[HN Gopher] Is that ship still stuck?
___________________________________________________________________
Is that ship still stuck?
Author : ColinWright
Score : 302 points
Date : 2021-03-25 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (istheshipstillstuck.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (istheshipstillstuck.com)
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Smit are like the Winston Wolf of the shipping business. No
| problem too big to solve.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Why do so many people here think they have some solution that
| could get this done faster? There is an entire industry that is
| built around heavy salvage, and their best and brightest are
| working around the clock to resolve the situation.
|
| Everybody here knows what Dunning Kruger is.
|
| If you have a solution that starts with: "Why don't they
| just...". The answer is either 1. They will when they can, that
| kind of operation is very hard to set up in the Egyptian Desert,
| or 2. That is a dumb/impractical/impossible thing you are
| suggesting.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Suez canal blocked by a massive ship_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26560319 - March 2021 (419
| comments)
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Drop salt around the ship to increase the buoyancy of the
| water...
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Looking at how stuck the ship is, this could also be a new
| terrorist vector to attack the channel via such a ,,derailed"
| ship.
| Tenoke wrote:
| It does legitimately seem like you can do tremendous damage by
| derailing a few ships in the right spots. Bringing bombs or
| other small ships or something else seems doable for a
| terrorist organization on the face of it.
| WWWWH wrote:
| Wasn't this the plot of an Ian Banks novel? Canal dreams.
| Imagine die hard, with the Bruce Willis part being a middle-
| aged, female, Japanese cellist.
| bigfudge wrote:
| This is true more generally. When I lived in London and the
| IRA campaign was going on I never understood why they didn't
| just set fire to a few stolen vans on Euston road/City
| road/Waterloo bridge every morning rather than actually
| killing people. Would have been more effective.
| simmerup wrote:
| What freedom fighter would throw away their life to cause a
| traffic jam?
|
| And what government would cave to whats essentially a minor
| inconvenience
| randompwd wrote:
| Such an ignorant comment.
| moritonal wrote:
| Shh! The modern world is based on the fact a few really mad
| stupid people don't realise how brittle the hacks we built
| society on are.
| bawbag wrote:
| Not related to this, but is there a company out there who could
| profit from this kind of thing? "I got stuck but my friend made
| it through, prices are up lol".
| tobr wrote:
| The ship is named "Ever Given", but the huge text on the side
| says "EVERGREEN", which is confusingly similar. Does anyone know
| why?
| nabla9 wrote:
| The ship stuck (Ever Given) is build to Suezmax limits. It fits,
| but barely.
|
| Ever Given (Suezmax limit) length: 399.94 m (400
| m) tonnage: 199,629 DWT (200,000 DWT)
| [deleted]
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| How long before this gets made into a Netflix series?
| drno123 wrote:
| One peaceful nuclear explosion would do the trick.
| elihu wrote:
| I suppose I'll kick off the usual "why don't they just do X"
| thread.
|
| It seems to me that if they can't move it by any normal means,
| they could just start pushing cargo containers overboard and fish
| them out until it's light enough to move.
|
| I could also a lot of plausible reasons why they wouldn't do
| that:
|
| - it wouldn't work (no equipment to move containers)
|
| - the ship's owner doesn't want to do that and no one has the
| authority to force them
|
| - the ship's owner wants to do that, but the owner of the cargo
| doesn't want them to
|
| - the cost of lost cargo is more than the cost of delaying other
| ships
|
| - it would take too long or be too messy to clean up
| brundolf wrote:
| Perhaps most importantly: the channel is only a couple dozen
| meters deep, which is part of the problem. Dropping a bunch of
| containers down there would almost certainly create a new
| obstacle for this and other ships
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they could just start pushing cargo containers overboard and
| fish them out until it 's light enough to move_
|
| Light boats are less stable. About the only thing that cold
| make this situation worse would be the damn thing capsizing in
| the canal.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Yes. Unloading is a science, also, if you want to avoid
| capsizing. And the risk is increased because they don't know
| on which sand the boat rests (it may be balanced at some
| point just by one bank + the pressure of the flow of water)
| and the tides add some random every 6 hrs.
| dshibarshin wrote:
| The carrier can announce a general average [1] which allows it
| to throw the containers overboard if they believe it will help
| the ship get moving.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average
| jdasdf wrote:
| A general average requires an imminent danger which the ship
| is clearly no in, since it's just stuck.
|
| You also can't argue that they have to dump it overboard
| because of the costs that the delays will cause, because such
| costs are explicitly excluded in the 2004 rules on general
| averages [1]
|
| [1] Rule C, paragraph 3
| https://shippingandfreightresource.com/wp-
| content/uploads/20...
| mongol wrote:
| They need to pump out sand from beneath the ship. If it is indeed
| sand.
| damontal wrote:
| Job interview question: how many helicopters would it take to
| lift it?
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| 15,000 Chinooks. Good luck finding that many, though.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| This thread reminds me similar threads here and elsewhere when
| Deep Water Horizon's well head was spewing hydrocarbons into the
| Gulf of Mexico for weeks. The immense scale (depth, pressure,
| etc) and logistics (distance from shore, open ocean) exceeds
| everyone's intuitive high-school grasp of physics. The ideas
| presented are laughable and immediately shot down by people armed
| with just a few facts (plenty again given the scale and logistics
| involved).
|
| I'm eager to see what clever solution the engineers eventually
| pick.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Could the water be made sufficiently denser by dissolving salt or
| another chemical into it? Or by refrigerating it?
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Anybody know at what point the backed up ships start taking the
| long way around? (Around Africa!)
| bertmuthalaly wrote:
| It might be already happening?
| https://twitter.com/AriaCallaghan/status/1375154205233721348
| donaldo wrote:
| Wow, didn't know it was stuck horizontally. Hope they can fix it.
| [deleted]
| cghendrix wrote:
| Wonder how the data for the actual position of the ship is
| obtained or if it's estimated and just hard coded on to the map?
|
| I always love sites that are question in the domain with answers
| in the webpage as the main content.
| samizdis wrote:
| You can see it here: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. I notice that the two Maersk freighters behind the Ever
| Given are no longer there. It looks like all traffic has been
| cleared from the canal on both sides. Zoom out. The north end
| of the Gulf of Suez looks like a parking lot. So does the Med
| north of Port Said. So does Fayed, the lake in the middle of
| the canal.
|
| Smit, the big Dutch salvage firm, has been called in and
| already has their first heavy equipment, a dredger, on site.
| "Days to weeks" is all they'll say. The good case is that
| they pump fuel and ballast water out of the ship, plus some
| dredging, and it floats free. The not so good case is they
| bring in a big crane and start unloading containers. The bad
| case is that the ship is partly sunk and will have to be
| patched and refloated. The really bad case is that the hull
| is so badly damaged that the ship has to be cut apart in
| place.
|
| Meanwhile, shipping from China to Europe is now US$4000/TEU.
| Usually it's around US$1000. China's "Belt and Road" rail
| plan may pay off.
| stragies wrote:
| Or the super-extra-bad case: The ship breaks while
| attempting to pull it free. Pieces of ship + 20000
| containers in the canal. How long would it be blocked for.
| Full-spectrum catastrophe!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...
|
| See the "Broadcast information" section.
|
| Position, heading, speed, unique ID, etc. are all broadcast
| "every 2 to 10 seconds".
| [deleted]
| lacker wrote:
| I know very little about boat data but I was also curious; it
| looks like it is using Vesselfinder which in turn uses data
| from this AIS system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...
|
| There is as much information as a normal human could want to
| know about how ship location data is tracked ;-)
| onedognight wrote:
| On iOS you can use Vessel Finder Pro. It provides a real-time
| world map of all (for some reasonable definition of all) ships.
| Most of maps views I have seen of this ship are just screen
| shots from this app. I paid the $10 just to confirm this fact
| yesterday as Ship Finder, my old standby, didn't have it.
| munk-a wrote:
| This is one particular outlet[1] for that data but, AFAIK, all
| modern commercial vessels continuously report their location
| via satellite or, preferably, coastal AIS. That data is
| collected by something then APIs happen along with aggregation
| and probably more APIs and... after all that, the data is
| pretty widely available.
|
| Ship location isn't considered privileged security information
| which was a bit surprising to me since pirates are still a
| thing, but yea - that's the state of the world.
|
| Edit: Apparently I forgot to include the link, here it is:
|
| 1.
