Live data from Hacker News

Is that ship still stuck?

istheshipstillstuck.com

211–220 of 1001 posts

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#211

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?

It has a 20,000 container capacity, so if it's full and you could unload them at a rate of 1 per minute (assuming multiple choppers) it would take 2 weeks with no stopping, but I assume the frequency would be much lower than that so you're talking possibly months to unload even a fraction of them.

Yeah, from the middle out.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#212
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's hilariously arrogant too.

I feel like we need a "why don't you just?" safe word, where the intent is to signify "hey I'm not being a smartass, I'm really just curious about why this seemingly simple solution won't actually work".

So much of what happens on the internet is in bad faith that it makes it really hard to just have innocent conversations without being misunderstood. :-(

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#213
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…

Crazy idea : Can we roll it into the water by pulling it over high strength rollers of some sort ? It would be pretty cool to use the same technique that was use to build the pyramids.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#214
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close. This ship is absolutely giant.

Hrm change of plans, let's pull a few ICBMs out and set them up on each corner with massive tow lines. We'll get it out the way in an instant... and into low earth orbit minutes later!

Forget it.

Let's just nuke it, them nuclear weapons have to be disposed of somehow, and the channel needs some expansion, it seems.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot of containers.

it's a quarter mile long. You can probably have 10 helicopters working at once while still keeping safe distances. Each helicopter has a crew of 4 on the boat and 4 on the shore. They hook 4 chains to the 4 corner hoists of each container. Say it takes 1 minutes per container to affix the chains, 1 minute to fly to the sand, 1 minute to unhitch, and 1 minute to fly back. Thats a lot slower than agricultural helicopte…

You're joking, right? It's a quarter mile, or 400m long. Ten helicopters in it means ~40m distance. That's less than safe distance between cars in a highway.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#217
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…

Not saying it can work in this scenario, but I think salvagers have used pneumatic devices to float and or manoeuver derelict ships.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#218

I wonder if they could build a dam around the ship and lift it with water.

Physically that would work, but this ship has a draught of 14.5 meters. You'd need to build a pretty high dam. It would need to cross the canal twice, as otherwise the water level inside the dam would never be higher than the current water level, and you'd need to pump in the water. Then, once the ship floats, you'd somehow need to move it out of your small artificial lake into the canal, and remove the dam you created in the canal.

It's easier to lighten the ship.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#219
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.

Just bring in a Bagger 288[1] and use it to excavate a new diversion canal in front of the ship long enough to get it out of the main canal, bada-bing bada-boom. Simple!

[1]Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEvfD4C6ow

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#220
post #94

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.

Yeah because what we really need to fix this situation is several hundred giant blenders exploding in mid air fireball of high velocity steel on top of the jammed ship
Post reply on HN