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Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money
- ggm 2y agoThe point is gluing a chunk of cruise ship in the middle to make it bigger. Not selling half a cruise ship to somebody twice. It's the stretch limo business model with norovirus.
- fransje26 2y ago> with norovirus. Chuckle.
- quibono 2y agoI'm amazed that these welds can hold ship sections like that. I wonder if this is regulated in any way? E.g. class and quality of welds required etc. On another note, a 2 billion investment to build a ship seems absolutely crazy. How long does it take to make that kind of money back, and how long does a ship need to sail to pay itself back?
- NullPrefix 2y agoA weld doesn't have to be weaker than the parent metal. I assume these people might inspect their welds before painting them over. Same process as when they make new ships
- newsclues 2y agoIt’s the same way the ship is built to start with
- mensetmanusman 2y agoHow to build a ship: Step 1: cut a ship in half…
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- doe_eyes 2y agoFor the most part, it doesn't matter how long it takes to pay this back. They borrow the money, pay installments, and still end up with a 10-15% profit per passenger from day one (and that's after deducting deprecation). But because they live on credit, they were pretty badly hosed during COVID-19.
- frognumber 2y ago* Regulation is non-existent in the cruise industry. You shop for the venue with the most lax regulations of the ≈200 countries in the world. * The equivalent is insurance. Insuring a $2B ship carries pretty good due diligence. A ship simply failing is rare. Of course, ship insurance doesn't care about employee rights, safe food, medical care, or other things one might expect to keep people safe. It's about protecting the capital expense. If everyone on the ship dies, but the ship survives, that's okay! * Welds are quite strong -- it just extends the metal. This is especially true when the baseline quality of the metal is not high. On something heat-treated SAE AISI 4130 steel (what e.g. fancy steel bicycles are made of), you see significant weakening. There is a heat-affected zone where the normal tempering is taken off, and the joining material isn't the fancy CrMo of the baseline material. I'm not a nautical engineer, but I doubt cruise ships are made of overly fancy steel. When you're making a 180,000 ton ship, your best bet is to use cheap steel, and if you need more strength, to simply use more of it. A good weld should be every bit as strong as the cheap steel around it, and the heat-affected zone is a lot less important if the steel isn't heat-treated or tempered in any way in the first place. It will harden the steel a bit, of course, but it shouldn't be the same level of impact. It's also worth noting you already have welds, and things need to be engineered for welds. It's not hard to reinforce the welds. Indeed, on a bike frame, the welds are where the stresses are highest, and you get around that by making the tubes a bit thicker (or, for fancier bikes, thicker just near the welds -- that's what a butted bike tube does). I think cruises are horrible, horrible things for a whole slew of reasons, but none having to do with the ship sinking Titanic-style.
- personjerry 2y agoThis comment was very useful and informative! Thank you.
- zikduruqe 2y ago> SAE AISI 4130 steel (what e.g. fancy steel bicycles are made of) Wouldn't a fancy bicycle use Reynolds 853 steel? /s
- cm2187 2y agoAnd the original hull wasn't made of a single piece of steel in the first place, it is already a patchwork of steel plates welded together, isn't it? And I think it is assembled as vertical sections like the one being added.
- pintxo 2y agoIcon of the seas, back of the envelop calculation: Revenue: 52 weeks of sailing x 5.6k passengers [1] x 1.8k $/week [2] ~= 525m $/year Costs: Interest [3] 160m $/year + Crew [4] 118m $/year + Hospitality [6] 200m $/year = 478m $/year Profit ~= 47m $/year or ~9% [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cruise_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cruise_ships [2] https://www.cruzely.com/heres-how-much-money-cruise-ships-make-off-every-passenger-infographic/ https://www.cruzely.com/heres-how-much-money-cruise-ships-ma... [3] 8% on 2b$ [4] Crew: 50k $/year * 2350 crew [5], just guessing the costs here, including all accomodation + living costs, probably still to high? [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_of_the_Seas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_of_the_Seas [6] Hospitality: 100 $/guest/day? = 52 * 7 * 100 * 5.6k = 200m $/year
- ta1243 2y agoYou've got to factor in deprecation. If the vessel cost $2b and lasts 20 years you need to repay $200m a year to repay the amount over 20 years. However I suspect 8% would be far higher that the rate they'd get. You'd also have to include maintenence costs, and also the reduction in revenue as it gets older (people will presumably not pay as much to travel on an older ship than a newer one), or the refurb costs you'll need to offset. On the other hand inflation has to be factored in. At 2% that debt will reduce 30% over the period.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI feel like it’s just easier to use the existing cruise companies’ public financials. It looks like 10% to 15% are the real world profit margins, but with quite a bit of volatility. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RCL/royal-caribbean-cruises/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RCL/royal-caribbea... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CCL/carnival/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CCL/carnival/profi... https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NCLH/norwegian-cruise-line-holdings/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NCLH/norwegian-cru...
