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Is it cheaper to have an emergency maintenance team on call 24/7 in a few key locations and just fly them out when there's an issue, or do the events tend to ha

Is it cheaper to have an emergency maintenance team on call 24/7 in a few key locations and just fly them out when there's an issue, or do the events tend to happen too fast to save the ships from a few hours away?

jessaustin 11y ago
Some shipping routes pass through some fairly remote stretches of ocean. While it's true that few issues would require instant attention, just getting attention within twelve hours might be difficult. And now a widely-dispersed fleet of large seagoing helicopters and their support infrastructure is a link in the chain. Here I thought ship maintenance was a challenge! Perhaps the biggest problem is that when maintenance is really a priority, severe storms are likely to be involved. Flying into those in order to land personnel and equipment on a troubled ship in order to perform maintenance should not be a regular event in oceanic shipping. This sort of innovation might catch on for less remote routes first, however.
- deleted 11y ago
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nradov 11y ago
Lol. Good luck landing a maintenance crew plus tools on a ship that's dead in the water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The available helicopters don't have enough range.
- protomyth 11y ago
  No, but I submitted an article a bit earlier about the first drone delivery to a ship. It does occur to me that the same technology being developed for remote surgery could be developed for remote ship repair.
  - nradov 11y ago
    Drones don't have any more range or cargo capacity than piloted helicopters so that's not going to solve anything. No one is going to risk sending a drone to land human technicians on a disabled ship. We are decades away from being able to build remotely operated repair robots that could begin to approach the capability and reliability of human technicians. Building a surgical robot that stays fixed in one operating room and moves a limited set of tools a few inches is orders of magnitude easier than building a robot that can roam around a huge ship and repair the hull, engine, electrical systems, painting, etc.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      I would expect the droids on board to be built into the ship at strategic places. Since this whole automated thing won't happen for a bit, I would bet drones will improve and might just drop parts depending on the quality of the bots. If they build automated ships, I would expect they would be built to have automated repairs.
JshWright 11y ago
The crew isn't just there to fix stuff that breaks. They're performing routine preventative maintenance constantly as the vessel is underway. That's in addition to performing inspections that would be difficult to do remotely, and training to handle emergencies that need to be dealt with _right now_ (you're not going to flying a response team out to a ship that has caught fire in the middle of the ocean... at least not if you expect to recover anything... that sort of thing needs to be dealt with by people on board).

jessaustin 11y ago

Some shipping routes pass through some fairly remote stretches of ocean. While it's true that few issues would require instant attention, just getting attention within twelve hours might be difficult. And now a widely-dispersed fleet of large seagoing helicopters and their support infrastructure is a link in the chain. Here I thought ship maintenance was a challenge! Perhaps the biggest problem is that when maintenance is really a priority, severe storms are likely to be involved. Flying into those in order to land personnel and equipment on a troubled ship in order to perform maintenance should not be a regular event in oceanic shipping. This sort of innovation might catch on for less remote routes first, however.

deleted 11y ago
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nradov 11y ago

Lol. Good luck landing a maintenance crew plus tools on a ship that's dead in the water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The available helicopters don't have enough range.

protomyth 11y ago
No, but I submitted an article a bit earlier about the first drone delivery to a ship. It does occur to me that the same technology being developed for remote surgery could be developed for remote ship repair.
- nradov 11y ago
  Drones don't have any more range or cargo capacity than piloted helicopters so that's not going to solve anything. No one is going to risk sending a drone to land human technicians on a disabled ship. We are decades away from being able to build remotely operated repair robots that could begin to approach the capability and reliability of human technicians. Building a surgical robot that stays fixed in one operating room and moves a limited set of tools a few inches is orders of magnitude easier than building a robot that can roam around a huge ship and repair the hull, engine, electrical systems, painting, etc.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    I would expect the droids on board to be built into the ship at strategic places. Since this whole automated thing won't happen for a bit, I would bet drones will improve and might just drop parts depending on the quality of the bots. If they build automated ships, I would expect they would be built to have automated repairs.

JshWright 11y ago

The crew isn't just there to fix stuff that breaks. They're performing routine preventative maintenance constantly as the vessel is underway. That's in addition to performing inspections that would be difficult to do remotely, and training to handle emergencies that need to be dealt with _right now_ (you're not going to flying a response team out to a ship that has caught fire in the middle of the ocean... at least not if you expect to recover anything... that sort of thing needs to be dealt with by people on board).