81–90 of 593 posts
I wonder how much the couple of excavators helped. I saw people on HN saying having two measly excavators was just to give the appearance of doing something and not an actual attempt to get the boat unstuck. But when I saw a photo of the digging, it looked like there was some serious progress made.
Apparently the high tides were maximized and were a big factor. Credit to the Moon!
It's worth looking at the discussion of the ship just three days ago on Hacker News[1]. A lot of what people thought was true (that it would be stuck there for weeks, being dismissive of using tugboats to pull it out) didn't pan out as expected. Just a reminder that we should always take what we read with a grain of salt, and that it's fine to reserve judgement and see what will actually happen after the initial medi…
Note that the egyptians were also planning for the "maybe weeks" scenerio. They were assembling the team for a litering operation (cranes etc) should the ship need to be partially unloaded. And a great many ships began to divert around africa, some of which may now be turning around. Certainly the shipping industry as a whole was headging against the "maybe weeks" option. Not everyone on HN is a software nerd. More t…
Which is the sensible thing to do in their position: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, if we’re being honest, a pack of software nerds on a website don’t have the deep expertise on every topic like they think they do (speaking as a software nerd on a website myself :)). The stuff that gets posted here sometimes is...fascinating.
To be fair, there were a number of people chiming in who were claiming to be experienced in that area (ex Navy captains, people who did dredging ops, etc). One of the big things that changed the timeline was that the highest tide of the month occurred yesterday; if not, I imagine that ship would be stuck for another month!
It's worth looking at the discussion of the ship just three days ago on Hacker News[1]. A lot of what people thought was true (that it would be stuck there for weeks, being dismissive of using tugboats to pull it out) didn't pan out as expected. Just a reminder that we should always take what we read with a grain of salt, and that it's fine to reserve judgement and see what will actually happen after the initial medi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how they think the canal was created.
I’m actually really curious about this! It was built in the mid 19th century, was there excavators then? Or was it shovels and manpower? I looked on wikipedia hoping to find some info, but was sadly disappointed. I would TOTALLY read an in depth article on how, practically, the Suez canal was actually built.
I wonder how much the couple of excavators helped. I saw people on HN saying having two measly excavators was just to give the appearance of doing something and not an actual attempt to get the boat unstuck. But when I saw a photo of the digging, it looked like there was some serious progress made.
I read it was six, running 24 hours a day, which moved 27,000 metric tons of sand. Which, sounds like a lot of sand to me. Seems like software engineers would have the best understanding of slowly but steadily working towards a goal since that's been my life since I started in this field! But, also, I admittedly bit the hype train too on how hard it was going to be to get this thing dislodged.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how they think the canal was created.
I’m actually really curious about this! It was built in the mid 19th century, was there excavators then? Or was it shovels and manpower? I looked on wikipedia hoping to find some info, but was sadly disappointed. I would TOTALLY read an in depth article on how, practically, the Suez canal was actually built.
It's worth looking at the discussion of the ship just three days ago on Hacker News[1]. A lot of what people thought was true (that it would be stuck there for weeks, being dismissive of using tugboats to pull it out) didn't pan out as expected. Just a reminder that we should always take what we read with a grain of salt, and that it's fine to reserve judgement and see what will actually happen after the initial medi…
Note that the egyptians were also planning for the "maybe weeks" scenerio. They were assembling the team for a litering operation (cranes etc) should the ship need to be partially unloaded. And a great many ships began to divert around africa, some of which may now be turning around. Certainly the shipping industry as a whole was headging against the "maybe weeks" option. Not everyone on HN is a software nerd. More t…
- without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to any of the cargo
- without destroying or imposing significant additional damage to the ship
- without taking multiple weeks
- without needing to ship a trillion dollars'+ worth of equipment halfway around the world
It's refreshing to see high-end engineering performed so competently.