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Is that ship still stuck?

istheshipstillstuck.com

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Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#261

Post by jdasdf »

dshibarshin wrote: post #143
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…

The carrier can announce a general average [1] which allows it to throw the containers overboard if they believe it will help the ship get moving. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average

A general average requires an imminent danger which the ship is clearly no in, since it's just stuck.

You also can't argue that they have to dump it overboard because of the costs that the delays will cause, because such costs are explicitly excluded in the 2004 rules on general averages [1]

[1] Rule C, paragraph 3 https://shippingandfreightresource.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#263

Post by nabla9 »

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…

Lloyd's List estimated that every day Suez is closed costs US$9 billion ($400 million per hour).

If it could be done technically and open up the canal, it would be cheaper for insurance companies to buy the ship, it's cargo, buy all nearby property and then blow the whole ship up.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#264

Post by qbasic_forever »

stordoff wrote: post #249
qbasic_forever wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've now got the most amazing image in my head of a container ship being fired at the moon.

Hah or if we reverse the polarity maybe we can crush it into something the size of an aluminum can.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#265

Post by gizmo385 »

prox wrote: post #184
adflux wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If this was space engineers I would build a crane drone and offload it unto nearby ships. Or build giant trucks to help the ship get unstuck. Or just tow it outside the environment...

> Or just tow it outside the environment...

For those who haven't seen this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#266

Post by gregoriol »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #246
tiborsaas wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the luxury of just throwing around ideas and not caring about the consequences (because nobody in power will read it). It's just fun to think about how you'd solve a problem like this. For example I'd try to attach a two Raptor engines to the ship and blow it back to the water :)

Or tear the ship apart :). Which makes me think - why not cut the ship in half? Two pieces will be easier to dislodge and tow away :).

Someone actually is trying that idea in Georgia right now (https://www.thedrive.com/news/34648/capsized-cargo-ship-in-g...) but it really is not easy!

Many likely problems: equipment avilability to do so, time it will take, debris falling off and from the operations, risk of capsizing, probably need to load pieces on barges/crane but canal is not much large

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#267

Post by RantyDave »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #18
ksec wrote: post #8

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

Because it's, you know, stuck. If they accidentally sink it, the cleanup will be even more messy.

I think it would be very, very difficult to sink. Quite aside from the (hopefully) large number of bulkheads and other such safety measures, the ship will be close to maximum draft for the canal and as such would only be able to sink a metre or two anyway. True, you'd then need to refloat it in situ, which would not be fun ... and it would probably just become more stuck rather than less.

I think it's just going to take time and lots of digging.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#268

Post by michaelt »

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?

It has 20,000 TEUs (twenty-foot-container-equivalent-units).

Weight-wise, the average container could be lifted with a military heavy lift helicopter: The ship carries 20,000 tons, i.e. 1 ton per TEU, and a CH-47F can lift 11 tons. Although a TEU can weigh up to 26 tons, so you couldn't lift the heaviest ones.

The problem is speed: A ship-to-shore crane at a properly equipped port can do a lift every 2 minutes. Ports can speed things up by lifting several TEUs in a single lift - but you'd also expect a helicopter to be slower, because we haven't put decades of optimisation into the process. So let's assume those cancel each other out.

If they can keep up that rate with a helicopter, and they operate 24 hours a day, it would take 28 days to unload the ship.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#269

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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…

If you unload 20,000 TEU's onto rail cars it takes 5000 cars, double-stacked. That's 50 100-car trains. It'll take weeks to months to load and unload all that, if a proper rail depot is available to take it. It takes huge cranes to reach across a megaship and into its hold. That'd have to be build. On sand.

The idea that there's any quick way to manage the cargo of this ship is whistling in the dark.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#270

Post by jeffgreco »

blhack wrote: post #107
leesec wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are 20,000 containers on the ship. Assuming you needed to remove 1/4 of those containers to get it to rise far enough to get off of the sand, you need to move 5000 containers. Assume that it takes 5 minute to connect a bridle to a container, hook it to a helicopter, and move it...and then also assume that the helicopters can run 24/7 and never have to refuel, that they can hot swap in pilots, and that there is…

How many copters are you assuming?
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