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:32.5/cente...
| WJW wrote:
| It's super useful to know the location, speed and course of
| other vessels nearby for navigational purposes. For those few
| regions where piracy is a serious issue, vessels are either
| escorted by navy ships in convoys, arrange private security
| contractors or turn off AIS. The benefits of hiding yourself
| don't outweigh the downsides though, especially not in
| "civilized" oceans.
| laurent92 wrote:
| > isn't considered privileged information
|
| Not only that, but Bloomberg terminals have the ship
| locations in real time because it impacts trading a lot:
| Petrol, ore, cereals, etc.
| cricalix wrote:
| As a small vessel (10 metres) owner and operator, it's quite
| nice that AIS operates over VHF. I can install an AIS
| receiver and see precisely what's coming my way, and the
| instrumentation available to me can predict whether I might
| collide with the ship, or if I'll pass ahead/behind (I prefer
| behind). Useful in the dark when distance is hard to gauge.
|
| Saw on twitter the other day that one vessel going past the
| east coast of Africa had changed their info field
| (destination I think) to "ARMED GUARD ONBOARD"..
| bmurray7jhu wrote:
| Twitter link:
|
| https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1374803809696817154
| cricalix wrote:
| VesselFinder and MarineTraffic use the data broadcast by
| vessels on AIS[0]. The AIS devices can be programmed with the
| dimensions of the vessel, location of the AIS GPS antenna
| relative to the vessel (ie, is it right aft, or in the middle,
| etcetera), and uses sensor data from the network bus to get
| direction, speed and the like. So yeah, if the ship's AIS is
| saying "I'm at latitude, longitude doing 0 knots, last reported
| course was 73 degrees", the websites can generate a somewhat
| accurate picture.
|
| 0:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...
| cgdub wrote:
| A single canal is a single point of failure. We need to have
| multiple canals to handle unexpected failures.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| A balloon half a kilometer in radius filled with hydrogen should
| be able to float the ship.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| How would you acquire that much hydrogen, and how much would it
| cost?
| [deleted]
| barbegal wrote:
| It will be weeks before this ship is free.
|
| Fuel and oil can be pumped out but that only makes up a fraction
| of the total weight of the vessel. Containers can be unloaded but
| again the lightest will be at the top so a significant number
| will need to be removed to make a big enough difference. And
| unloading them will be a slow process. You can maybe unload a few
| per hour with helicopters. There doesn't exist any infrastructure
| which could get to that location and lift off containers. You
| could build a custom crane barge but that would take at least a
| month to fabricate and get to the site. The easiest way to remove
| containers will be using cutting equipment, winches and possibly
| explosives. It won't be easy and will likely take several weeks
| to unload a significant number of containers, the ship and
| containers will be damaged in the process.
|
| That leaves dredging the sand under the ship. Again the
| infrastructure to do this rapidly doesn't exist. You can dig out
| the sand around the ship but there is a huge amount that the ship
| is resting on. It will take specialist dredging equipment to
| start removing this sand.
| maxerickson wrote:
| The excavators make sense as the first stage of a dredging
| operation.
| kergonath wrote:
| I wonder how expensive and complicated it would be to let it
| there and dig another lane to bypass it.
| ksec wrote:
| ~15% of the World's trade is dependent on it and this is taking
| much longer than expected. Why?
| vkou wrote:
| Because your expectations were far too high.
| yuliyp wrote:
| So yes it affects a lot of trade. But it can be worked around.
| Ships can sail around Africa or goods can be shipped across the
| Pacific and across the Panama Canal or via rail across America.
| Obviously those are more expensive, but the goods will still be
| transported.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Is this taking longer than expected?
| ksm1717 wrote:
| For real. Why haven't they just mobilized hacker news?
| gizmo385 wrote:
| "We should take the ship, AND PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE" :D [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0sTNLdNhuE
| ksm1717 wrote:
| You can trust that I don't need to follow that link,
| brother.
| [deleted]
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Extrapolating from the 2014 extensions, building a 2nd backup
| canal would cost >$8B.
|
| Considering it earns $10B/year to Egypt, I don't know if this
| short downtime will justify the cost to them.
| kergonath wrote:
| It is costing much more than that to shipping companies and
| the broader industry. If that is an option, I am sure they'll
| find the money. That probably would take much longer than un-
| sticking the ship, assuming this is possible.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| Because it's hard
| londons_explore wrote:
| Just dig a new canal around the ship?
|
| A quarter mile diversion can't take that long to dig. The
| whole canal is 120 miles, so an extra quarter mile they
| should be able to dig in a few days I would think?
| Hamuko wrote:
| Sounds easier to just dig through the ship.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This man doesn't infrastructure.
|
| (If you think it's that easy, pop over and ask if you can
| have a go on the JCB)
| londons_explore wrote:
| I actually spent a few weeks of my life driving a JCB
| commercially...
| phkahler wrote:
| "Just" widen the canal so it can continue pivoting around
| the most stuck end until its straight again.
| azornathogron wrote:
| > The whole canal is 120 miles, so an extra quarter mile
| they should be able to dig in a few days I would think?
|
| Uh, what? Why would the length of the canal as a whole tell
| you anything about how long digging a quarter-mile section
| would take? If the canal as a whole was longer or shorter,
| would that somehow change your estimate?
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Just get people who know what they are doing to sort it
| out.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes it would... I know the suez canal was a once-per-
| century type infrastructure investment for Egypt. Doing
| that same investment again probbaly isn't feasible. But
| doing 0.2% of the work again is starting to sound pretty
| affordable...
| LegitShady wrote:
| "Quarter mile" is a linear dimension. What is the width?
|
| If you had to estimate the volume of earth in that 'quarter
| mile', and then estimate the size of an excavator bucket,
| and the capacity of a dump truck, and the availability of
| all those things at any given time (even if you ship them
| in), you'd soon realize that just digging out that earth
| will take more time.
|
| On top of that, there's going to be FLOW in the canal -
| what will your diversion to for erosion, pressure on the
| locks, etc.
|
| You risk damaging the canal itself to deal with a temporary
| problem if you think you can just 'dig around it' in 5
| days. My bet is you've never seen how long it takes to plan
| something with this much risk involved.
|
| This isn't software, you aren't going to Agile it away if
| you screw it up.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I hope the people trying to remedy the situation right now
| are reading your comment about your idea that you thought
| up in five minutes, presumably without any background or
| qualification. (Sarcasm, in case that wasn't obvious.)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Volume is ^3 of the linear size. To get a clear picture of
| how much it is do this:
|
| - launch minecraft in creative mode and make 40x40 pad of
| steel blocks, 1 block high. You should do it in a few
| minutes.
|
| - now do a 40x40x40 cube. Good luck for the rest of your
| day.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Lol no
| gizmo385 wrote:
| This sounds eerily similar to "Just add the new feature, it
| can't take that long". Things are complicated.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I mean it is just typing... how hard can it be?
| dekhn wrote:
| because it's "cheaper" to build a SPOF and then handle the
| exceptions when they come.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ship is no longer on the happy path.
| panzagl wrote:
| It's stuck like a couch in a stairwell.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Pivot!
| RantyDave wrote:
| Except it's a couch with a bulbous bow that got buried into
| the side of the stairwell, which just happens to be made of
| clay. I assume the stern is stuck, too.
|
| And all you have to remove it is a pin. So, this is going to
| take a while.
| dkarl wrote:
| Oh, dear. Time travelers really ought to be more careful.
| phkahler wrote:
| Yeah, they forgot their towel.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Do you think getting David Schwimmer to come yell "Pivot!"
| would help?
| fuzzy2 wrote:
| Because it's, you know, stuck. If they accidentally sink it,
| the cleanup will be even more messy.
| RantyDave wrote:
| I think it would be very, very difficult to sink. Quite aside
| from the (hopefully) large number of bulkheads and other such
| safety measures, the ship will be close to maximum draft for
| the canal and as such would only be able to sink a metre or
| two anyway. True, you'd then need to refloat it in situ,
| which would not be fun ... and it would probably just become
| more stuck rather than less.
|
| I think it's just going to take time and lots of digging.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Suez canal is 24 meters deep. i count 9 iso containers
| stacked high on the deck (an iso container is 2.59m high).
|
| Smit will be making bank on this.
| blhack wrote:
| One of the largest ships in the world has run aground. How long
| did you expect it would take to salvage it?
| nabla9 wrote:
| ~30% of World container traffic goes trough it.
|
| Many bulk carriers exceed Suezmax limits and can't go trough.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| My question, for those who know more about this domain than me,
| is this a problem that enough money could fix? If the
| governments of the world wrote a $1 trillion blank check, would
| that be enough to get the ship out in the next 24 hours?
|
| Or is this a problem that money alone can't solve?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Let the answers to your question be a caution to all the Musk
| and Star Trek fans around here: like this ship, not matter
| how much money you throw at mars terra-forming, FTL drives
| and climate change reversal or control technology some things
| have non-negotiable deadlines.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| There is a limited number of people that have the expertise,
| and equipment to pull it off, and it takes them time even if
| they had been standing by at the accident site. Money isn't
| the issue right now. I'm a mariner, but not a salvage law
| expert, but the ship and the cargo on it are effectively the
| collateral for whoever removes this thing, so money is likely
| not an issue.
|
| This is now an engineering and logisitics problem. What is
| necessary for the ship to be floating again? And what
| equipment is needed for that to happen? If it isn't already
| at hand, how can they get the equipment there (there is
| navigable water nearby, but there may be no way to unload
| heavy equipment onto the land).
