Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

wbaltv.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#402

Post by low_common »

boringg wrote: post #397

This is a tragedy for those involved. My rough calculus points that the amount of force of this collision is on par with a large scale natural disaster. Everyone being surprised at the bridge collapsing needs to reconcile with the amount of force that struck the bridge - it is a truly significant amount of Newtons that hit the bridge. More than a train going from full speed to a full stop. Unbelievable amount of forc…

Your last sentence is pretentious and condescending.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#404

Post by RHSeeger »

swader999 wrote: post #399
boringg wrote: post #397

This is a tragedy for those involved. My rough calculus points that the amount of force of this collision is on par with a large scale natural disaster. Everyone being surprised at the bridge collapsing needs to reconcile with the amount of force that struck the bridge - it is a truly significant amount of Newtons that hit the bridge. More than a train going from full speed to a full stop. Unbelievable amount of forc…

And many here have engineer in their job title.

There are a lot of types of engineering, and some of them are VERY far away from civil/structural engineering.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#405

Post by [deleted] »

guenthert wrote: post #109
makach wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern bridges are required to endure a collision. This bridge might be very old and not sufficiently maintained against current requirements.

Collision with what? I'm pretty sure that with a sufficiently massive ship sailing fast enough, one could take down any bridge. Hence I'd think there are limits which ship may approach at a given speed. Was one of those limits perhaps exceeded?

[deleted]

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#406

Post by boringg »

jsumrall wrote: post #351

The design of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, specifically the tunnel part, makes a lot of sense now. Imagine a US navy port (Norfolk) being inaccessible if this happened there.

Right? Clearly it would be a significant national defense risk. Also allows for larger ships to get through.

That said - It also makes for a very enjoyable drive with children - probably their main design parameter right?

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#408

Post by armchairdweller »

mvdtnz wrote: post #147
armchairdweller wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! So why are huge—ass container ships allowed to navigate underneath fragile public bridges with single points of failure? The not unlikely worst case is that the ship is out of control for some reason…

Not unlikely? Can you point us to all the other times this has happened? You must know of several given your knowledge of how obviously likely this is.

When has "nothing will happen as long as we can carefully navigate our massive vessels around these critical pillars" ever been a trustable safety measure? Over the long term shit like this will happen if it the possibility that it happens is not excluded by other measures.

This is a public bridge 5 years in the making and who knows how long in planning, and people have been extremely lucky that it collapsed at 3am and not in the middle of the day. It doesn't matter at all how unlikely this is in a given time frame if the impact if it happens at any point in time is catastrophic.

Re: Baltimore's Key Bridge struck by cargo ship, collapses

#409

Post by paddy_m »

dwightgunning wrote: post #28

I had a hunch this was the bridge featured in The Wire s2e1, "Ebb Tide". Classic McNulty; a great season opener. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebb_Tide_(The_Wire)

Also relevant to season 2. The US seriously lacks dredging capacity, because we only allow US built dredges to operate on our ports. Only 1-3 of the top 50 highest capacity dredges in the world qualify. Bloomberg Odd Lots has a great episode about this.

https://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/the-1906-dredging-law-that-ma...

Post reply on HN