Is that ship still stuck? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#171

Post by riffraff » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

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…

> Egypt is losing 400million in trade every hour

this seems excessive, if they made 400M in trade per hour that would be 3T per year, but Egypt's GDP is ~1T.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#172

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

gm3dmo wrote: post #25

Smit salvage have got this. I just hope they had enough notice to to take their film crew with them: https://www.youtube.com/c/SmitSalvageTowage/videos

They said "days to weeks" for how long it will take, so they got plenty of time to film it.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#173

Post by nabla9 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

The ship stuck (Ever Given) is build to Suezmax limits. It fits, but barely.

Ever Given (Suezmax limit)

  length: 399.94 m (400 m)

  tonnage: 199,629 DWT (200,000 DWT)

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#174

Post by atdt » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

adflux wrote: post #155

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…

Love the armchair engineers who think they're gonna solve this better than billion dollar companies

It's a way of thinking out loud and providing an opening for someone more knowledgeable to explain what is being overlooked. It makes for interesting threads.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#175

Post by yitchelle » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #160

adflux wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love the armchair engineers who think they're gonna solve this better than billion dollar companies

Just let the air out of the tires, simple.

Put balloons around it to give extra buoyancy. That should work.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#176

Post by gregoriol » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

bigfudge wrote: post #125

postingawayonhn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there a reason they couldn't have a smaller crane on board and dump them over the side. Surely even losing the cargo would be cheaper than keeping it blocked at this point?

Nature loves you!

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#177

Post by qbasic_forever » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 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?

Oh what about magnetism? Could we wrap the ship in wire and send so much current through that it repels against the Earth's magnetic field and shoots itself right into the atmosphere? Basically building a giant rail gun. Might need a small nuclear power plant or two to make it feasible.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#178

Post by nine_k » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #131

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…

How about creating a mini-dam surrounding the vessel and raising the water level so it can turn. Or stopping the current at 90% of the ship and letting it push to the front ( if it's in the right direction), perhaps in combination with gigantic sails ( if there's enough wind) and/or sucking sand/mud from the bottom.

Apparently, there are no watertight gates anywhere near.

Filling in the entire canal is unrealistic.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#179

Post by kmonsen » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #60

dcolkitt wrote: post #23

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.

Are there helicopters capable of lifting a fully loaded cargo container?

In addition to the weight issues, there are up to 20k of them on board.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#180

Post by Denvercoder9 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #118

Needs a counter for ongoing cost. An experienced military logistics person I know estimated yesterday that the bill for this is up to about $40 billion already.

That might be the total value of impacted shipping, but nobody is going to get a $40 billion bill for this.