| cricalix wrote:
| We're discussing a ship that is 400 metres long, 59 metres
| wide, and has a draft of 16 metres[0]. It's carrying
| somewhere over 18,000 containers, each of which could weight
| up to 27,000 kg[1]. It's unlikely that all of them weigh that
| much, but still, they can be heavy.
|
| The load has been very carefully placed on the ship to ensure
| maximum stability. So the heavy loads are probably deeper in
| the hull and the lighter loads are higher up. When ships get
| unloaded in port, it's unlikely that all the containers are
| for that port, so an intricate dance starts - offloading some
| containers, moving other ones to maintain the balance, and
| loading new ones. At all times, you have to keep the load
| within tolerances so that your ship doesn't go "I'm out!" and
| roll over.
|
| So yeah, money alone can't solve this in 24 hours. They've
| got to calculate the load changes when they offload
| containers, so that you don't accidentally cause the ship to
| roll over in the canal. You're not going to stop that
| happening with a few bits of rope tied to some concrete
| pillars in the ground..
|
| [0] https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/EVER-GIVEN-
| IMO-9811000-...
|
| [1] https://www.dsv.com/en/our-solutions/modes-of-
| transport/sea-...
| cricalix wrote:
| And as a bit more context, the cranes that are used at
| ports are capable of moving 60+ tonnes[0] - physics becomes
| a bit of a problem when your crane is a lever..
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_crane
| anyfoo wrote:
| Is it even that easy to get any containers off the ship,
| without the machinery and infrastructure at ports?
|
| Is it common at all to get containers off a ship outside of
| docking areas?
| WJW wrote:
| Certainly not common, but it can be done with specialized
| vessels.
| cricalix wrote:
| Well, they fall off of ships all the time, especially in
| rough weather (all the time is hyperbole, but it
| absolutely happens). So sure, you can probably push one
| off with a pretty big lever, but shipping containers are
| actually designed to "clip" together to an extent, to
| make the load more solid. Problem is, the canal is only
| about 24 metres deep, so you're going to end up blocking
| the canal with containers instead if you just push them
| off.
|
| The modern shipping world is _all_ about containers,
| container cranes, and container ships. 99 Percent
| Invisible hosted some episodes of the Containers podcast
| [0] that will probably provide some insight.
|
| 0: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/containers-
| ships-tugs...
| sliken wrote:
| Well it's a question of odds. Hard to imagine you couldn't
| get a big auger, drill a bunch of holes, put a bunch of
| telephone poles into the holes and start running steel cables
| + winch from each one to the end of the ship. Repeat on the
| other end of the canal/ship and start applying ever more
| force to realign the ship with the canal.
|
| Question is, what would happen? Would the ship move the sand
| it's embedded in, realign with the deepest part of the
| channel and move off?
|
| Or would the (potentially already damaged) hull breach?
| chki wrote:
| I'm also just speculating but my understanding is that there
| is already a lot of money behind this and that it simply
| takes time for companies specialized in salvaging ships to
| physically get there with their equipment and also develop a
| solution that works.
|
| I don't think more money would make those companies work
| faster and I don't think there is some reasonable alternative
| solution available other than using these companies.
| kergonath wrote:
| At some point no amount of money is enough to overcome
| Physics.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Nine women can't make a baby in a month. Some things just take
| time, regardless of how much resources you throw at it.
| Black101 wrote:
| Somebody just have to come up with a good idea.... IE: blow
| up a boat load of C4 on the side of it...
| munk-a wrote:
| I'm pretty certain if you nuked the container ship you'd
| solve the first problem - it'd be messy and expensive but
| if you could explosively throw chunks out of the canal you
| could _probably_ resume service.
|
| And just imagine how badass the canal would look if we
| glassed the banks and lined them with some LEDs!
|
| (please don't do this)
| azornathogron wrote:
| I think you might inadvertently create a few new problems
| if you did this.
| munk-a wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing - that glassed canal would
| probably be so scenic that you'd cause several future
| traffic jams from private vessels and romantic cruises
| charting a path through the already near-capacity canal.
| krisoft wrote:
| Just in case you are not joking, what do you think blowing
| up C4 at the side of the ship would achieve?
| WJW wrote:
| The canal is just 10 metres deeper than the ship and it's
| more than 10 metres high, so just blowing up the ship is
| not enough to clear the canal. You also need to take away
| the 200 million kg of steel afterwards. At that point it's
| easier to just wait for the Really Big Tugboats to come
| over.
| nomy99 wrote:
| not if you blow up so hard that there is a massive
| crater. Then let nature fill it up. Isn't the canal
| connected to large waterways on both ends
| xbar wrote:
| That's not exactly the problem here.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| You can dance on your head as hard as you can but nine
| women won't make a baby in one month.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| > Nine women can't make a baby in a month. This is my new
| favorite phrase.
| cmckn wrote:
| Visited this on my phone and it said "No.". I yelped. Turns out
| there's just an issue with the site on mobile! Still stuck.
| timgarner0 wrote:
| The site provides a tongue-in-cheek warning for this: "Tornado
| Guard warnings apply."
|
| https://xkcd.com/937
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| How does liability work here? Who is liable for all the work
| required to get the ship dug out? Who keeps the insurance that
| will pay for all this?
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Had rockets not been so regulated, this problem could have easily
| been solved. It would not be cheap but with a 150million
| insurance budget it is doable. Egypt is losing 400million in
| trade every hour. The ship weighs 200 000 tons. You only need to
| drag it out of the sand, not bring it to LEO. Another option
| would be a lot of shaped charges but the side effects are much
| more catastrophic if things go wrong. In the olden days, they
| would just use nuclear (See project Plowshare for the Panama
| Canal).
|
| Before you downvote, do the math.
| tehjoker wrote:
| I like how everyone thinks that by using money, bombs, or
| radiation they can fix a carefully engineered project by
| essentially kicking it hard enough.
|
| Blowing a messy radioactive hole in the ground does not
| guarantee maritime navigability....
| gm3dmo wrote:
| This is Hacker News.
| riffraff wrote:
| > Egypt is losing 400million in trade every hour
|
| this seems excessive, if they made 400M in trade per hour that
| would be 3T per year, but Egypt's GDP is ~1T.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| At the very least, why aren't they using helicopters to take
| the containers off one-by-one. That would reduce the overall
| weight, and it'd be easier to move an empty ship than one
| weighed down by cargo.
| dageshi wrote:
| Are there helicopters capable of lifting a fully loaded cargo
| container?
| kmonsen wrote:
| In addition to the weight issues, there are up to 20k of
| them on board.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| No. The absolute heaviest-lift helicopter, the MI-26, can
| lift a little over 20 short tons. Most helicopters can
| carry a ton or two at most.
|
| In comparison, unloaded shipping containers are already a
| few tons. Loaded ones are all over the place, of course,
| but max out at around 30.
| karagenit wrote:
| Not sure if that's possible. Some quick Googling told me a
| typical 40' cargo container has a capacity of 30 tons, but
| the largest commercial cargo helicopter (the Mi-26) can carry
| only 22 tons.
| PeterisP wrote:
| It has something like 20000 containers on it. Even if
| helicopters would lift a container off every 10 minutes, it
| wouldn't make any meaningful difference.
|
| Also, you can't do the maneuvering they were trying to with
| the tugs at the same time you're doing something like that,
| unless you want to kill someone.
|
| Unloading such a ship to empty would take a long time even if
| it's in port facilities under many cranes.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The worlds highest capacity heavy lift helicopter can lift
| 44k lbs (russian M-26, estimated to be 20 in working
| condition). An empty 40 ft. container weighs 9k lbs. With a
| max loading of 66k lbs gross. The Ever Given has a capacity
| of 20k TEU, or 10k 40 ft. containers.
|
| Being generous, you could move maybe 5 per hour. Probably 1
| per hour would be realistic. But give them the benefit of the
| doubt and say they could move 20 per hour for some reason,
| including fuel and maintenance stops.
|
| So assuming that they could work 24 hours per day, they could
| do 480 containers per day (again assuming that all of the
| containers are 22k lbs lighter than capacity). They should be
| able to get this helicopter unloading done in 20 days of
| around the clock work with a bunch of highly optimistic
| assumptions.
|
| Plus they have to stay out of the way of the dozens of
| salvage workers trying to move the actual ship, while
| operating a soviet era machine in a VERY harsh desert
| environment with no infrastructure.
|
| If they need the ship to float higher, they would start by
| removing ballast, fuel, crew water, etc.
|
| Large salvage operations are notoriously expensive, tricky,
| dangerous, and often don't make sense to outsiders. There's a
| reason that there's really only about half a dozen firms
| worldwide that have the expertise and equipment to pull
| something like this off.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It looks like there might be a kind of priority difference
| going on here...
|
| To all the ship owners and cargo owners, this blockage is a
| big problem and massive amounts of money should be spent to
| solve it.
