541–550 of 1001 posts
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Dumb question: How about evacuating and then blowing up the ship? Yes, the loss of the ship and all its cargo will be immense, but that seems to be dwarfed by the damage the blocked canal causes.
Then how do you clean up 220,000 tons of debris? Turns out: the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. And its already packed and loaded.
Like that old Mythbusters episode where they blow up a car twice
I think the Earth could use just ONE MORE nuclear crater..
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…
I say build a trebuchet on deck and start launching containers into the desert.
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Egypt is bleeding money right now. It earned roughly USD 15,360,000.00/day from Suez passage fees in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Authority#Revenues
Wow, costs $300K to transit through the canal per ship by fee alone? That is capital intensive. It's amazing that more ships are not simply sailing around Africa.
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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.
Those excavators are there for show while they try to figure out what to do. There is absolutely no chance that 2 guys with excavators are going to dredge out enough of the canal to free the ship, and the canal authorities know this. It there was even shadow of a chance that that might work, then every single excavator in Northern Africa would be on it's way to the canal to dig it out and free the ship. In fact I'd s…
Damn straight, considering the law of salvage[1]:
> The law of salvage is a principle of maritime law whereby any person who helps recover another person's ship or cargo in peril at sea is entitled to a reward commensurate with the value of the property salved.
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.
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Could you build a temporary barrier around the ship and the section of the canal, bring in some massive pumps, and temporarily raise the water level around the ship? Edit: Something like this https://www.hydrologicalsolutions.com/aqua-barrier-cofferdam...
In the middle parts of the ship it is probably not grounded, so you might have ropes below the hull with large inflatable balloons on both sides below water level, to give the ship extra lift. Then on a high tide, with oil & water removed, maybe some dredging on the sides where it needs to rotate to, and.. go!
Quite the arrogance here of mostly software devs trying to out -solutionize marine/shipping experts who undoubtedly have been consulted and are already looking for the quickest way to resolve the situation. With billions of dollars in stake, I'm sure even the most expensive experts are involved.
We're kind of like physicists: https://xkcd.com/793/
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Then how do you clean up 220,000 tons of debris? Turns out: the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. And its already packed and loaded.
I mean, the 220,000 tons of debris are at least not a single solid object - so maybe they'd be moved by the current (if there is any) or could be pushed to the sides by smaller vessels. Then the actual cleanup can happen while the canal is already back in operation. > the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. Well, evidently not if it is stuck.
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Or what?
Well, there's always the option of just demolishing the ship and its cargo, getting everything out of the canal without worrying about whether any of it survives the process. That would still be expensive, but is it more expensive than blocking the canal?