5 ms·
I'd be amazed if the density of weight on the ship is such that an arbitrarily large fleet of Chinooks could actually safely accomplish this. And helicopters f
by munk-a 6y ago
I'd be amazed if the density of weight on the ship is such that an arbitrarily large fleet of Chinooks could actually safely accomplish this. And helicopters flying in a dense formation under strain is quite likely to result in a lot of really big problems.
- qbasic_forever 6y agoThe rotor wash beneath it all would be breathtaking.. and might blow all the water out of the canal. :)
- munk-a 6y agoSomebody get Randall Munroe on the phone - I think we've found the next What-If topic.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoWhich 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.)
- munk-a 6y agoThat'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!
- Izkata 6y agoNow I wonder... Let's assume it was possible. Would the force of lifting that much mass be enough to shift the earth in a measurable way? (I'm assuming it would be a lot stronger lifting it into the air than what floating on the water produces, but have no idea what the math would be)
- lisper 6y agoF=ma no matter what, so if things aren't accelerating, the force isn't changing, it's just being transferred to the earth by other means. In this case, it would be through the air rather than the water.
- Izkata 6y agoIt is as it's lifted though, right?
- lisper 6y agoI don't understand the question. Try restating the question without using the word "it".
- Izkata 6y agoThe ship is accelerating as it's lifted though, right?
- lisper 6y agoYes, but the ship is already being accelerated upwards by the surface of the earth at 9.8 m/s^2. If you were to lift it, you'd do it very, very slowly, so you'd increase the acceleration (temporarily) to, say, 9.8000001 m/s^2. The extra force required to do that is very small. Note that ships actually are accelerated up and down in the Panama canal, which has locks. (The Suez doesn't.) That amounts to pretty much the same thing. It doesn't matter whether the forces are transferred to the earth via a column of water or a column of air.
- smegger001 6y agoYeah because what we really need to fix this situation is several hundred giant blenders exploding in mid air fireball of high velocity steel on top of the jammed ship
- kuzko_topia 6y agoAbsolutely glorious, though I'm wondering what recent synced drones could do for that instead of faking foreworks.