4 ms·

How about creating a mini-dam surrounding the vessel and raising the water level so it can turn. Or stopping the current at 90% of the ship and letting it push

How about creating a mini-dam surrounding the vessel and raising the water level so it can turn. Or stopping the current at 90% of the ship and letting it push to the front ( if it's in the right direction), perhaps in combination with gigantic sails ( if there's enough wind) and/or sucking sand/mud from the bottom.

nine_k 6y ago
Apparently, there are no watertight gates anywhere near. Filling in the entire canal is unrealistic.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  I'm not saying the entire canal. Surround the boat, make a dam somehow. Concrete is dry in 24-48 hours. Sand and wooden poles could be enough. Some ideas on the how, could be found in this video, on how they created a bridge in the middle ages: https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk I'm pretty sure engineers could find better/faster solutions than what I'm proposing.
  - cricalix 6y ago
    The canal is 200 metres wide, 25ish metres deep. Gotta think in the cube, because now you're talking volume. I have zero idea what thickness you're going to need for your dam, but I'm going to spitball and say 10 metres at the top, and 30 metres at the bottom to get a slope like you'd see on something like the Hoover Dam. This means you need to provide .. lets see, a trapezoidal cross section is 500 square metres.. 100,000 cubic metres of filler. Twice. And then you probably need to curve it to resist the pressure, so that's a bit of a lowball figure. You can't dam any less, because the ship is stuck sideways across the canal. Using some old numbers for concrete pours in Ireland (2016 era) per cubic metre, that's 7.5 million Euro worth of concrete. Sure, you're not going to use pure concrete like that though - you'd probably start dropping massive boulders in first, and then try to cap/fill it. Have a read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands to get a feel for how long it takes to lay in that much material.. And then you have to dig it all back up to reopen the canal.
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      > Using some old numbers for concrete pours in Ireland (2016 era) per cubic metre, that's 7.5 million Euro worth of concrete. A sister comment mentioned 400$ million per hour worth of trades being blocked by this, so the cost of this would probably recouped by the time the order is cleared.
      - gruez 6y ago
        >A sister comment mentioned 400$ million per hour worth of trades being blocked by this but it's not $400M lost? If you ordered a $100 package from amazon and it got stuck in transit it's not a $100 loss.
        KittenInABox 6y ago
        There are fees associated with lateness.
        Sebb767 6y ago
        Not all. But there are late fees, refunds, profits lost because your ship now has to travel a larger route and can therefore take fewer roubdtrips, increasing costs per roundtrip due to the longer route etc.. If we just assume a meager 1% actual loss, the concrete would be worth it in two hours. Even with the remaining expenses due to work, this should pay for itself rather quickly.
        devdas 6y ago
        Quite a lot of shipped goods have tight delivery schedules requirements.
    - SubiculumCode 6y ago
      So clearly we just need.to find some sand beavers.
    - NicoJuicy 6y ago
      160 km of protection against 2m. High waves to build something on unstable soil isn't exactly the same thing as this, is it. They need some construction which they can add water faster than it escapes the container, to raise the water level. If stacked water based cofferdams would be a solution ( idk depending on these requirements, current, ..), it could be done quickly if they have the bags ( multiple teams, multiple locations to start and filling the coffers with water as soon as possible). The budget to fix this fast is probably pretty high. A lot would depend on how much they need to raise the water for the pressure, so it wouldn't collapse. ( Fyi, i do think water based coffers would collapse, but perhaps sand ones can be placed in top on it for 1 meter). Palm islands needed a construction that holds multiple years and isn't the same as the issue in the Suez canal. Tu be honest, I'm just thinkering about the variables that could make this work, instead of dismissing it immediately.
  - nullserver 6y ago
    Lot of heavy containers that aren’t being used at the moment.
- _Microft 6y ago
  What if we could part the water at both sides of the ship? Would that suffice as makeshift gates? The Egyptians had a bad experience with that in the past though and lost a lot of gear and many men in an incident. Might be understandable if they didn’t want to do that again.
  - nomy99 6y ago
    Let me call moses, hold on.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    Cofferdams could be viable Relevant feedback on pro's/cons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26587692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26587692
throwaway41597 6y ago
How would you remove such a dam? Sounds like it'd take weeks to build and weeks to remove?
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Cofferdam are temporarily dams. Biggest issues seem to be building ( and logistics) + deconstructing. But i saw an estimate of a cofferdam for a bridge of 640 meters ( but less deep and with a single crane) of 16 days.

nine_k 6y ago

Apparently, there are no watertight gates anywhere near. Filling in the entire canal is unrealistic.

