Is that ship still stuck? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#351

Post by munk-a » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #271

qbasic_forever wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rotor wash beneath it all would be breathtaking.. and might blow all the water out of the canal. :)

Which makes me think - what about using all these choppers to blow the water in - and keep it there? :). (I assume this is an equivalent problem to the lifting problem, as the extra pressure they'd be fighting would be that of the ship displacing water.)

That's actually an interesting idea - set up a temporary lock/dam on either side of the ship to float it. If, instead of a boring dam made out of concrete or something "normal" we used a fleet of Chinooks then all the better!

I do believe this is probably one of the solutions that's being investigated but I also believe it's

1. Super expensive to construct an impromptu dam under water

2. Floating a listing ship can result in more severe listing if you're not careful (See, for instance, the fact that when a ship beaches itself while the tide is out it's initially bad news - and when the tide starts to come back in it becomes significantly worse news.

Learning and humor are fun together!

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#352

Post by Imnimo » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

At this point just fill in that section of the canal, leave the ship there, and dig a new canal.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#353

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #92

samizdis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see it here: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000

Yes. I notice that the two Maersk freighters behind the Ever Given are no longer there. It looks like all traffic has been cleared from the canal on both sides. Zoom out. The north end of the Gulf of Suez looks like a parking lot. So does the Med north of Port Said. So does Fayed, the lake in the middle of the canal. Smit, the big Dutch salvage firm, has been called in and already has their first heavy equipment, a d…

Removing ballast from a ship with such a heavy top load is super risky. That could turn 'days or weeks' into 'months or years'.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#354

Post by jart » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #40

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #14

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 ol…

Brute force won't really help here, as the ship does not have the structural integrity to resist the force rocket engines would exert on it. Breaking the ship up would be catastrophic, as clean-up of many pieces would take a lot longer than getting it unstuck.

Nuking the Suez canal was a better proposal than using the rocket boosters. The most important artery in the world is blocked right now and you're concerned about clean-up work? It's the desert!

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#355

Post by akmarinov » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #39

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…

Can’t we just dig a new canal?

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#356

Post by es7 » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

tobr wrote: post #325

The ship is named “Ever Given”, but the huge text on the side says “EVERGREEN”, which is confusingly similar. Does anyone know why?

"Ever Given" is the ship's name

Evergreen is the company that owns (manages?) the ship

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#357

Post by chanandler_bong » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:08 PM UTC

tobr wrote: post #325

The ship is named “Ever Given”, but the huge text on the side says “EVERGREEN”, which is confusingly similar. Does anyone know why?

The company name is Evergreen, the name of the ship is Ever Given.

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#358

Post by dharmab » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:09 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #68

Comedy option, what wacky cold war era aircraft do we have capable of lifting massive loads like a container ship? Perhaps an enormous fleet of Chinook helicopters could take it straight up?

The Mil V-12 was built to lift ICBMs, and could easily lift any container.

https://youtu.be/yOApFeEgHcE

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#359

Post by baggy_trough » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:10 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #326

blhack wrote: post #39

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…

This ship is delaying $400 million dollars per hour in global trades. It better not fucking take weeks.

Or what?

Re: Is that ship still stuck?

#360

Post by johncessna » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 11:10 PM UTC

Given how important this canal is, I would have thought multiple countries have literally wargamed how to remove a blockade from the canal in a way that makes it still usable for shipping.