|
| But to the canal owners, they are only losing relatively
| small amounts of revenue by the canal being shut, so while
| they are sending all their boats to try pull it free, they
| aren't yet at the stage of calling in the army helicopters to
| help unload the ship.
|
| At some point Egypts government will probably get involved,
| and then the army will show up with tanks with a lot of
| pulling power, massive winches installed on the shoreline,
| and helicopters for unloading.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Just to throw some numbers out there, last year the canal
| grossed ~15 million USD/day in revenue from the toll
| charge.
| dragontamer wrote:
| An entire fleet of tug-boats seem unable to move the ship.
| I don't think tanks would fare much better.
|
| The proper solution is probably (?? I'm not an engineer,
| just spitballing here) a system of pulleys. See Archemedies
| and The Syracusia: Archemedies allegedly moved a ship
| powered only with his own muscles using only a system of
| pulleys as an assist.
|
| I realize that the Syracusia is probably smaller than this
| container ship in the canal. Still though: a system of
| pulleys is probably cheaper and stronger than what a team
| of Tanks would do.
|
| -------------
|
| They're at least in a situation where there's a ton of land
| nearby that can serve as an anchor point. I mean... the
| problem right now is probably just figuring out where and
| how to safely pull the ship. They need to apply hundreds-
| of-thousands of tons of force in a way that:
|
| 1. Won't break the ship apart
|
| 2. Successfully dislodges it
|
| Its a relatively simple problem to apply hundreds-of-
| thousands of tons of force. But doing it in such a way to
| keep the ship floating... that's the hard part.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Egypt is losing transit fees.
|
| A typical bulk carrier pays about $200,000 per transit.
|
| 51 ships transit the canal each day, on average.
|
| Egypt is losing $10m per day.
|
| Edit: the canal generated $5.85billion in revenue in 2018, or
| $16million per day.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-egypt-economy-suezcanal-i...
| yitchelle wrote:
| Egypt could claim the lost fees from the ship owner, maybe?
| p1mrx wrote:
| "The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run
| for survival as huge chunks of container blubber fell
| everywhere."
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| "the blast blew blubber beyond any believe boundaries"
| stragies wrote:
| The original source:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPuaSY0cMK8
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Brute force won't really help here, as the ship does not have
| the structural integrity to resist the force rocket engines
| would exert on it. Breaking the ship up would be catastrophic,
| as clean-up of many pieces would take a lot longer than getting
| it unstuck.
| electrotype wrote:
| Genuine question: why not simply pull its back in the reverse
| direction it was going, until its front is unstuck?
| artificial wrote:
| Both ends are jammed now.
| sliken wrote:
| Because the momentum of a huge ship dug quite deeply into the
| sides of the canal quite hard, so it's no longer floating.
|
| It's nowhere close to floating currently, and a ship can't be
| pulled with arbitrarily large forces without damage.
| vpribish wrote:
| the stern is stuck already in the other bank
| nitramm wrote:
| Do you know why half of the internet is using evergiven when on
| all the photos is written evergreen?
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Hi. pm me and I can explain you
| andylash wrote:
| The name of the company is Evergreen. All their ships start
| with Ever. This ship is Evergiven.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "Ever Grounded"?
| tsm wrote:
| Evergreen is the company name, Ever Given (which does appear on
| the ship in much smaller letters) is the ship's name.
| [deleted]
| jachee wrote:
| This confused me, too, at first.
|
| The vessel name (on the bow) is _Ever Given_.
|
| The company operating it, emblazoned on the side in large
| letters, is Evergreen.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Evergreen is the company, all their ships are named "Ever X"
| where "X" is some word that begins with "G".
|
| Like how some people name all their kids with the same first
| letter. I know, weird.
| snakeroman wrote:
| Evergreen is the company, Evergiven is the name of the ship.
| gizmo385 wrote:
| Because Evergreen is the name of the company that operates the
| ship [1] and Ever Given is the name of the ship [2].
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Marine
|
| [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ever_Given
| topspin wrote:
| Evergreen Marine Corporation owns the ship named Ever Given.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| evanlong wrote:
| Great minds think alike:
|
| https://isthesuezcanalblocked.com
| dnautics wrote:
| Principle of maximal irony prediction: the ship rolls over while
| trying to free it and the suez gets littered with containers,
| takes even longer to clear it.
| WJW wrote:
| The Dutch national news had an interview with the CEO of
| Boskalis, which is the company hired to unlodge the ship. They
| have one team on the ground atm and another building computer
| simulations exactly to calculate how much oil and ballast they
| can pump out (to lighten the ship up and make it easier to tow)
| without endangering the stability of the ship.
|
| Apparently they had a similar case (same size of ship) a few
| years back on the Elbe in Germany, in the end it took 12 (!) of
| the largest tugs they had to get it loose.
| em-bee wrote:
| do you mean this case? https://www.mopo.de/hamburg/frachter-
| rammt-faehre-knapp-an-d...
|
| that was the very same ship
|
| EDIT: no, the incident needing 12 tugs was a different ship.
| see comment below.
| Forge36 wrote:
| This gave me a good laugh.
| wussboy wrote:
| Oh my god who is driving this thing?
| RupertEisenhart wrote:
| Thats.. almost literally unbelievable. I almost want to
| suspect that that's a code name? For any sufficiently large
| ship that blocks a major waterway? Incredible.
| Anther wrote:
| Perhaps Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses is driving
| this one.
| BatFastard wrote:
| Very strange that it was the same ship, very strange!
| sliken wrote:
| I don't read German, but I can find reports of the same
| SIZE chip getting stuck on the Elbe and requiring 12 tugs
| to free it. The ship was called the CSCL Indian Ocean.
| doublesocket wrote:
| And again a strong wind was blamed. Maybe there's a limit
| to how big these ships can be built?
| kmonsen wrote:
| Is that ship abnormally large or something or is this just
| a super wild coincidence?
| bolasanibk wrote:
| It is one of the largest container ships in the world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_s
| hip...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Needs a counter for ongoing cost. An experienced military
| logistics person I know estimated yesterday that the bill for
| this is up to about $40 billion already.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| That might be the total value of impacted shipping, but nobody
| is going to get a $40 billion bill for this.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Do they have deadlines for delivery and late fees? I've heard
| a quarter of the worldwide cargo capacity will be delayed by
| this event, this could rise very fast.
| blhack wrote:
| Those two guys on excavators are gonna be RICH!
| hikerclimb wrote:
| I hope it never gets unstuck
| Jedd wrote:
| An image showing an excavator near the pointy end.
|
| I'm sure the overwhelming scale is reduced at this proximity.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/aAyrXub.jpeg
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Smit salvage have got this. I just hope they had enough notice to
| to take their film crew with them:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/SmitSalvageTowage/videos
| aidenn0 wrote:
| They said "days to weeks" for how long it will take, so they
| got plenty of time to film it.
| piinbinary wrote:
| I wonder if they could build a dam around the ship and lift it
| with water.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| Physically that would work, but this ship has a draught of 14.5
| meters. You'd need to build a pretty high dam. It would need to
| cross the canal twice, as otherwise the water level inside the
| dam would never be higher than the current water level, and
| you'd need to pump in the water. Then, once the ship floats,
| you'd somehow need to move it out of your small artificial lake
| into the canal, and remove the dam you created in the canal.
|
| It's easier to lighten the ship.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| Is it naive to suggest that they start digging a detour around
| this roadblock? I feel like it would take less time to do that
| than to try to move the ship out of the way.
|
| The Army Corps of Engineers can build waterways and levies like
| it's nobody's business.
| saberdancer wrote:
| Dig it with what? By the time you could get anything in place
| and start digging any sort of a detour, you'll get this ship
| removed.
|
| This is not a small detour. These ships can't turn well so any
| detour would need to be very long and would take months to dig
| out (even if you had infrastructure in place to do it).
|
| You could nuke it though. Throw a bunch of nukes in a line and
| you are good to go. :D
| TedShiller wrote:
| I feel like this whole thing is a perfect metaphor for the
| current US government
| rbx wrote:
| Apparently, the ship drew a giant penis before getting stuck:
| https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/cargo-ship-drew-penis-before-g...
| blhack wrote:
| I don't think people are giving enough credit to _how_ stuck the
| ship is.
|
| Look at some of the photos of the front of it. Look at how far
| out of the water it is sitting. The ship might look like that if
| it were totally empty, but not when it is full of containers like
| this.
|
| Some people saying: just drag it off of the sand. Okay! And what
| happens when that causes you to rip a hole into the hull of the
| ship? Now it's _really_ stuck.
|
| Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think you
| realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship. You're
| basically asking to build a port in the middle of the egyptian
| desert. That isn't going to happen.
|
| It's really stuck. It's probably going to take a couple of weeks
| to get it unstuck.
| adflux wrote:
| Love the armchair engineers who think they're gonna solve this
| better than billion dollar companies
| lamontcg wrote:
| Just let the air out of the tires, simple.