NicoJuicy 6y ago
I'm not saying the entire canal. Surround the boat, make a dam somehow. Concrete is dry in 24-48 hours. Sand and wooden poles could be enough. Some ideas on the how, could be found in this video, on how they created a bridge in the middle ages: https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk https://youtu.be/nJgD6gyi0Wk I'm pretty sure engineers could find better/faster solutions than what I'm proposing.
- cricalix 6y ago
  The canal is 200 metres wide, 25ish metres deep. Gotta think in the cube, because now you're talking volume. I have zero idea what thickness you're going to need for your dam, but I'm going to spitball and say 10 metres at the top, and 30 metres at the bottom to get a slope like you'd see on something like the Hoover Dam. This means you need to provide .. lets see, a trapezoidal cross section is 500 square metres.. 100,000 cubic metres of filler. Twice. And then you probably need to curve it to resist the pressure, so that's a bit of a lowball figure. You can't dam any less, because the ship is stuck sideways across the canal. Using some old numbers for concrete pours in Ireland (2016 era) per cubic metre, that's 7.5 million Euro worth of concrete. Sure, you're not going to use pure concrete like that though - you'd probably start dropping massive boulders in first, and then try to cap/fill it. Have a read of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_Islands to get a feel for how long it takes to lay in that much material.. And then you have to dig it all back up to reopen the canal.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    > Using some old numbers for concrete pours in Ireland (2016 era) per cubic metre, that's 7.5 million Euro worth of concrete. A sister comment mentioned 400$ million per hour worth of trades being blocked by this, so the cost of this would probably recouped by the time the order is cleared.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >A sister comment mentioned 400$ million per hour worth of trades being blocked by this but it's not $400M lost? If you ordered a $100 package from amazon and it got stuck in transit it's not a $100 loss.
      - KittenInABox 6y ago
        There are fees associated with lateness.
      - Sebb767 6y ago
        Not all. But there are late fees, refunds, profits lost because your ship now has to travel a larger route and can therefore take fewer roubdtrips, increasing costs per roundtrip due to the longer route etc.. If we just assume a meager 1% actual loss, the concrete would be worth it in two hours. Even with the remaining expenses due to work, this should pay for itself rather quickly.
      - devdas 6y ago
        Quite a lot of shipped goods have tight delivery schedules requirements.
  - SubiculumCode 6y ago
    So clearly we just need.to find some sand beavers.
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    160 km of protection against 2m. High waves to build something on unstable soil isn't exactly the same thing as this, is it. They need some construction which they can add water faster than it escapes the container, to raise the water level. If stacked water based cofferdams would be a solution ( idk depending on these requirements, current, ..), it could be done quickly if they have the bags ( multiple teams, multiple locations to start and filling the coffers with water as soon as possible). The budget to fix this fast is probably pretty high. A lot would depend on how much they need to raise the water for the pressure, so it wouldn't collapse. ( Fyi, i do think water based coffers would collapse, but perhaps sand ones can be placed in top on it for 1 meter). Palm islands needed a construction that holds multiple years and isn't the same as the issue in the Suez canal. Tu be honest, I'm just thinkering about the variables that could make this work, instead of dismissing it immediately.
- nullserver 6y ago
  Lot of heavy containers that aren’t being used at the moment.
_Microft 6y ago
What if we could part the water at both sides of the ship? Would that suffice as makeshift gates? The Egyptians had a bad experience with that in the past though and lost a lot of gear and many men in an incident. Might be understandable if they didn’t want to do that again.
- nomy99 6y ago
  Let me call moses, hold on.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Cofferdams could be viable Relevant feedback on pro's/cons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26587692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26587692

throwaway41597 6y ago

How would you remove such a dam? Sounds like it'd take weeks to build and weeks to remove?

NicoJuicy 6y ago
Cofferdam are temporarily dams. Biggest issues seem to be building ( and logistics) + deconstructing. But i saw an estimate of a cofferdam for a bridge of 640 meters ( but less deep and with a single crane) of 16 days.