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I've had the exact same idea but the canal bank is very shallow.. so you would have to build around the whole ship (as you said). This also seems like a major u
by fileeditview 6y ago
I've had the exact same idea but the canal bank is very shallow.. so you would have to build around the whole ship (as you said). This also seems like a major undertaking.
I am excited to see how they will solve the problem though!
- wongarsu 6y agoIf the bank is very shallow and mostly sand, maybe instead of building a damn all around the ship it would be easier to just dredge a new passage that goes around the stuck ship. After all the real problem isn't that the ship is run aground, it's that the canal is blocked for everyone else.
- TylerE 6y agoIf would be a very long diversion. The turning radius of large ships is, well, astronomical, we're talking miles. The canal itself is MASSIVE - 79ft deep and 700ft wide - and if you're turning you'd need to be wider still. We're talking about removing absolutely massive amounts of material.
- Aeolun 6y agoWell, they did it before, and without the help of the massive diggers we have currently, so it can’t be that hard, relatively speaking. Besides, my newspaper said that the economic losses of the stuckness amount to like 400M per hour. That is a looot of money you can throw at a problem.
- nostrademons 6y agoThe Suez Canal took 10 years to build, with > 30,000 people working on it at any given time and over 1.5M total laborers, thousands of whom died. I don't think we want to be waiting for 10 years. Cheaper to blow up the ship and its cargo than to re-build a whole new canal.
- TylerE 6y agoBlowing it up isn't really a solution either, that still leaves the canal blocked, as it was for 8 years after the 6 day war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Fleet
- nostrademons 6y agoI was being semi-facetious, but now I see that a bunch of people seem to be suggesting that in all seriousness. Poe's Law strikes again.
- ReflectedImage 6y agoActually with a well placed nuclear warhead placed directly under the ship, it could be thrown out of the canal and into the nearby desert clearing the canal route /s
- tomatotomato37 6y agoFun fact: the ship is larger than the fireball of a peacekeeper warhead would be (~320 meters)
- playerm1 6y agoMay want to use two of those bad boys then
- lazide 6y agoThose were what, 300kiloton’s ish? So if we go to 1+ megaton we’d be good. Seems reasonable if we go up to 3-4 megatons, maybe we’d even end up with a big enough crater one of these ships could pull a three point turn next time?
- aww_dang 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare >Proposed uses for nuclear explosives under Project Plowshare included widening the Panama Canal, constructing a new sea-level waterway through Nicaragua nicknamed the Pan-Atomic Canal, cutting paths through mountainous areas for highways, and connecting inland river systems.
- cesarb 6y ago> The turning radius of large ships is, well, astronomical, we're talking miles. But do the ships actually have to turn? As long as they are floating instead of stuck in the sand, can't they be dragged sideways, either by tugboats or by stationary winches on land? Of course, the ships would have to stop first, which would take miles of slowing down, and it would probably still be faster to fully dig the stuck ship out of the sand than to dig a diversion channel.
- kbenson 6y ago> The turning radius of large ships is, well, astronomical, we're talking miles. That's when under speed. If these ships don't have the unidirectional port engines like cruise ships do for maneuvering in tight spots (and they may not, I don't know), in this situation they would likely use tugboats for turning. That's what they're for. That doesn't necessarily make a diversion feasible, but I don't think whether it's feasible or not rests on whether these ships can turn. That's really not the problem as I see it.
- TylerE 6y agoIf with a zero turn radius, these ships are in excess of 1000ft long...you need a lot of clearance and a large radius just because of the physical dimensions (and so you know, we don't get a second ship wedged sideways in the canal.
- kbenson 6y agoWe're talking about digging a diversionary channel. Making either end of that where it connects to the current channel wider to accommodate turning is trivial in comparison.
- ethbr0 6y agoIf you're talking about digging a diversionary channel, then why not just dig around the boat with the same equipment? Excavate sand around + weight from ship pancakes sand its sitting on, gradually = ship lowers back to floating depth
- TylerE 6y agoProbably very complicated since you couldn't have people in close. What if, as is not unlikely, part of the bank suddenly crumbles and the boat shifts? Also, I doubt the sand goes down very deep...this is a costal area, not rolling dunes. You're going to hit rock quickly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Alupis 6y agoDredge a new passage? These ships do not turn on a dime, it would have to be started way before this blockage, and end way after the blockage so that the entry and exit are shallow enough of an angle for even the largest ships to handle with easy. You're basically asking why can't they just make a whole new canal in less than a week?
- Johnny555 6y agoI'd think that rather than dredge enough sand/dirt to create a completely new channel, it'd be easier to dredge out enough next to the ship to free it. They should only need to dredge out the bow and stern, the middle of the ship is already in deeper water.
- jacquesm 6y agoYou might end up getting it stuck higher. Then what?
- greymalik 6y agoBuild a taller barrier!
- aaron-santos 6y agoIf it keeps getting stuck higher and higher at some point it will be out of the canal thus solving the problem, no?
- tillinghast 6y agoPlus: free bridge!
- imperfectcats 6y agoThen that is tomorrow me's problem! I honestly think a lot of thinking works that way, where we'll let tomorrow me worry about it. To be fair, a lot of the time it makes sense. The problems a solution creates are things we need to accept when alternative is worse (think global warming vs starvation circa 1770).
- jacquesm 6y agoI honestly think that if you are involved in an operation like this and you bring this attitude to work that you'll be fired before the day is out. This is the kind of job you want to get right the first time.
- Quarrelsome 6y agoif we keep going then the other ships can just duck.
- failwhaleshark 6y agoSubmarine container ships or an underpass would be cool.
- souprock 6y agoNo, just change the density. The oil industry uses cesium formate. It's relatively non-toxic. The brine can have density of 19.2 pounds per gallon. (2.3 grams/mL) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium#Petroleum_exploration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium#Petroleum_exploration