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Is that ship still stuck?

istheshipstillstuck.com

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Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#61

Post by frozenlettuce »

p1mrx wrote: post #37
ampdepolymerase wrote: post #14

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 ol…

"The humor of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of container blubber fell everywhere."

"the blast blew blubber beyond any believe boundaries"

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#62

Post by elihu »

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

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#63

Post by leesec »

blhack wrote: post #39

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 real…

Dumb question but what about heavy lift helicopters moving containers off 1 by 1?

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#64

Post by azornathogron »

londons_explore wrote: post #26
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s hard

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?

> 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?

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#65

Post by cricalix »

dcolkitt wrote: post #38
ksec wrote: post #8

~15% of the World's trade is dependent on it and this is taking much longer than expected. Why?

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?

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-...

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#66

Post by JshWright »

blhack wrote: post #39

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 real…

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).

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#67

Post by karagenit »

dcolkitt wrote: post #23
ampdepolymerase wrote: post #14

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 ol…

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.

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.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#69

Post by bmurray7jhu »

cricalix wrote: post #35
munk-a wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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 c…

Twitter link:

https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1374803809696817154

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#70

Post by LegitShady »

londons_explore wrote: post #26
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s hard

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?

"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.

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