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
- WJW 2y agoDon't forget it's not just the welds on the outside, but also the welds on all decks and walls on the inside. The resilience of modern vessels mainly comes from the internal structure rather than the hull. The hull is just the skin and needs to be strong enough to withstand the impact of water and tugboats etc but it's not responsible for holding the ship together.
- timrichard 2y agoTonight's on-board movie will be The Finest Hours....
- Hnrobert42 2y agoHa! I just read that book because of a different HN thread. It was excellent. As I read about this process, I thought of the same thing. For those not familiar, "The Finest Hours" by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman recounts the 1952 rescue mission off Cape Cod. In a tragic coincidence, a storm split two different oil tankers in half. Both tankers split as a result of a construction process, at least superficially, similar to the one in TFA.
- brudgers 2y agohow long does a ship need to sail to pay itself back? Some uninformed guessing: A operational net of $100/passenger/day is 10,000,000 passenger days per billion dollars. That’s 27,000 passenger years. With an average load of 5000 passengers that’s about five years per billion dollars. My guess is that average operational net is well above $100/passenger/day because cruising caters to luxury market segments; the scale is vast; people expect to be up sold; and gambling. All with little regulatory oversight.
- yuliyp 2y agoI'd guess the average revenue per passenger to be on the order of $200 / day so for that 10k passenger ship that's about $700M of revenue per year. If they can put $200M of that toward the cost of the ship that'd pay for itself in a decade.
- whymauri 2y agoThey are regulated by regional professional boards with reciprocity. For example, the American Bureau of Shipping in North America. This concept is called a Classification Society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_classification_society They are unlikely to skimp on this due to the insurance implications.
- protocolture 2y agoI worked on a cruise ship below decks, once, for 3 hours, and I swore I would never take a cruise. Take the dirtiest hotel you have ever been in, and then ensure you cant leave it for days at a time. It interests me that demand is increasing but I suspect thats just good advertising.
- lbriner 2y ago"Prices from $1,000" but shows the picture of the presedential suite to lure people in. "Oh yeah, $1,000 is a room next to the engine room with no window and a single bed" at which point people feel a bit embarrassed and accept that it is another $10K just to get a window. On the other hand, lots of people are returning customers so maybe there is something to be said for moving slowly across the ocean as your life ebbs away ;-)
- ge96 2y agoTape an ipad to a wall, loop an ocean scene... Window
- EnigmaFlare 2y agoParallax, sunlight intensity, directionality, heat. It's a pity we don't have affordable (or even any?) artificial windows that even emulate the sun. Just think how much more economically buildings could be made if they had effective fake windows.
- shreddit 2y agoYou can do-it-yourself https://youtu.be/6bqBsHSwPgw?si=fWO5-pYa6kPYKLZO https://youtu.be/6bqBsHSwPgw?si=fWO5-pYa6kPYKLZO
- EnigmaFlare 2y agoThanks. I'll watch that. It doesn't seem to have images but maybe you could have the scenery window separately and just look at one thing at a time :P I've considered setting up mirrors in my garden to redirect sunlight into a shaded room but never quite got it off the ground.
- djhworld 2y agoI watched the videos embedded in the article, annoyingly they don't show the cutting process just the splitting part but still. One thing I always appreciate about watching these sort ofs things is how much work and people goes into it, like the people repainting the hull and sides of the ship, looks like real hard but honest work and probably comes with a great sense of satisfaction to boot seeing the results of your graft materialize over time.
