"My god, it's full of cars!"
A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
61–70 of 136 posts
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#62If you ever thought tech people got paid obscene sums compared to the rest of society, just look into marine salvage, marine welding, etc. and the cost of those ships per day...
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#63What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
Various other stories refer to the chain as a "diamond-encrusted cutting chain" so perhaps there's more to the chain than what you can see in the pictures.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#64Great article and better distraction
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#65What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.
Various other stories refer to the chain as a "diamond-encrusted cutting chain" so perhaps there's more to the chain than what you can see in the pictures.
I'm guessing similar to the diamond blades and pads used to cut granite. The edges usually aren't sharp, the blades are usually pretty wide, 1/8" kerf, but they're encrusted with diamonds. The blades don't usually get dull, they just wear down until the diamonds are gone. The diamonds not the blade itself does the cutting. Once the diamonds are gone, the blade will actually start melting and stuff.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#66This looked really cool, but I kept getting distracted by the sheer amount of blank ad spots (tysm UBO!), they were constant. Literally every picture in the 'article' was paired with an ad. How tf is anyone supposed to concentrate on what they are reading with constant interruptions? Even with the ads just being blank spots it drove me so nuts I added jalopnik.com to my blacklist.
The new owners of the media company have been...liberal with their sale of advertising space. Jalopnik has long been an interesting site, but the ownership is making it very difficult to continue as a reader.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#67If you ever thought tech people got paid obscene sums compared to the rest of society, just look into marine salvage, marine welding, etc. and the cost of those ships per day...
Presumably a lower margin activity though.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#68I can't help but cringe at all the motor oil and other fluids leeching out of the ruined cars that were on board.
There were about 4000 cars on board. If each car has 10 quarts of oil, that's 10000 gallons or about 32 tonnes. Oil tanker spills are typically in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil. So, don't waste cycles worrying about it; it's a rounding error in the general scheme of things.
I'm not going to lose sleep over it. It's just a trained response to how sensitive we are about it in the local area. Motor oil spills are a big deal because they are more than just a fraction of the crude oil - they contain various toxic additives including heavy metals and can affect the local watershed.
I realize it's still likely a drop in the proverbial bucket. :(
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#69This related to, but not the same as, the mechanism by which modern torpedoes kill warships.
Historically torpedoes used to hit the sides of ships, punching big holes. The response by ship builders was to build empty “torpedo bulges” on the sides of ships to trigger the torpedo early, preventing structural damage.
Modern torpedoes instead detonate under the ship. The explosion creates a massive bubble (most explosives being nothing more than a solid that’s itching to turn into a hot cloud of nitrogen). This bubble ends up under the ship, resulting in a ship that’s supported at the ends and not the middle. It turns out modern ships aren’t strong enough to support their own weight in this way, and the ship breaks in two.
Obviously this lacks the grinding mechanism described here, but the similarity is in the application of a huge amount of force in the middle of a ship to break it.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were about 4000 cars on board. If each car has 10 quarts of oil, that's 10000 gallons or about 32 tonnes. Oil tanker spills are typically in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil. So, don't waste cycles worrying about it; it's a rounding error in the general scheme of things.
I'm not going to lose sleep over it. It's just a trained response to how sensitive we are about it in the local area. Motor oil spills are a big deal because they are more than just a fraction of the crude oil - they contain various toxic additives including heavy metals and can affect the local watershed. I realize it's still likely a drop in the proverbial bucket. :(
Consider the amount of oil that just leaks every day from cars is orders of magnitude more.