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Is that ship still stuck?

istheshipstillstuck.com

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Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#81

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?

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.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#82
post #63
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?

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.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#83
post #59
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yea…

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.

This gave me a good laugh.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#85
post #59
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yea…

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.

Oh my god who is driving this thing?

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#86
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…

>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

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 t…

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.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#88
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?

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.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#89
post #52
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…

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.

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?

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#90
post #63
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?

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.

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