- dewey 2y agoThe "Silver Spirit Lengthening Video" video in the article has a big segment on cutting, with both the matchine-assisted cutting and the human-cutting. https://youtu.be/bhZHhDrVQ2Q https://youtu.be/bhZHhDrVQ2Q
- throwawayffffas 2y agoNone showed any shots from the cutting or the joining from the inside though. That would be the most interesting to see.
- jitl 2y agoThe cutting apart of ships at their end of life in salvage shipbreaker junkyards is fascinating, terrifying, and sad in equal parts. This (and similar) documentaries of the salvage beaches in India show a lot of interior cutting: https://youtu.be/5jdEG_ACXLw?si=Jx7STIHrAEX0Hq6F https://youtu.be/5jdEG_ACXLw?si=Jx7STIHrAEX0Hq6F It’s a stark juxtaposition from these shots of clean, carefully planned and engineered operations in high-tech ports. Shipbreaking is often done freehand, based on experience and intuition, without much in the way of reference documents or safety gear.
- moffkalast 2y agoTo show the power of flex tape?
- pfdietz 2y agoThis reminds me of the case a British destroyer from WW1. This ship started as two Tribal class destroyers, HMS Nubian and HMS Zulu. In 1916, the first lost its bow to a torpedo (and then running aground); the second lost its stern to a mine. The admiralty decided to salvage the remains by joining them together into a new ship, dubbed HMS Zubian. https://www.twz.com/royal-navy-once-created-a-franken-ship-from-two-destroyers https://www.twz.com/royal-navy-once-created-a-franken-ship-f...
- nolok 2y agoIn 2020 France did the same with an attack submarine. The Perle had a major fire in its forward half, ruining it. The Saphir was a submarine of the same class being about to be decommissioned. They cut both in half then fitted the forward from Saphir onto Perle, which ended up being way cheaper than rebuilding a new half. (they're from an older class that is not being built anymore, but the Perle should remain in service a few more years until enough of the new class units are delivered) https://www.naval-group.com/fr/naval-group-livre-le-sous-marin-nucleaire-dattaque-perle-la-marine-nationale https://www.naval-group.com/fr/naval-group-livre-le-sous-mar... https://archives.defense.gouv.fr/content/download/611644/10245060/Dossier%20de%20presse_Chantier%20de%20r%C3%A9paration%20du%20SNA%20Perle.pdf https://archives.defense.gouv.fr/content/download/611644/102...
- astura 2y agoThe US did the same for the San Francisco when she struck a seamount. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711) >In June 2006, it was announced that San Francisco's bow section would be replaced at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard with the bow of USS Honolulu, which was soon to be retired. San Francisco is four years older than Honolulu, but she had been refueled and upgraded in 2000–2002. The cost of her bow replacement has been estimated at $79 million, as compared with the estimated $170 million to refuel and overhaul the nuclear reactor of Honolulu.[11]
- pfdietz 2y ago
- jillesvangurp 2y agoCruise ships have a huge ecological impact everywhere they go. They burn colossal amounts of fuel, they produce lots of toxic exhaust, sewage, etc. A lot of destinations for these things don't exactly have a lot of regulations for any of this either. Just flying to your destination and staying in some nice place is arguably both better for the environment and probably a lot more enjoyable depending on your tastes. Not that flying is particularly good for the environment of course. Or that enjoyable these days. But I wanted to put in context just how nasty cruise ships can be.
- raldi 2y agoThey produce sewage that would otherwise not have existed?
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI assume they mean that sewage at home is treated.
- raldi 2y ago[flagged]
- jillesvangurp 2y agoWe don't normally dump our sewage straight in the ocean.
- tharkun__ 2y agoNo, sometimes it goes directly into Lake Ontario and the river. Plans put in place by previous administrations over the years said that by 2038, waste water dumped into the lake would finally be as close to zero. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-storm-water-wastewater-management-program-1.5396886 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-storm-water-w...
- raldi 2y ago
- dghughes 2y agoThis makes me feel uneasy. Wouldn't a longer ship but the same beam (width) mean it's less stable?
- ReptileMan 2y agoAnd now I am reminded that I have to replay Leisure Suit Larry 7 ...