| yitchelle wrote:
| Put balloons around it to give extra buoyancy. That should
| work.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| That actually is something that you can do in smaller
| salvage operations. The technical word for these balloons
| is lift bag.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| I searched for the biggest ones I could find this week
| and it was something like several tons. So we only need
| about 10 thousand of them.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| Or with crabs, potc style! /s
| Arrath wrote:
| Just bring in a Bagger 288[1] and use it to excavate a new
| diversion canal in front of the ship long enough to get it
| out of the main canal, bada-bing bada-boom. Simple!
|
| [1]Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEvfD4C6ow
| atdt wrote:
| It's a way of thinking out loud and providing an opening for
| someone more knowledgeable to explain what is being
| overlooked. It makes for interesting threads.
| DanBC wrote:
| > It makes for interesting threads.
|
| The threads are not particularly interesting because people
| make the same suggestions over and over again.
| jonplackett wrote:
| In that case... why don't we get Elon Musk's Submarine to
| get it out?
| arkitaip wrote:
| It's hilariously arrogant too.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| I feel like we need a "why don't you just?" safe word,
| where the intent is to signify "hey I'm not being a
| smartass, I'm really just curious about why this
| seemingly simple solution won't actually work".
|
| So much of what happens on the internet is in bad faith
| that it makes it really hard to just have innocent
| conversations without being misunderstood. :-(
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Agreed. I've thought the same for posting an interesting
| fact. Anymore, I want to preface every single one by
| saying, "hey, you may already know this; I'm just sharing
| it because it hasn't been mentioned yet and I think it's
| neat. If you were implying the fact already, I apologize
| for overlooking that."
| rjmill wrote:
| I try to replace any "I think..." and "Why don't they
| just..." comments with "I wonder if..." ones.
|
| I've found it communicates my curiosity in a way that's
| less likely to be misinterpreted. It's made my
| internet/IRL conversations much more productive.
| noizejoy wrote:
| > So much of what happens on the internet is in bad faith
|
| ... and I have to admit I'm still not able to easily
| recognize the difference between bad faith and utter lack
| of experience and/or intelligence without digging deep
| into the history of the individual posting such
| "questions".
|
| And the need for that extra digging makes such questions
| effectively the same waste of time and emotional energy
| as responding to a troll.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| Same. It's super easy to know when _I_ am communicating
| in good faith, but it 's not so trivial to know when
| _you_ are.
|
| You know those scenes in the movies where two characters
| circle around each other giving the side eye like "so are
| you fucking with me or are we cool?"
|
| Twitter in particular feels like a whole site of people
| doing that. :)
| lovemenot wrote:
| Why dont you just coin a new phrase? Perhaps it'll stick.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| I've actually seen literal quotes before, e.g. a question
| like:
|
| "Why don't you just" get a bunch of people on rafts and
| row real fast to push it off?
| ksd482 wrote:
| Maybe but maybe not.
|
| Like the parent comment said, it's a way of thinking out
| loud.
|
| For e.g., when someone says "just dig it out, it just
| pull it away...", I give them a benefit of doubt by
| assuming what they are really saying is "I know it's not
| as simple as just pulling it out but can someone explain
| why we can't though?"
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What do you think people at "billion dollar companies" do
| in such situation?
|
| Exactly the same thing. Just not on a public board. Just
| like everyone else is doing when discussing problems they
| face in any line of work.
|
| Since it's unlikely anyone here has any decision making
| power relevant to the Suez canal, look at this discussion
| as an exercise in group problem solving. Sharpening the
| saw.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > Exactly the same thing.
|
| Not exactly-exactly. There are (e.g.) 1000 suggested
| solutions.
|
| 950/1000 of them are silly, stupid, impossible,
| -facepalm-, etc.
|
| 25/1000 are doable.
|
| 10/25 are doable and cost less than the other 25
|
| 5/10 are faster than others
|
| 2/5 are actively being investigated, and of course they
| won't be announced to 'us'. They
| (thinkers/engineers/specialists) will have to talk to
| their CEOs/COOs/CFOs, insurance companies, Egypt's
| military, handlersof the canal, and a bunch of other key
| stakeholders.
|
| (my ratios are pure guesstimates, but it makes sense that
| there is a selection process, and we won't figure them
| out from our couches)
| ortusdux wrote:
| Cunningham's Law: "The best way to get the right answer on
| the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the
| wrong answer."
| gregoriol wrote:
| That's what some scientists said about mRNA research
| prox wrote:
| If this was space engineers I would build a crane drone and
| offload it unto nearby ships. Or build giant trucks to help
| the ship get unstuck.
|
| Or just tow it outside the environment...
| gizmo385 wrote:
| > Or just tow it outside the environment...
|
| For those who haven't seen this video...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
| topspin wrote:
| Where is Elon when you need him?
| ericj5 wrote:
| He just offered to build them a little submarine
| kergonath wrote:
| That ship is never going to fit in that submarine.
| olalonde wrote:
| That's how a lot of billion dollar companies got started.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| We have the luxury of just throwing around ideas and not
| caring about the consequences (because nobody in power will
| read it). It's just fun to think about how you'd solve a
| problem like this.
|
| For example I'd try to attach a two Raptor engines to the
| ship and blow it back to the water :)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Or tear the ship apart :). Which makes me think - why not
| cut the ship in half? Two pieces will be easier to dislodge
| and tow away :).
| gregoriol wrote:
| Someone actually is trying that idea in Georgia right now
| (https://www.thedrive.com/news/34648/capsized-cargo-ship-
| in-g...) but it really is not easy!
|
| Many likely problems: equipment avilability to do so,
| time it will take, debris falling off and from the
| operations, risk of capsizing, probably need to load
| pieces on barges/crane but canal is not much large
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| in half? I would not go for less than nine pieces.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ENOJBLVgjw
| ampersandy wrote:
| What a fascinating watch! That they were able to produce
| such clean cuts through the entire ship with the cutting
| wire is absolutely incredible.
| danaris wrote:
| I think there's still room for suggesting potential solutions
| that might _work_ , even if they make the operation of the
| cargo ship (even more?) unprofitable for its owners.
|
| That said, the ones mentioned there don't pass the smell
| test.
| undefined1 wrote:
| but did they try turning it off and on again?
| zepearl wrote:
| Detonate a small but still relatively powerful bomb upstream
| (or maybe multiple small but staggered ones), to create a
| small tsunami-like wave, which in turn will move at least the
| ship's aft/stern (as the ship creates in the canal a "V"-like
| shape which will therefore concentrate most of the wave's
| force in that area) when it hits it. Almost guaranteed to
| work, theoretically.
| [deleted]
| wongarsu wrote:
| So you are complaining that on a startup forum people are
| trying to solve billion dollar questions?
|
| Besides, billion dollar companies often miss things. Yes,
| they have the more relevant experts and much better data than
| we, but they have to content with internal and external
| politics and have fewer people throwing around ideas.
| Sometimes the answer is to "why haven't you done X" is simply
| "nobody with a voice to be heard had that idea". If billion
| dollar companies were the infallible giants you make them out
| to be then startups straight up couldn't work.
| [deleted]
| grenoire wrote:
| Weeks are measured in what I'd call, a lot of money. Is it a
| consolidation of funds sort of issue? Anybody responsible for
| getting it fixed?
| dan-robertson wrote:
| The people who should be desperately trying to pay a lot of
| money to get the ship unstuck are maritime insurance
| underwriters. There is a lot of insurance against late
| delivery. Unless they have managed to figure out how this is
| an act of god, that is.
| WJW wrote:
| They hired a company specialized in this kind of stuff
| (Boskalis), but as their CEO mentioned of TV it depends on
| how stuck it is. If you're lucky, pumping out the fuel and
| ballast can make the ship light enough to drag it clear with
| tugboats. If that doesn't work, you might have to unload
| some, most or all of the 20k containers from the ship to make
| it light enough. It can be done, but depending on how much is
| required it'll take a few days to a week to get the required
| equipment all the way to Egypt.
| maxerickson wrote:
| If I estimated right, the fuel is a few percent of the
| total mass (maybe around 5%). Not the most encouraging
| result.
| bostonfincs wrote:
| Military does it all the time with helicopters. Not cheap or
| easy but probably the most likely outcome
| nomy99 wrote:
| People think I'm joking but we should bomb it to smithereens.
| The crater would probably just fill up with the water flow.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| What would be the total loss cost of this ship?
| nomy99 wrote:
| As someone mentioned in the thread below, "Lloyd's List
| estimated that every day Suez is closed costs US$9 billion
| ($400 million per hour)."
|
| I am not sure what the value of the ship is but it wouldn't
| be comparable.
| samizdis wrote:
| > Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think
| you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship.
|
| It seems, though, that a partial unloading is being considered
| by a professional in the field according to quotes in an
| article in The Guardian [1]:
|
| _However, Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, a specialist
| dredging company that has sent a crew to the scene, said data
| so far suggested "it is not really possible to pull it loose"
| and that the ship may need to be unloaded. "We can't exclude it
| might take weeks, depending on the situation," Berdowski told
| Dutch television.
