6 ms·

At least in small craft, bow thrusters are usually electric, with local batteries charged from the main engine room. I don't know what large craft are like, but

At least in small craft, bow thrusters are usually electric, with local batteries charged from the main engine room. I don't know what large craft are like, but it doesn't seem unreasonable that a bow thruster may remain operable even if the main engine fails. Clearly that's not required or they would've had it and used it, but it could be required if the regulations didn't suck. Furthermore, steering could absolutely have an electric backup for the hydraulic pumps that power the main steering gear. As long as there's some forward speed through the water, the rudder should work. But again, backups clearly aren't required or they would've worked here. Steer-by-wire cars are required to have all sorts of redundancy so they're almost as safe as steering-shaft cars in case of an engine failure. This is a 9,900TEU ship with a 41480 kw powerplant. That a ship with so much more destructive potential is allowed to operate without the same level of redundancy as a $90k Audi, is unconscionable.

paddy_m 3y ago
The difference for a car and drive by wire system is that the failure mode of control systems on cars is normally catastrophic and dangerous. If a car loses steering or brakes, it will hit something within seconds 95% of the time. That ship spent 1 (4:30 to 5:30) hour of a presumably 10-20 day voyage in a critical control section. The tugs left the ship right around 5:08 (43 seconds into the video). A much better policy for this case would be to have required the tugs stay with the boat until it passed the main span safely. There were no doubt maintenance issues that led to this accident, but it is exceedingly rare for these types of failures to cause this type of catastrophic result.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  Damage is less likely, but much more destructive. Same as for a nuclear reactor. It’s not clear why adding ~$100k to the cost of a billion dollar ship is unreasonable
  - throwup238 3y ago
    Aircraft carriers are billion dollar ships, these are not. The most expensive container ship tops out at ~$250 million and the one that crashed today is more like $80-150 million. The propulsion systems on these vessels cost tens of millions. $100k wouldn't even pay for the material costs of a rudder. I don't know enough about the cost and safety tradeoffs made in the design of these ships to comment but your numbers are orders of magnitude off from both directions.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      Right. It's not like the ship owners (or, more saliently, their insurers) want things like this to happen. Second-guessing the marine engineers in this case is like the people post-9/11 who argued that future buildings should be designed to withstand the impact of a wide-body jetliner fully loaded with fuel. It's basically not a serious argument.
      - vkou 3y ago
        Neither the insurers nor the owners of the ship will be on the hook for the full set of damages this inflicted. Thanks to that, they aren't performing an accurate cost/benefit analysis.
      - jordanb 3y ago
        Really recommend you read Tankership Tromedy which was written by a marine engineer. You don't even have to find a copy, the author put a PDF on the internet: http://martrans.org/documents/2006/safety/The%20_tankership_tromedy.pdf http://martrans.org/documents/2006/safety/The%20_tankership_...
        Turing_Machine 3y ago
        This was written in 2006, so it clearly does not take any data from this incident into account. Even if it were written today, it would not be based on any real data -- it's far too soon for that. The bridge has been there for nearly 50 years, in a port that handles around 50 million tons of cargo every year. It seems pretty clear that whatever the cause, it was an extremely rare incident.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    I know this may seem pedantic, but to image that the cost of an additional screw or screw+engine at 100k for vessels like this is patently absurd. Just trying to offer some explanation if you're confused at the responses you're getting. Requiring such a thing would probably have a measurable impact on the global economy, even if all current vessels were grandfathered in and exempt.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    Maritime shipping is a business where shaving every penny rules the day. Most ships use flags of convenience, so the regulatory structure is pretty much nothing.
- myself248 3y ago
  All valid points. Tugs are quite a reasonable option.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
> That a ship with so much more destructive potential is allowed to operate without the same level of redundancy as a $90k Audi, is unconscionable. Would you still believe this if it was demonstrated that the system lacking redundancy was - due to factors beyond the scope of this conversation - more safe by an order of magnitude than the steering system that includes redundancy but in a different medium? Put differently: do you think the Space Shuttle should have had ejection seats? If yes, what about an Airbus A320 flying a normal commercial route?
- salawat 3y ago
  Ejection seats are a use case noche unique to military flying where the pilot is A) the most irreplaceable piece in terms of warfighting, and B) injury of the pilot in the escape attempt is considered an acceptable tradeoff. If you really want chills, think about this: a conscious decision was made with covil aviation that it was more economically feasible to sacrifice the human lives on board, and resolve the rest through lawsuits. In short: if you know/are critical to the process of murdering extra-natiomals, you warrant a life saving device. If you're a civillian, you're a line item in a potential series legal judgements.
  - yongjik 3y ago
    That's wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to start. Where in a commercial airliner do you want to keep several hundred explosive devices that would violently launch a passenger out onto an open air, through a hole punctured through a pressurized fuselage at the perfect moment, when the plane could be either at a cruising altitude, over an ocean, or speeding down a runway?
  - cyberax 3y ago
    > In short: if you know/are critical to the process of murdering extra-natiomals, you warrant a life saving device. Do you think it's even feasible to install ejector seats for 10-30 passengers? What do you think will happen if they all fire at once?
    - 3y ago