- mark_l_watson 2y agoAfter owning small cruising sailboats for about twenty years my wife and I did the calculation that we could sell our last boat and go on two of three cruises a year. The big cost of cruising, by the way, is not so much the ship but expensive shore excursions that sometimes take you away from the ship overnight. I get all the complaints people have against cruising but for us we have seen so much of the world in relative comfort. The trick is to plan trips around the shore excursions and what experiences you want to have. The ship is just the means to get to those experiences without having to hop on and off airplanes frequently.
- pfdietz 2y agoWe went on a river cruise last year (Viking, on the Danube). I thought of it like a bus tour of that part of Europe, except the hotel moves along with you.
- dmd 2y agoIt's also possible to do this on "cruise ships" that aren't "cruise ships". My wife and I toured the Dalmation coast (Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece) on the https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-48957/pan-orama.htm https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-48957... ten years ago - a cruise, but a cruise with ~30 other people, not ~6000. It's a big difference! The ship itself was, as you say, really just the way to get there; everything happened on-shore.
- npsimons 2y ago> a cruise, but a cruise with ~30 other people, not ~6000. This is the sort of thing that tempts me - an enchanting vision, like something out of "Death on the Nile", only minus the death. Just a small floating hotel that takes you to interesting places, not a floating amusement park combined with buffet.
- EricE 2y agoYes, smaller boats are definitely of higher appeal to me. Went on a Galapagos cruise years ago and the max amount of passengers was 83 - we had 80 on our cruise. Sadly the dynamics of that trip have changed and I don't know if I would as enthusiastically recommend it (it's become way more commercialized and you don't get to see nearly as much as we did). The big ships have zero appeal to me.
- YVoyiatzis 2y agoReminds me of the limo industry in the '80s, when [stretch limos](https://www.oldtimer-auktionen.at/auktionen/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Cadillac-Superstretch-2010.08.09-017-Gro%C3%9F.jpg https://www.oldtimer-auktionen.at/auktionen/wp-content/uploa...) just kept getting longer and longer.
- d_burfoot 2y agoThe cruise industry is very fascinating to me. I think in the medium term we could see significant populations of people living long-term on cruise ships; it seems like the economic model is long-run more efficient (assuming the shipbuilding industry is very good at building these structures). You avoid the property tax, zoning, and regulatory burdens that go with living on land. It's likely safer because you're not driving cars and you don't let criminals onboard. And Starlink solves the internet access problem.
- okasaki 2y agoDon't people disappear (fall overboard) all the time? Also I would think diseases spread pretty easily on ships.
- WillAdams 2y agoIt's already begun with some news articles noting that retirees find back-to-back cruise voyages less expensive than nursing home care: https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/is-living-on-a-cruise-ship-really-cheaper-than-a-retirement-home/ar-AA1icsWB https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/is-living-on-a-cruise-...
- bushbaba 2y agoIs their nursing care on cruise ships though? Not exactly the same
- ooterness 2y agoEvery day we move closer to WALL-E becoming reality. "'B' is for Buy N Large, your very best friend."
- asib 2y ago> you don't let criminals onboard Plenty of crimes happen at sea. Cruise companies expend effort to sweep these crimes under the carpet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nCT8h8gO1g Criminals are people who've been convicted of a crime. These people are either: - allowed on cruises (I'm not aware of a "no conviction" clause when buying a cruise ticket) - in jail, in which case you can also make the argument they're not allowed out in public So criminals are allowed on board, and people who might commit a crime are not necessarily criminals yet.
- 1-6 2y agoHow big can you make these things before they fall apart from natural forces?
- ryukoposting 2y agoAs the author notes, this isn't a concept that was invented by the cruise companies. My grandfather worked as a welder for a shipyard. I remember him telling me about how they would cut a barge in half, and he and a few other guys would weld in a new chunk that would make the thing longer. This would have been 60ish years ago.
- DrNosferatu 2y agoGreat - more air pollution from bunker fuel fumes at port cities! Big economic blocks like the EU and the US should force the cruise ships to operate sustainably and not pollute the literal sh*t out of the port cities they stop at.
- proggyfawnt 2y ago[dead]
- Neil44 2y agoIt's my understanding that bunker fuel is only used out at sea.