|
| He said the ship's bow and stern had been lifted up against
| either side of the canal. "It's like an enormous beached whale.
| It's an enormous weight on the sand. We might have to work with
| a combination of reducing the weight by removing containers,
| oil and water from the ship, tugboats and dredging of sand."_
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/suez-canal-
| blo...
| 6nf wrote:
| Only about the center third of the channel is actually deep
| enough for this massive ship. Both ends of the ship is stuck in
| several meters of sand. So far they've only managed get two
| bulldozers on to try and dig it out but progress is slow.
| blhack wrote:
| Those excavators are there for show while they try to figure
| out what to do. There is absolutely no chance that 2 guys
| with excavators are going to dredge out enough of the canal
| to free the ship, and the canal authorities know this.
|
| It there was even shadow of a chance that that might work,
| then every single excavator in Northern Africa would be on
| it's way to the canal to dig it out and free the ship.
|
| In fact I'd say that if there was even a snowball's chance in
| hell that that would work, China would be airdropping
| excavators into the area as we speak.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Kind of amazing that in 48 hours, an event happens that
| threatens one of Egypts major income streams and political
| power sources, and the maximum they can spare is 2
| bulldozers...
|
| Like why not call in the army, rent every bulldozer in the
| district, and within 12 hours you'll have 30 on site and be
| able to move a lot of sand quickly to free it?
| SilasX wrote:
| In fairness, the US couldn't ramp up mask or ventilator
| production very fast when the coronavirus was going to tank
| the entire economy.
| eliseumds wrote:
| They know they have a monopoly. There are no viable
| alternative routes, so they just don't care enough.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sure there is. It's about to be busier than usual.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/nu0CNPi
| londons_explore wrote:
| If I were South Africa, I would announce a tax on passing
| within 100 miles of their shore for commercial
| shipping...
| gregoriol wrote:
| It's probably not easy to dig with excavators into the
| canal: they likely won't reach far enough
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| I watch Gold Rush and one of the prospectors use a massive
| Volvo excavator that makes those two tiny ones they use in
| Suez look like tinker toys.
|
| I think they have no idea at this moment as the tugs can't
| get it done.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Lloyd's List estimated that every day Suez is closed costs US$9
| billion ($400 million per hour).
|
| If it could be done technically and open up the canal, it would
| be cheaper for insurance companies to buy the ship, it's cargo,
| buy all nearby property and then blow the whole ship up.
| maxerickson wrote:
| From orbit.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Could you build a temporary barrier around the ship and the
| section of the canal, bring in some massive pumps, and
| temporarily raise the water level around the ship?
| rapnie wrote:
| In the middle parts of the ship it is probably not grounded,
| so you might have ropes below the hull with large inflatable
| balloons on both sides below water level, to give the ship
| extra lift. Then on a high tide, with oil & water removed,
| maybe some dredging on the sides where it needs to rotate to,
| and.. go!
| wongarsu wrote:
| Maybe something like those air/water tanks they attached to
| the side of the Costa Concordia to float it [1].
|
| But you would have to take great care to prevent it from
| rolling over, so you probably can't lift it up too far.
|
| 1: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28288823
| brown9-2 wrote:
| the land around the canal looks pretty flat, those would have
| to be very strong barriers
| fileeditview wrote:
| I've had the exact same idea but the canal bank is very
| shallow.. so you would have to build around the whole ship
| (as you said). This also seems like a major undertaking.
|
| I am excited to see how they will solve the problem though!
| wongarsu wrote:
| If the bank is very shallow and mostly sand, maybe instead
| of building a damn all around the ship it would be easier
| to just dredge a new passage that goes around the stuck
| ship. After all the real problem isn't that the ship is run
| aground, it's that the canal is blocked for everyone else.
| [deleted]
| rblatz wrote:
| I'm not at all qualified on these matters, but that's one of
| the better ideas I've read.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| If you unload 20,000 TEU's onto rail cars it takes 5000 cars,
| double-stacked. That's 50 100-car trains. It'll take weeks to
| months to load and unload all that, if a proper rail depot is
| available to take it. It takes huge cranes to reach across a
| megaship and into its hold. That'd have to be build. On sand.
|
| The idea that there's any quick way to manage the cargo of this
| ship is whistling in the dark.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Cranes on barges or ships, unloading the cargo into other
| ships is probably the most viable way to unload any
| significant amount of cargo.
| xwdv wrote:
| This ship is delaying $400 million dollars per hour in global
| trades.
|
| It better not fucking take weeks.
| Zenst wrote:
| > It's really stuck. It's probably going to take a couple of
| weeks to get it unstuck.
|
| My armchair engineering would dump a load of salt into the
| water to increase buoyancy of the ship long enough for the tugs
| to get some momentum with less effort than currently.
|
| That would be my cheap try solution to help the tugs that have
| already hit there limit so why not change the physics and add a
| load of salt.
| leesec wrote:
| Dumb question but what about heavy lift helicopters moving
| containers off 1 by 1?
| michaelt wrote:
| It has 20,000 TEUs (twenty-foot-container-equivalent-units).
|
| Weight-wise, the _average_ container could be lifted with a
| military heavy lift helicopter: The ship carries 20,000 tons,
| i.e. 1 ton per TEU, and a CH-47F can lift 11 tons. Although a
| TEU can weigh up to 26 tons, so you couldn 't lift the
| heaviest ones.
|
| The problem is speed: A ship-to-shore crane at a properly
| equipped port can do a lift every 2 minutes. Ports can speed
| things up by lifting several TEUs in a single lift - but
| you'd also expect a helicopter to be slower, because we
| haven't put decades of optimisation into the process. So
| let's assume those cancel each other out.
|
| If they can keep up that rate with a helicopter, and they
| operate 24 hours a day, it would take 28 days to unload the
| ship.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| It's a lot of containers.
| leesec wrote:
| You don't need to remove all of them? Just get it light
| enough to float it?
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Helicopters also have limited capacity. So it's not like
| you could pick up the heaviest first. Which brings back
| the issue of sheer quantity.
| londons_explore wrote:
| it's a quarter mile long. You can probably have 10
| helicopters working at once while still keeping safe
| distances.
|
| Each helicopter has a crew of 4 on the boat and 4 on the
| shore. They hook 4 chains to the 4 corner hoists of each
| container. Say it takes 1 minutes per container to affix
| the chains, 1 minute to fly to the sand, 1 minute to
| unhitch, and 1 minute to fly back. Thats a lot slower than
| agricultural helicopters, but nobody will be very practiced
| with this yet, so it'll be slower.
|
| The entire ship could be unloaded with this method in 5.5
| days. Perhaps less if not all the cargo needs unloading.
|
| The job could be half done by now...
| yongjik wrote:
| You're joking, right? It's a quarter mile, or 400m long.
| Ten helicopters in it means ~40m distance. That's less
| than safe distance _between cars_ in a highway.
| totalZero wrote:
| You're assuming that the helicopters don't stagger their
| work cycles.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The worlds highest capacity heavy lift chopper (M-26, of
| which there are 20 operational) has a max take off weight
| of 44k lbs. A standard 40 ft. container can be loaded to
| a gross weight of 66k lbs.
|
| It takes a purpose built crane a few minutes to unload a
| container, so I sort of doubt a helicopter could make it
| happen faster.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| A quarter of a mile long is a huge ship. Damn. Never
| really got that until now.
| kergonath wrote:
| It's really tall as well. You can't take any quickly
| assembled crane to unload that.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Or, depending on how quick it really is, it could take
| months. Its easy to arm-chair speculate.
| gizmo385 wrote:
| Based on the information on Wikipedia, it sounds like the
| ship could potentially hold more than 20,000 containers.
| Assuming I'm understanding the article correctly, that'd be a
| lot of containers to move 1-by-1.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If it's fully loaded, that'd be something like ten _thousand_
| 40 ' containers to move.
|
| Hooking them up to a helicopter would be a slow, dangerous
| process as well.
| 6nf wrote:
| The biggest choppers in the world can only lift about 20
| tonnes. 20 foot containers max gross is 25 tonnes, and 40
| foot containers even more.
| gm3dmo wrote:
| Typically an empty 20 foot shipping container weighs
| between 1.8-2.2 metric tonnes (about 3,970 - 4,850 lb) and
| an empty 40 foot shipping container weighs 3.8 - 4.2 tonne
| (8,340 - 9,260 lb) depending on what kind of container it
| is. For example, high cube containers tend to be heavier.
| blhack wrote:
| Why would these containers be empty?
| eCa wrote:
| Yes, especially with the container shortage[1] reported
| earlier this week, I would be very surprised if empty
| containers are being sent _away_ from where there already
| is a shortage.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574077
| blhack wrote:
| There are 20,000 containers on the ship. Assuming you needed
| to remove 1/4 of those containers to get it to rise far
| enough to get off of the sand, you need to move 5000
| containers.
