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Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

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Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that people perhaps don't appreciate is that typical large ships like this don't even have a gearbox (which would be perhaps 95% efficient). They use large two stroke diesel engines which can be stopped and started in reverse. They use an extra valve in the engine head to admit air for starting and have valve gear which controls the direction. Cruise ships on the other hand have electrical house loads which…

Megaship engines are so fascinating. Over 100k horse power! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXeBQrio4Uo&t=680s

I like to think of it as: 5.6 million lb-ft of torque at ~100 rpm means if you could get it up to about 5250 rpm, you'd have 5.6 million hp.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 days, but the bigger problem is that increases the expected sea states encountered by several levels. Huge container ships don't like that.

Can you expand as to why not/what "increases expected sea states encountered" means? Maybe an ELI5

Look at a globe. You'll notice that the water around the tip of South America/South Africa is one of the few bands of the Earth completely unbroken by landmass.

That's a lot of fetch for wind, which transfers energy to the ocean's surface, which travels as waves, which build up because there's no land damping from west to east. Throw in the Antarctic Circumpolar current and weather systems interacting with the Benguela current an Agulhas current... That's a lot of energy getting put into a relatively tiny band of water.

The Cape of Good Hope was previously known as the Cape of Storms based on the aforementioned confluence of forces generally making sea states miserable. The Good Hope part was what putatively happened after you got through it, and the seas you'd have to worry about would generally be calmer.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#433
On news.com.au (https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/catast...) they claim that the ship war previously driving in a pattern that looks like a giant...

"DICK"

"Yaa"

"take a look out at starboard"

"OH ma God, it looks like a huge..."

"PECKER, wait, that's not a wood pecker, it looks like someone's..."

"PRIVATES, we have reports of an Unidentified Flying Object, it is a long smooth shaft, complete with..."

"TWO BALLS, what is that? That looks just like an enormous..."

"WANG, pay attention"

"I was distracted by that enormous flying..."

"WILLIE, what's that?"

"Well it looks like a giant..."

"JOHNSON"

"Yes Sir"

"Get on the hold of the British intelligence and let them know about this"

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the position of the Swedish flag in that photo. Given that the accident happened in Germany and the ship is Taiwanese. It is just freaky, I don't know if it is good or bad to be associated with such an incident. In a plane crash they are usually quick to paint over the name of the airline company to not be associated. I don't think this is the same though.

Can't see the flag, because the whole page is blocked by some BS (presumably in german). Blocking own content or creating obstacles to see it ... what can be more ridiculous. I just close such web pages and never come back.

Same. I had this idea of making a special pi-hole variation where instead of blocking the domains, it actually redirects me to a page of my own creation that explains that the given domain was blocked by me due to [intrusive popups, hiding the article behind a click so it can trigger some JS, whatever other dark patterns]. It's hard to manually remember all the domains to not bother clicking links to :)

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#436
post #396
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> letting off bombs in the metro doesn’t acheive anything Well, it terrorizes. Terror not achieving anything is a bold statement. Maybe you'd prefer to argue that it's not efficient or productive.

But who cares if it terrorises? I mean, I care if my tube train seems scarier than last week but I'm irrelevant. If the goal of Islamic terrorists is to have America or Britain change its foreign policy towards Islamic countries, I think that Islamic terrorism has achieved the opposite of that. If the IRA's goal was to change the position of the British government from 'we don't negotiate with terrorists' then the bo…

The main effect of terror is destabilisation, which is also what breeds terrorism. Islamic terrorism in Europe turns people against their muslim demographics, and most importantly promotes populism and right-wing politics in general. Those are all pretty auto-destructive things. Some normal reactions to terrorism is to alienate some demographics or to exact revenge on some countries, both of which just create more recruits for the terrorist. It makes sense if you don't take that universal-islamic-state narrative too seriously.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#437
post #356
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In October 1967, the officers and crews of all fourteen ships met on the Melampus to found the "Great Bitter Lake Association" which provided mutual support. Crew members continued to regularly meet on board their ships, organized social events, founded a yachting club and held the "Bitter Lake Olympic Games" to complement the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Life boat races were arranged and soccer games were…

> They even introduced a postal system! That is pretty cool. I remember back in the early 90s attending a CEBIT trade show (at the time perhaps the largest computing show in the world -- the show floors covered acres) and being astonished to see that the Bundespost delivered mail, including the usual trade show flyers, to each display booth. Yes, uniformed postal workers wheeling the usual delivery carts up and down…

Where I live physical mail, as well as land (fixed? wired?) phone, is just an outlet for marketers and hardly has enough legitimate use.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#438
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much longer would it take to go around Africa to Gibraltar?

The increase in distance would be approx. 6,000Nm (assuming they arrived at the entrance to the Red Sea before having to change course). 6000Nm and, say, 25 knots (probably a bit on the high side, but not by much) should add 240 hours of steaming or 10 days to the voyage. (This will be somewhat offset by the lower speed through the channel, waiting times &c - I've no idea how long a typical Suez transit is.)

walrus01 linked a video here yesterday [0] of a ship transit. For a ship it takes 11 to 16 hours, including stop on Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the canal.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561816

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#439

How does a huge ship like that get stuck in that orientation wrt. the canal? These things don't really turn on a dime I presume. Edit: Go to https://www.myshiptracking.com/ and use the Playback button with timestamp 23/03/2021 06:15:00 to see the ship drifting left and right.

From one of the twitter threads on the topic: "power blackout". So likely the ship was uncontrollable and drifted into the bank. There seems to be evidence that there its bulbous bow is embedded in the bank.

Can you find that tweet again? I'm scouring every link I can find and I seem to have lost it.

In particular, there was one where someone said another ship behind them _also_ lost power/control around the same time and almost rear-ended them. I would really love to find that tweet again.

Re: Suez canal blocked by a massive ship

#440
post #434

What kind of pictures are these? https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1374924822199865349

They are from vesselfinder [1]. [1]: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000

What technique? It looks like a combination of xray and heat? I am curious what I'm looking at and want to understand the optics more.
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