- seabrookmx 2y agoYes most nations require cruise ships (sometimes even cargo ships) switch to a refined fuel once they're a certain distance from shore. Nobody wants their pier covered in soot.
- cyanydeez 2y agoYes, it only destroys the environment from afar
- fhsm 2y agoOf course, outside the environment -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
- oska 2y agoI like to sort comments by new whenever I see this linked. Doing this today, seems most ppl now are return viewers in on the joke and only a few asking "Is this real?". Used to be a lot more of the latter.
- Diesel555 2y ago"We should properly tax/negate negative externalities" in accordance with microeconomics. It's at the core of basic economics and both conservative and liberal economists would agree with this statement. It's a well studied field. The problem is policy. I often post this, but I really wish microeconomics was a required course in high school or primary. I find it to be one of the least understood of the well-established fields, and one that matters when we get older and vote or debate on these topics.
- DrNosferatu 2y agoHave to confess the “serving class caters to the punter class” thing annoys me a bit. Why can’t modern cruises just be like the Love Boat on tv?
- swader999 2y agoMeh. We do this to software projects all the time.
- 3eb7988a1663 2y agoThe article made several mentions of requiring additional trained crew. Where is the gap in getting staff? I expect there is a tiny fraction of specialists (engineers, medical, ship command) and a boat load of low skill jobs (cooks, cleaning, waiters, pool boys, bar tenders, etc) who could do on the job training if required.
- perlgeek 2y agoI've told the story before on HN, but maybe it fits here too... A great-uncle of mine lived in Eastern Germany. He bought a pleasure cruiser, about 28 meters length. For everything longer than 25m, he would have needed a captain's patent to operate, so he cut out a bit more than 3m at the rear, fixed up all the wires, pipes and shafts, and then had nice (even if imbalanced-looking) boat. So he did the opposite of what the article is about :-) He spent most of his vacations on that boat, cruised up and down the rivers with his family. https://www.ddr-binnenschifffahrt.de/fotogalerie-gross/Passagier/P-064-lenz.JPG https://www.ddr-binnenschifffahrt.de/fotogalerie-gross/Passa... you can see that it ends pretty abruptly at the rear.
- mattpallissard 2y agoHere in Alaska some fisheries and permits have historical length restrictions on vessels. In order to carry the gear, ice, and catch they wanted they would cut boats in half longitudinally and widen them.
- TruffleLabs 2y agoThis video shows such an expansion, increasing passengers from 212 to 312 https://youtu.be/OTpVxCOjmPY?si=FK5qR-Tvf027WZKM https://youtu.be/OTpVxCOjmPY?si=FK5qR-Tvf027WZKM
- kelseyfrog 2y agoThe photographs satisfy the Stephen Biesty's Incredible Cross Sections of Everything part of my brain.
- green-salt 2y agoAfter watching Brick Immortar on youtube this sounds like the root cause of a future episode.
- ericyd 2y agoWhile I have no love for cruise ships, this type of engineering absolutely blows my mind. Same with mega skyscrapers or any other huge engineering project with exacting requirements. In web dev I'm lucky if I even get a complete spec to work from, so millimeter precision over the scale of a ship is far outside of my experience.
- j-a-a-p 2y agoYou might think, welding a ship together: what could possibly go wrong? The first ships that were welded would suddenly break in two. These were the liberty ships used in WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship
- dredmorbius 2y agoIf you're ever looking for inspiration, consider that your own foul-ups could launch an entire new field: These incidents are what led to the creation of the field of materials science. (Wikipedia link above.)
- akudha 2y agoWhat can one do in these massive, employee abusing, law dodging, polluting piles of monstrosities that can’t be done on land? Drink, party, fight (Google cruise ship fights for some colorful stories)…? makes zero sense. If one is going to watch sea life, dive etc, then it makes some sense. I honestly don’t understand the appeal
- KetoManx64 2y agoDon't they typically stop at different ports in different countries during the trip? Other than that, I don't understand it either, especially since you're just stuck on the boat for the majority of the time.
- akudha 2y agoYe, they do stop. From what I have heard, these are short stops to do touristy things
- rkagerer 2y agoWhat's the impact on ship strength, stability, handling, etc? I assume that's considered at the design stage? Any cons to a patchjob like this vs. building it bigger from scratch?