3 ms·

I'd guess that the marginal efficiency of cutting a few crew positions isn't much, but no longer needing to support human life at sea would seem to cut signific

I'd guess that the marginal efficiency of cutting a few crew positions isn't much, but no longer needing to support human life at sea would seem to cut significant overhead. As soon as you need one person for a mission-critical task at sea, you need a bunch of other stuff (including people) on the ship just to support him. A medic, a cook, food, water, shower, toilet, transportation (the ship's boats), maintenance on all of the above, etc. It doesn't have to be the high-cost component to be worth automating. Seems like you could program a route by satellite without too much difficulty and just watch telemetry from there. If something goes really wrong, just have the ship sit in the water until a roving maintenance crew arrives. Unlike flight or driving there is a pretty wide margin for error before safety consequences kick in (unless it's near shore).

nradov 11y ago
That doesn't work in the real world. A disabled ship won't just obediently sit there like a broken-down truck on the side of a highway. A ship without power will drift with the current and crash into a reef, or simply break apart and sink when it gets caught in a storm and can't keep its bow into the weather. http://gcaptain.com/tag/el-faro/ http://gcaptain.com/tag/el-faro/
- superuser2 11y ago
  Okay, but how much of a difference does it make to fly a crew out to the ship only when needed vs. having the crew on board?
  - nradov 11y ago
    That wouldn't work either. Current helicopters lack the range to cover many Ocean shipping routes. And they can't safely land on a disabled ship in the middle of a severe storm.
jessaustin 11y ago
This is the most sensible justification I've seen yet, but I note that for some time, ships have gotten larger and larger. To torture a metaphor, when all our eggs are in one basket, we want somebody watching the hen-house. It seems common that while small systems are designed for maintenance-free reliability, really big systems worth lots of money are designed to require occasional human intervention. Maybe the observation robot can't maneuver well enough to notice coolant leaking out of the oil pump (I'm not a maritime diesel mechanic, but let's imagine that these oil pumps get hot enough to require their own cooling systems), or maybe it's not equipped to tighten the relevant fitting. When the remote operator gets on the phone with the manufacturer to complain about having to shut down, they're not going to have much sympathy for her when she relates that there's no one on-board to turn a wrench. In the meantime, the shipper is paying pro-rated late fees while the ship floats in the Northern Pacific without an engine.

nradov 11y ago

That doesn't work in the real world. A disabled ship won't just obediently sit there like a broken-down truck on the side of a highway. A ship without power will drift with the current and crash into a reef, or simply break apart and sink when it gets caught in a storm and can't keep its bow into the weather. http://gcaptain.com/tag/el-faro/ http://gcaptain.com/tag/el-faro/

superuser2 11y ago
Okay, but how much of a difference does it make to fly a crew out to the ship only when needed vs. having the crew on board?
- nradov 11y ago
  That wouldn't work either. Current helicopters lack the range to cover many Ocean shipping routes. And they can't safely land on a disabled ship in the middle of a severe storm.

jessaustin 11y ago

This is the most sensible justification I've seen yet, but I note that for some time, ships have gotten larger and larger. To torture a metaphor, when all our eggs are in one basket, we want somebody watching the hen-house. It seems common that while small systems are designed for maintenance-free reliability, really big systems worth lots of money are designed to require occasional human intervention. Maybe the observation robot can't maneuver well enough to notice coolant leaking out of the oil pump (I'm not a maritime diesel mechanic, but let's imagine that these oil pumps get hot enough to require their own cooling systems), or maybe it's not equipped to tighten the relevant fitting. When the remote operator gets on the phone with the manufacturer to complain about having to shut down, they're not going to have much sympathy for her when she relates that there's no one on-board to turn a wrench. In the meantime, the shipper is paying pro-rated late fees while the ship floats in the Northern Pacific without an engine.