|
| Assume that it takes 5 minute to connect a bridle to a
| container, hook it to a helicopter, and move it...and then
| also assume that the helicopters can run 24/7 and never have
| to refuel, that they can hot swap in pilots, and that there
| is never a single problem, you're talking about 25000
| minutes, or about 17 days of absolutely non stop running
| helicopters.
|
| And that only gets you 1/4 of the containers, and it might
| not even work at all.
|
| (It's not a dumb question, and I'm sure that it was already
| discussed by the team who is dealing with this. It's just
| that the scale of what is happening here is restrictive.)
| jeffgreco wrote:
| How many copters are you assuming?
| kergonath wrote:
| We really are bad at dealing with large numbers. 20 000
| does not seem that much when it's just written that way.
| Even looking at the pictures, this is a lot of containers,
| but the efforts needed to get them out of that ship are
| hard to imagine.
| bkor wrote:
| Just a small correction: 20.000 TEU is not the same as the
| amount of containers. TEU is the number of twenty foot
| equivalent. There will be enough 40 foot containers on
| there. If it was going to Europe there will hardly be any
| empty containers.
|
| Amount of actual containers is probably the 20.000 divided
| by 1.6 or so, though it's not a given that any vessel is
| fully loaded to max capacity. Sometimes need to deal with
| restrictions.
| gizmo385 wrote:
| You'd also need a helicopter than can lift containers that
| heavy, which might be a long shot.
| WJW wrote:
| Most heavy lift helicopters don't really go above 20 tons
| takeoff weight, while even a 20 foot container has a max
| allowable weight well above that. Most shipping containers
| will the 40 footers, so helicopters will probably be a no-go.
| There's also 20k of them so it would take quite a while.
|
| That said, taking off some containers is a viable option but
| it'll probably have to wait for a crane ship to arrive.
| JshWright wrote:
| Unloading it may be exactly what happens (based on comments
| from the Dutch salvage company brought in to deal with the
| mess). And yeah, it's going to take weeks (best case scenario).
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Comedy option, what wacky cold war era aircraft do we have
| capable of lifting massive loads like a container ship? Perhaps
| an enormous fleet of Chinook helicopters could take it straight
| up?
| eCa wrote:
| If I understand [1] properly, the Chinook can lift 13
| tons[2].
|
| The Evergiven's maximum weight is 200000 tons. So that would
| be 15000+ Chinooks lifting it. A sight to behold.
|
| Added: Only about 1200 were ever produced, so that won't fly.
|
| [1]
| https://www.army.mil/article/137584/ch_47_chinook_helicopter
|
| [2] 26000 pounds
| gizmo385 wrote:
| I desperately want someone to photoshop this.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Oh what about magnetism? Could we wrap the ship in wire and
| send so much current through that it repels against the
| Earth's magnetic field and shoots itself right into the
| atmosphere? Basically building a giant rail gun. Might need a
| small nuclear power plant or two to make it feasible.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > Might need a small nuclear power plant or two to make it
| feasible.
|
| Amazingly, that's a severe underestimation.
|
| The force on a wire carrying current in a magnetic field is
| given by F = B*I*l, and to move it upwards that force needs
| to be at least equal to gravity, so equate to F = m*g.
|
| - Let's be generous and assume B = 100 uT = 100 * 10^-6 T.
|
| - Likewise, assume the ship is a rectangular box with sides
| of 400 m x 100 m, so a circumference of 1000 m, and that we
| can wrap a wire 100,000 times around it, to give total wire
| length l = 10^8 m.
|
| - m = 200,000 metric tonne = 2 * 10^8 kg (we assume magic
| wire that is massless).
|
| - g = 10 m/s^2.
|
| Solving for I yields I = mg/Bl = 2 * 10^5 A. That's a lot
| of current.
|
| If we assume the wire has a diameter of 10 cm (which is
| ridiculously high considering we just wrapped it 100,000
| times around the ship, but whatever) and is made out of
| copper, it has a resistance of ~200 Ohms. Necessary power
| to generate such a current is P = I^2*R = 8*10^12 W (= 8000
| TW). That's about half the total energy consumption of
| humanity.
|
| The largest nuclear power plant puts out about 8000 MW, so
| you'd need a 1000 of them.
| _Microft wrote:
| The most important thing here is the magic wire. The ship
| is 60m wide and 30m tall, that makes a circumference of
| 180m. 0.05m radius, 100000 windings, made of copper with
| a density of approx. 8900kg/m^3 gives a total mass of
| approx. 1.3*10^6 tons for the cable.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Well, on the bright side once we free it with this
| incredible contraption then we've also solved all of
| humanity's power needs for a few more centuries. :)
| stordoff wrote:
| I've now got the most amazing image in my head of a
| container ship being fired at the moon.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Hah or if we reverse the polarity maybe we can crush it
| into something the size of an aluminum can.
| afarrell wrote:
| An entire fleet of Chinook helecopters would blow a mighty
| draft of air downward onto the ship, holding it in place.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Better Cold War option:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
|
| The ship's a total loss, but Egypt also gets a new lake!
| HPsquared wrote:
| Those passing through the area afterwards might not like
| that idea.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| You know there's probably someone doing the cost-benefit
| analysis right now to see if just digging a new canal
| channel around the ship would be faster and cheaper than
| removing it.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Why dig when you can blast?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chagan
| samizdis wrote:
| How about combining Britain's supposed Dunkirk spirit -
| lots of small, plucky volunteers etc - with the pent-up
| frustration of lockdown, not to mention Britain's
| hopelessly reduced global role ... and the solution you
| get is sending 5,000 British 10-year-olds with buckets
| and spades. They'd make quite a dent. A bit like building
| the pyramids, but in reverse.
|
| It'd be a win-win situation, surely. OK, or I could just
| take my meds and leave quietly.
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd be amazed if the density of weight on the ship is such
| that an arbitrarily large fleet of Chinooks could actually
| safely accomplish this. And helicopters flying in a dense
| formation under strain is quite likely to result in a lot of
| really big problems.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The rotor wash beneath it all would be breathtaking.. and
| might blow all the water out of the canal. :)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Which makes me think - what about using all these
| choppers to blow the water _in_ - and keep it there? :).
|
| (I assume this is an equivalent problem to the lifting
| problem, as the extra pressure they'd be fighting would
| be that of the ship displacing water.)
| munk-a wrote:
| Somebody get Randall Munroe on the phone - I think we've
| found the next What-If topic.
| smegger001 wrote:
| Yeah because what we really need to fix this situation is
| several hundred giant blenders exploding in mid air
| fireball of high velocity steel on top of the jammed ship
| Izkata wrote:
| Now I wonder...
|
| Let's assume it was possible. Would the force of lifting
| that much mass be enough to shift the earth in a measurable
| way? (I'm assuming it would be a lot stronger lifting it
| into the air than what floating on the water produces, but
| have no idea what the math would be)
| lisper wrote:
| F=ma no matter what, so if things aren't accelerating,
| the force isn't changing, it's just being transferred to
| the earth by other means. In this case, it would be
| through the air rather than the water.
| [deleted]
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| It has a 20,000 container capacity, so if it's full and you
| could unload them at a rate of 1 per minute (assuming
| multiple choppers) it would take 2 weeks with no stopping,
| but I assume the frequency would be much lower than that so
| you're talking possibly months to unload even a fraction of
| them.
| josiahq wrote:
| Yeah, from the middle out.
| munk-a wrote:
| Also - it's quite possible it'd further beach itself during
| the unloading unless you replaced the mass in an easily
| removable manner... To which end I'd like to suggest self-
| launching lead trebuchets.
| sverhagen wrote:
| I understand this is all not realistic, but since we're
| just spitballing here, before I realized how many
| containers we're even talking about here, I had rather
| wondered if lifting off a lesser number of containers in
| the right place would be exactly right to shift the
| weight/balance for the ship to get unstuck.
| leesec wrote:
| Not even close. This ship is absolutely giant.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Hrm change of plans, let's pull a few ICBMs out and set
| them up on each corner with massive tow lines. We'll get it
| out the way in an instant... and into low earth orbit
| minutes later!
| garaetjjte wrote:
| ICBMs won't do it, we need something stronger.
|
| I cannot find how much ship weights itself, but
| deadweight tonnage which is about 200000t. Let's assume
| 300000t. Thrust of Saturn V S-IC stage is 3300t, with
| diameter of 10m, empty mass of 130t and 2150t of
| propellant for 150s burn time. It would need nearly 300
| fully fuelled S-IC stages to lift it! Which is a bit too
| much, as with 400x60m ship area we can only fit about 240
| stages. But as we're _definitely_ not going into orbit
| anyway we can reduce propellant amount for shorter burn
| time. Cutting propellant by half reducing burn time to
| 75s we only need around 143 stages, fitting on ship with
| room to spare.
|
| So in that regard it is doable. But there's problem of
| what to do with all the exhaust, as rockets obviously
| aren't designed for pulling load attached to the
| bottom...
| WJW wrote:
| Ya no. An ICBM like the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SM-65_Atlas has a launch
| thrust of only 1,300 kN, or about 130 tons. That would
| lift about 4 of the 20000 containers aboard.
| lstodd wrote:
| Forget it.
|
| Let's just nuke it, them nuclear weapons have to be
| disposed of somehow, and the channel needs some
| expansion, it seems.
| smegger001 wrote:
| well lets just dig out the old mothballed project
| plowshare out of the coldwar toolbox and see what we can
| do.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
| pjc50 wrote:
| If I've done the maths right, you need a force of two
| billion Newton to lift it, and even if you round up a
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-30_Minuteman to 1MN
| you still need two thousand of them. ICBMs are not that
| big.
|
| Use musk's starship and you need >166 of them...
