Maybe that comic is more related to this topic than I realized at first.)



Feel free to forward sciency friends here, I genuinely want to understand.