5 ms·

These things weigh up to 120,000 tonnes - that isn’t something that’s going to move on road or rail.

wizzwizz4 3y ago
So make them as big as the infrastructure supports? That's what's happened with cargo ships purpose-built for the Panama Canal.
- Detrytus 3y ago
  So basically: build a port and a train station at both ends, and move containers through railway?
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    No, the GP meant to reduce the ships sizes until it's viable. TBH, I have no idea how a rail compares to a canal in terms of terrain pressure and building viability. Without further information, it's a promising alternative that is very obviously limited by the (area) density of those ships, but obviously a major investment. Somehow, the ship is able to sustain its weight, so it's not an absurd idea, but they can just barely sustain it, so it's only a just barely not absurd of an idea.
    - qup 3y ago
      we'll put a portable pool on the rails. float em across. it only increases the complexity a little.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Typical HN idea, sorry. Ignoring all practical considerations, engineering and operations wise. One coupd use starship so, sub-orbital or even orbital would be so much faster! /s
        qup 3y ago
        move the hyperloop to panama, scale it up. rails are strong, they can hold 24000 shipping containers. we'll accelerate the steel ships with magnets to incredible speeds and global efficiency will skyrocket.
  - robocat 3y ago
    Interoceanic Corridor in Mexico will move 1.4M containers a year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38223882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38223882
klyrs 3y ago
I certainly wasn't picturing a standard rail gauge, or even a single pair of rails. But now that I'm looking at how high they stack containers on ships, I can imagine that "add more wheels per axel" might not suffice.
userbinator 3y ago
For some interesting weight comparisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_machines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_machines The ships look like they're over an order of magnitude heavier than anything on land.
- klyrs 3y ago
  That is an interesting comparison. By my calculation, "The Captain" is just under 5 tons per square meter. Contrast that to the neopanamax, almost 6.5 tons per square meter (some uncertainty here -- I'm going by DWT which apparently doesn't contain the ship itself). So yeah, it's certainly heavier, but the areal density isn't an order of magnitude greater.
mrj 3y ago
Why not unload it though and transport by rail? The canals were built for a different world, before there were containers and giant ports for offloading. Serious question, surely it's expensive to unload but so is waiting for the canal. For some loads it seems like it'd make sense to bridge the oceans using rail.
- cranky908canuck 3y ago
  It could be cheaper than the typical container port, if you can co-ordinate the ships: the Rustbucket Pacific unloads to a train/series of trains that carry the containers to the waiting Rustbucket Atlantic at the other end. No need to sort out destinations at the individual container level. This does mean that you would like to work with the same shipping line at both ends, to address the matching of ship capacities.

So make them as big as the infrastructure supports? That's what's happened with cargo ships purpose-built for the Panama Canal.

Detrytus 3y ago
So basically: build a port and a train station at both ends, and move containers through railway?
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  No, the GP meant to reduce the ships sizes until it's viable. TBH, I have no idea how a rail compares to a canal in terms of terrain pressure and building viability. Without further information, it's a promising alternative that is very obviously limited by the (area) density of those ships, but obviously a major investment. Somehow, the ship is able to sustain its weight, so it's not an absurd idea, but they can just barely sustain it, so it's only a just barely not absurd of an idea.
  - qup 3y ago
    we'll put a portable pool on the rails. float em across. it only increases the complexity a little.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Typical HN idea, sorry. Ignoring all practical considerations, engineering and operations wise. One coupd use starship so, sub-orbital or even orbital would be so much faster! /s
      - qup 3y ago
        move the hyperloop to panama, scale it up. rails are strong, they can hold 24000 shipping containers. we'll accelerate the steel ships with magnets to incredible speeds and global efficiency will skyrocket.
- robocat 3y ago
  Interoceanic Corridor in Mexico will move 1.4M containers a year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38223882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38223882

klyrs 3y ago

I certainly wasn't picturing a standard rail gauge, or even a single pair of rails. But now that I'm looking at how high they stack containers on ships, I can imagine that "add more wheels per axel" might not suffice.

userbinator 3y ago

For some interesting weight comparisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_machines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_machines The ships look like they're over an order of magnitude heavier than anything on land.

klyrs 3y ago
That is an interesting comparison. By my calculation, "The Captain" is just under 5 tons per square meter. Contrast that to the neopanamax, almost 6.5 tons per square meter (some uncertainty here -- I'm going by DWT which apparently doesn't contain the ship itself). So yeah, it's certainly heavier, but the areal density isn't an order of magnitude greater.

mrj 3y ago

Why not unload it though and transport by rail? The canals were built for a different world, before there were containers and giant ports for offloading. Serious question, surely it's expensive to unload but so is waiting for the canal. For some loads it seems like it'd make sense to bridge the oceans using rail.

cranky908canuck 3y ago
It could be cheaper than the typical container port, if you can co-ordinate the ships: the Rustbucket Pacific unloads to a train/series of trains that carry the containers to the waiting Rustbucket Atlantic at the other end. No need to sort out destinations at the individual container level. This does mean that you would like to work with the same shipping line at both ends, to address the matching of ship capacities.