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Is that ship still stuck?

istheshipstillstuck.com

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Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#11

Post by munk-a »

cghendrix wrote: post #3

Wonder how the data for the actual position of the ship is obtained or if it’s estimated and just hard coded on to the map? I always love sites that are question in the domain with answers in the webpage as the main content.

This is one particular outlet[1] for that data but, AFAIK, all modern commercial vessels continuously report their location via satellite or, preferably, coastal AIS. That data is collected by something then APIs happen along with aggregation and probably more APIs and... after all that, the data is pretty widely available.

Ship location isn't considered privileged security information which was a bit surprising to me since pirates are still a thing, but yea - that's the state of the world.

Edit: Apparently I forgot to include the link, here it is:

1. https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:32.5/cente...

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#12

Post by cricalix »

cghendrix wrote: post #3

Wonder how the data for the actual position of the ship is obtained or if it’s estimated and just hard coded on to the map? I always love sites that are question in the domain with answers in the webpage as the main content.

VesselFinder and MarineTraffic use the data broadcast by vessels on AIS[0]. The AIS devices can be programmed with the dimensions of the vessel, location of the AIS GPS antenna relative to the vessel (ie, is it right aft, or in the middle, etcetera), and uses sensor data from the network bus to get direction, speed and the like. So yeah, if the ship's AIS is saying "I'm at latitude, longitude doing 0 knots, last reported course was 73 degrees", the websites can generate a somewhat accurate picture.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste...

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#14

Post by ampdepolymerase »

Had rockets not been so regulated, this problem could have easily been solved. It would not be cheap but with a 150million insurance budget it is doable. Egypt is losing 400million in trade every hour. The ship weighs 200 000 tons. You only need to drag it out of the sand, not bring it to LEO. Another option would be a lot of shaped charges but the side effects are much more catastrophic if things go wrong. In the olden days, they would just use nuclear (See project Plowshare for the Panama Canal).

Before you downvote, do the math.

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