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Drat, we never should have given up on nuclear powered
| rocket engines in the 50s!
| [deleted]
| erulabs wrote:
| (200,000 short tons) / (130,000 pounds lifting capacity) =
| 3,076 Spruce... Geese.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| I'm imagining an incredible system of hooks setup so that
| the fleet of Spruce Gooses pass over at low altitude and
| speed, snare the hooks, and _YOINK_ pull it right out in
| one pass.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's been done.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-
| air_recovery...
| elihu wrote:
| Maybe supplement the Chinooks with V-22 Ospreys and Harriers?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Exactly. I'm guessing weeks rather than days, and maybe more
| than that.
|
| The best I can come up with is heavy lift helicopters to at
| least remove the front most containers to relieve some of the
| pressure but even that would be an enormous operation.
|
| Anything else would require major construction especially if it
| is to reach more than just the first four or five rows which is
| likely not going to be enough.
| zeteo wrote:
| >Some people have suggested unloading the ship. I don't think
| you realize the infrastructure required to unload a ship.
| You're basically asking to build a port in the middle of the
| egyptian desert. That isn't going to happen.
|
| I think you just need a smaller crane ship to transfer the
| cargo e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_crane_ship
| PeterisP wrote:
| IMHO would take weeks to unload the cargo with something like
| that.
| zeteo wrote:
| Yeah but you may not need to unload it completely. At some
| point as the buoyancy improves the tugs become more likely
| to pull it off.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Assuming the crane ship can even get into position to offload
| it.
|
| The ship is stuck because the sides of the canal are quite
| shallow.
|
| You are quite likely to get two stuck ships instead of one.
| thewarrior wrote:
| Crazy idea : Can we roll it into the water by pulling it over
| high strength rollers of some sort ? It would be pretty cool to
| use the same technique that was use to build the pyramids.
| cricalix wrote:
| Sane answer: No.
|
| The ship is 400 metres / 0.25 of a mile long. With
| containers, it weighs anywhere up to 199 _thousand_ tons. One
| does not simply attach a few hundred cables, put some rollers
| under it, and pull with all the tractors you can find in
| Egypt.
|
| Also, it's already in the water. It's just turned sideways
| and buried the bulb (by the looks) into the canal wall.
| blhack wrote:
| Okay hear me out:
|
| Somebody call Elon. Get the TBMs, and set them to work
| building a tunnel under the ship.
|
| Now fill the tunnel with giant rubber bladders.
|
| Call the Saudis and have them start shipping over helium.
| Fill the bladders with helium.
|
| Okay, keep the saudis around and get them to bring over one
| of the high pressure water drilling rigs that they use for
| oil. Start digging out the sand above the bladders, and float
| them up to be UNDER the ship.
|
| Okay now call the Dutch. Get them to bring over some MASSIVE
| water pumps and some damming equipment. The two guys on
| excavators can help. Dam up the canal on both sides of the
| ship, and pump out all the water.
|
| The bladders become rollers. Roll that ship back into the
| middle of the canal.
|
| Okay now repump the canal, and float the ship away. Bam.
| Done!
| testaoijoiaj wrote:
| > Get them to bring over some MASSIVE water pumps and some
| damming equipment.
|
| If you had this, then I would damn each side and pump water
| INTO that space. Raise water level, ship frees. Boom
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| Unloading is feasible, it would just take a couple of weeks.
| They just need a floating crane on each side and some barges to
| take the containers away.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Is there a reason they couldn't have a smaller crane on board
| and dump them over the side. Surely even losing the cargo
| would be cheaper than keeping it blocked at this point?
| gregoriol wrote:
| Nature loves you!
| input_sh wrote:
| I think you're severely overestimating the depth of the
| canal. I'm too lazy to look up the depth of the specific
| section where it's stuck, but some sections are just 20
| something meters deep.
|
| In other words, just deep enough for ships to come through
| with little wiggle room. Not as tight as the Panama Canal,
| but it's not much bigger.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The canal is only 24m deep.... one or two containers would
| essentially block it for most traffic.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| If you dump the containers over the side, you managed to
| remove a ship blocking the canal, but now it's blocked by
| containers.
| bigfudge wrote:
| Right, but you don't need to leave them there. If it's
| limited depth you could pull them away with barges.
| Arrath wrote:
| Dumping things over the side, into the canal? That would
| rapidly block up the canal even worse.
| [deleted]
| mcdevilkiller wrote:
| Plus a couple of weeks to get the cranes there, I guess.
| blhack wrote:
| Maybe. That's a lot of barges. Remember that you then have to
| go and unload the barges, and there are 20,000 containers.
| tempestn wrote:
| I read that there aren't any tall enough cranes in that area
| to do it, so they're considering unloading some containers by
| helicopter.
| barbegal wrote:
| Even if you could unload a container per minute you could
| only unload less than 1000 containers per day (assuming
| it's too dangerous to work at night) so at least 3 weeks of
| continuous helicopter operations.
| tempestn wrote:
| Yes, that's true. It still might be faster than other
| options. You wouldn't likely need to unload the whole
| thing though, just lighten it enough to get it unstuck.
| moonbug wrote:
| that "just" is doing even more work than the guy in the
| digger.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not saying it can work in this scenario, but I think salvagers
| have used pneumatic devices to float and or manoeuver derelict
| ships.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The pictures I've seen completely hide the ship's bulbous bow.
| It juts out seemingly like 50 feet from the front of the bow
| that you can see. It looks like all of that is wedged in the
| sand
| RantyDave wrote:
| Bingo. It's long, fat, and like the pharaohs ... buried in
| Egypt.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| How about creating a mini-dam surrounding the vessel and
| raising the water level so it can turn.
|
| Or stopping the current at 90% of the ship and letting it push
| to the front ( if it's in the right direction), perhaps in
| combination with gigantic sails ( if there's enough wind)
| and/or sucking sand/mud from the bottom.
| nine_k wrote:
| Apparently, there are no watertight gates anywhere near.
|
| Filling in the entire canal is unrealistic.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| I'm not saying the entire canal. Surround the boat, make a
| dam somehow.
|
| Concrete is dry in 24-48 hours. Sand and wooden poles could
| be enough.
|
| Some ideas on the how, could be found in this video, on how
| they created a bridge in the middle ages:
| https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk
|
| I'm pretty sure engineers could find better/faster
| solutions than what I'm proposing.
| cricalix wrote:
| The canal is 200 metres wide, 25ish metres deep. Gotta
| think in the cube, because now you're talking volume. I
| have zero idea what thickness you're going to need for
| your dam, but I'm going to spitball and say 10 metres at
| the top, and 30 metres at the bottom to get a slope like
| you'd see on something like the Hoover Dam.
|
| This means you need to provide .. lets see, a trapezoidal
| cross section is 500 square metres.. 100,000 cubic metres
| of filler. Twice. And then you probably need to curve it
| to resist the pressure, so that's a bit of a lowball
| figure. You can't dam any less, because the ship is stuck
| sideways across the canal.
|
| Using some old numbers for concrete pours in Ireland
| (2016 era) per cubic metre, that's 7.5 million Euro worth
| of concrete. Sure, you're not going to use pure concrete
| like that though - you'd probably start dropping massive
| boulders in first, and then try to cap/fill it.
|
| Have a read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands
| to get a feel for how long it takes to lay in that much
| material..
|
| And then you have to dig it all back up to reopen the
| canal.
| _Microft wrote:
| What if we could _part_ the water at both sides of the
| ship? Would that suffice as makeshift gates?
|
| The Egyptians had a bad experience with that in the past
| though and lost a lot of gear and many men in an incident.
| Might be understandable if they didn't want to do that
| again.
| nomy99 wrote:
| Let me call moses, hold on.
| Karupan wrote:
| OT: is it a given that the person responsible (the captain?) will
| be fired once this is over? Can the org running the Suez Canal
| deny entry to vessels by black listing the captain?
| phenylene wrote:
| My non-techie wife just said to me, "We need to NFT this
| situation somehow."
|
| She's been down that rabbit hole ever since reading about the
| Beeple piece.
| aritmo wrote:
| MarineTraffic direct URL:
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/shipid:5630138/zoo...
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