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Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need mass to break ice.
> You need mass to break ice. this is one of the narrow cases where pounds comes off the bench to say, "actually, you need weight" (icebreakers slide/ride up on top of the ice and the weight of the ship breaks breaks it ice downward)
"This new idea could reduce steel’s carbon emissions by 90%" https://www.freethink.com/energy/decarbonizing-steel Why is steel necessary for ships? From "Plant-based epoxy enables recyclable carbon fiber" (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30138954 : > And once it’s completed you have an insanely strong material that makes steel look weak and brittle. It’s reported to be as much as ten times stronger than st…
A boat you could carry couldn’t break ice.
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The article speaks to that. The polar cap melting means thinner ice, which can in turn make sea lanes.
Simplistically, no ice is fine, thick ice is fine, but when there's "thin" ice you need ice breakers.
Russia doesn't have much in the way of non-polar coast (well, not the European end) so they've been breaking ice since forever. The US by comparison has very little polar coast and so less need for icebreakers.
Frankly, not sure it needs them at all except for bragging rights. Canadians maybe, but not sure about the US.
Non-meta: Why does the US have so few of these ships? Were more just not produced? I didn’t see an answer in the article but it’s possible I missed it.
I don't understand. Aren't modern military ships armoured anymore?
Do we really need to OWN icebreakers? Maybe we could start a website where countries and companies who own icebreakers can operate them for the benefit of other countries and companies who want to use them. They just walk to the shore in the Canadian north, click the "Call Icebreaker" button on the app and wait for an icebreaker someone else owns to arrive.
Does anyone know of any good sources on this?
Two articles now I try to access the content at archive.ph and cannot make it past the Captcha. I've disabled uBlock Origin and that seems to make no difference. Is anyone else seeing this and if so, have a solution? (Firefox 117.0.1 (64-bit) on Debian Linux.)