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Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

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Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#141
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhhh it's in Wikipedia's "largest container ships" list! [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...

In 2016, Prokopowicz and Berg-Andreassen defined a container ship with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 TEU as a Very Large Container Ship (VLCS), while that with a capacity greater than 20,000 TEU as an Ultra Large Container Ship (ULCS) They are gonna run out of larger adjectives pretty soon.

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Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'd ever considered prior to now how much more economic it would be to release "The one nuclear bomb [TerroristOrganisation] can afford to muster" in a shipping choke-point, rather than a city. So, another thing to worry about :)

For the Suez Canal a huge bomb is just going to make it bigger and easier to navigate in one spot. Blow up the locks for the Panama Canal and you have some seriously inconvenienced shipping companies. But even in both cases the result is that they have to take the long way around. It makes the shipping slower and more expensive, but it was a tiny fraction of your costs to begin with so most companies survive just fin…

For the Suez Canal a huge bomb is just going to make it bigger and easier to navigate in one spot.

A huge bomb to one side of the canal would displace rock and mud in to the channel and make it shallower. That would be enough to close it to large ships until it could be dredged again.

Although, if terrorists really wanted to wreak havoc in the canal they could scuttle a large ship while it's sailing in it. That would necessitate dismantling and removing the entire thing.

I'm surprised no one has made a movie of that.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#145

Compare the red/black line on the ship's hull and the water line. Under normal conditions, the red/black line is parallel to the water across the length of the ship: https://www.google.com/search?q=evergreen+ever+given&source=... In this picture of the ship stuck in the Suez, the red/black line appears to tilt noticeably upwards towards the bow: https://twitter.com/marceldirsus/status/1374480496789393412 If this isn'…

I’m not a ship engineer but I do know that ships are not built to be suspended from the ends. I guess in the worst case the hull breaks which would mean the canal to be blocked for quite a while.

That's usually only a real problem when the ship is suspended in the air, between wavetops. This one is still in the water, though maybe it has a little less support in the center than normal

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#146
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were some interesting profiles following the NotPetya attack on Maersk in 2017 where Maersk claimed to have 1,200 - 1,500 applications, 49,000 laptops, 6,200 servers. Maersk are entering into block-chain "distributed ledger technology" with IBM and similar modern solutions. But one article put $300 of every $2,000 of shipping costs for administration and paperwork[0]. I think you're right, there is a massive ad…

> 300 of every $2,000 of shipping costs for administration and paperwork Damn that's a lot. I understand this is a capital intensive industry so I guess it's hard/impossible to get in now but it seems like if someone started a competitor from scratch and had great software as the foundation of their company, they'd make a killing

A good deal of it probably has to do with how crazy customs gets in every single port, and how to properly insure goods. (Lloyd’s of London got its start in marine insurance.)

If your paperwork is mostly driven by other actors tech probably won’t help all that much. Tech has not made significant inroads in disrupting American health insurance, for example.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#147
post #75

This is fascinating. I wonder if it really was solidly trapped if they would resort to essentially scuttling it just to get it out of the way faster.

The canal isn't very deep there. Scuttling it would make the situation much worse

It has like 50cm clearance. If it “sank” you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#149

Three questions: 1. How easy would it be to pay a container ship’s captain to do that ? 2. Can you then bet on short term commodity futures to benefits from the event significantly? 3. Do you think this is what’s happening ?

Normally the ship’s captain isn’t in-charge in the canal. The Suez Port Authority has pilots you have to hire for that.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and as the article says, "Furthermore, some of the world's main waterways such as the Suez Canal and Singapore Strait also restrict the maximum dimensions of a ship that can pass through them.", which explains why the list consists of large fleets of ships all almost exactly the same size.

Much like Panamax being the largest ship size which can traverse the Panama canal, there's a corresponding Suezmax[1]. Sort of like the old story of the Space Shuttle's SRB size being dictated by old Roman road design, it's interesting how modern design is influenced by historical limitations we might not consider.

Not sure if that’s true. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/4064/how-fair-is-t...
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