Is that ship still stuck? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#91

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

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.

It has something like 20000 containers on it. Even if helicopters would lift a container off every 10 minutes, it wouldn't make any meaningful difference.

Also, you can't do the maneuvering they were trying to with the tugs at the same time you're doing something like that, unless you want to kill someone.

Unloading such a ship to empty would take a long time even if it's in port facilities under many cranes.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#92

Post by Animats » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

samizdis wrote: post #4

cghendrix wrote: post #3

Wonder how the data for the actual position of the ship is obtained or if it’s estimated and just hard coded on to the map? I always love sites that are question in the domain with answers in the webpage as the main content.

You can see it here: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000

Yes. I notice that the two Maersk freighters behind the Ever Given are no longer there. It looks like all traffic has been cleared from the canal on both sides. Zoom out. The north end of the Gulf of Suez looks like a parking lot. So does the Med north of Port Said. So does Fayed, the lake in the middle of the canal.

Smit, the big Dutch salvage firm, has been called in and already has their first heavy equipment, a dredger, on site. "Days to weeks" is all they'll say. The good case is that they pump fuel and ballast water out of the ship, plus some dredging, and it floats free. The not so good case is they bring in a big crane and start unloading containers. The bad case is that the ship is partly sunk and will have to be patched and refloated. The really bad case is that the hull is so badly damaged that the ship has to be cut apart in place.

Meanwhile, shipping from China to Europe is now US$4000/TEU. Usually it's around US$1000. China's "Belt and Road" rail plan may pay off.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#93

Post by 6nf » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

leesec wrote: post #63

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?

The biggest choppers in the world can only lift about 20 tonnes. 20 foot containers max gross is 25 tonnes, and 40 foot containers even more.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#94

Post by munk-a » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #68

Comedy option, what wacky cold war era aircraft do we have capable of lifting massive loads like a container ship? Perhaps an enormous fleet of Chinook helicopters could take it straight up?

I'd be amazed if the density of weight on the ship is such that an arbitrarily large fleet of Chinooks could actually safely accomplish this. And helicopters flying in a dense formation under strain is quite likely to result in a lot of really big problems.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#95

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

elihu wrote: post #62

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 th…

> they could just start pushing cargo containers overboard and fish them out until it's light enough to move

Light boats are less stable. One of the few that could make this situation worse would be the damn thing capsizing.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#96

Post by arnaudsm » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #8

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

Extrapolating from the 2014 extensions, building a 2nd backup canal would cost >$8B.

Considering it earns $10B/year to Egypt, I don't know if this short downtime will justify the cost to them.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#97

Post by gm3dmo » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

tehjoker wrote: post #51

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…

I like how everyone thinks that by using money, bombs, or radiation they can fix a carefully engineered project by essentially kicking it hard enough. Blowing a messy radioactive hole in the ground does not guarantee maritime navigability....

This is Hacker News.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#98

Post by postingawayonhn » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

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 is feasible, it would just take a couple of weeks. They just need a floating crane on each side and some barges to take the containers away.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#99

Post by RupertEisenhart » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #59

WJW wrote: 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.

Thats.. almost literally unbelievable. I almost want to suspect that that's a code name? For any sufficiently large ship that blocks a major waterway? Incredible.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#100

Post by gizmo385 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

ksm1717 wrote: post #78

ksec wrote: post #8

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

For real. Why haven’t they just mobilized hacker news?

"We should take the ship, AND PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE" :D [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0sTNLdNhuE