paddy_m 3y ago

The difference for a car and drive by wire system is that the failure mode of control systems on cars is normally catastrophic and dangerous. If a car loses steering or brakes, it will hit something within seconds 95% of the time. That ship spent 1 (4:30 to 5:30) hour of a presumably 10-20 day voyage in a critical control section. The tugs left the ship right around 5:08 (43 seconds into the video). A much better policy for this case would be to have required the tugs stay with the boat until it passed the main span safely. There were no doubt maintenance issues that led to this accident, but it is exceedingly rare for these types of failures to cause this type of catastrophic result.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Damage is less likely, but much more destructive. Same as for a nuclear reactor. It’s not clear why adding ~$100k to the cost of a billion dollar ship is unreasonable
- throwup238 3y ago
  Aircraft carriers are billion dollar ships, these are not. The most expensive container ship tops out at ~$250 million and the one that crashed today is more like $80-150 million. The propulsion systems on these vessels cost tens of millions. $100k wouldn't even pay for the material costs of a rudder. I don't know enough about the cost and safety tradeoffs made in the design of these ships to comment but your numbers are orders of magnitude off from both directions.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Right. It's not like the ship owners (or, more saliently, their insurers) want things like this to happen. Second-guessing the marine engineers in this case is like the people post-9/11 who argued that future buildings should be designed to withstand the impact of a wide-body jetliner fully loaded with fuel. It's basically not a serious argument.
    - vkou 3y ago
      Neither the insurers nor the owners of the ship will be on the hook for the full set of damages this inflicted. Thanks to that, they aren't performing an accurate cost/benefit analysis.
    - jordanb 3y ago
      Really recommend you read Tankership Tromedy which was written by a marine engineer. You don't even have to find a copy, the author put a PDF on the internet: http://martrans.org/documents/2006/safety/The%20_tankership_tromedy.pdf http://martrans.org/documents/2006/safety/The%20_tankership_...
      - Turing_Machine 3y ago
        This was written in 2006, so it clearly does not take any data from this incident into account. Even if it were written today, it would not be based on any real data -- it's far too soon for that. The bridge has been there for nearly 50 years, in a port that handles around 50 million tons of cargo every year. It seems pretty clear that whatever the cause, it was an extremely rare incident.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  I know this may seem pedantic, but to image that the cost of an additional screw or screw+engine at 100k for vessels like this is patently absurd. Just trying to offer some explanation if you're confused at the responses you're getting. Requiring such a thing would probably have a measurable impact on the global economy, even if all current vessels were grandfathered in and exempt.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  Maritime shipping is a business where shaving every penny rules the day. Most ships use flags of convenience, so the regulatory structure is pretty much nothing.
myself248 3y ago
All valid points. Tugs are quite a reasonable option.

DiggyJohnson 3y ago

> That a ship with so much more destructive potential is allowed to operate without the same level of redundancy as a $90k Audi, is unconscionable. Would you still believe this if it was demonstrated that the system lacking redundancy was - due to factors beyond the scope of this conversation - more safe by an order of magnitude than the steering system that includes redundancy but in a different medium? Put differently: do you think the Space Shuttle should have had ejection seats? If yes, what about an Airbus A320 flying a normal commercial route?

salawat 3y ago
Ejection seats are a use case noche unique to military flying where the pilot is A) the most irreplaceable piece in terms of warfighting, and B) injury of the pilot in the escape attempt is considered an acceptable tradeoff. If you really want chills, think about this: a conscious decision was made with covil aviation that it was more economically feasible to sacrifice the human lives on board, and resolve the rest through lawsuits. In short: if you know/are critical to the process of murdering extra-natiomals, you warrant a life saving device. If you're a civillian, you're a line item in a potential series legal judgements.
- yongjik 3y ago
  That's wrong on so many levels that I don't know where to start. Where in a commercial airliner do you want to keep several hundred explosive devices that would violently launch a passenger out onto an open air, through a hole punctured through a pressurized fuselage at the perfect moment, when the plane could be either at a cruising altitude, over an ocean, or speeding down a runway?
- cyberax 3y ago
  > In short: if you know/are critical to the process of murdering extra-natiomals, you warrant a life saving device. Do you think it's even feasible to install ejector seats for 10-30 passengers? What do you think will happen if they all fire at once?
  - 3y ago