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Costa Concordia: Stricken ship set upright in Italy
- vermontdevil 13y agoThis is a great engineering hack especially the part about building a platform underwater for the ship to roll over and set upon. Impressive!
- camus 13y agoTrue, a sad story , but i'm impress that they have been able to do that. But the salvage is expected to cost more than a billion , and italian taxpayers will have to pick up the tab... the question is , was it worth ? what about just tearing down the ship and dispose of it ?
- themckman 13y ago> what about just tearing down the ship and dispose of it ? That's exactly what they're planning to do once they clean it up enough to be towed away. They seem very worried about the surrounding ecosystem which is, my guess anyway, why they're not just doing it where it lies.
- brohee 13y agoThe insurers are said to be picking up the tab, and the ship will be scrapped, but it had to be moved in a proper place first.
- georgeott 13y ago>> the ship will be scrapped, but it had to be moved in a proper place first. You mean a POORER PLACE first?
- sk5t 13y agoLet's start with the assumption that the coast of Giglio is not the proper place... maybe a facility that specializes in scrapping and recycling of disused vessels would be better? That said, the ship breaking yards in Bangladesh don't look like pleasant places.
- alphakappa 13y agoI believe what georgeott is referring to is the fact that ships are often scrapped in poorer places like India where it's possible to deal with toxic materials with minimal oversight.
- ansible 13y agoYes, but the ship has to still be seaworthy to make it to India in the first place. The CC is definitely not seaworthy, so I expect it will be towed to the closest shipyard that can handle it.
- speeder 13y agoNo, he means proper for scrapping. You don't scrap a ship in the middle of the sea, you don't want oil, rotten food, battery acid, sewage, cargo, and any other random stuff that might exist on a ship floating around freely.
- Argorak 13y agoI don't know what you want to imply with the comment, could you please explain? It will be moved to a close harbor that can hold the ship (to my knowledge http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piombino http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piombino is discussed, currently). That sounds like reasonable thing to do.
- smoyer 13y agoThe reports I've seen say that Costa (and Carnival) are paying the bills but their insurance company will be reimbursing them for much of the cost.
- chiph 13y agoIt contains a lot of toxic stuff -- left over fuel, oil, and especially rotting food. It's also sitting on top of an environmentally sensitive area. So cutting it up in place is not a good option. In a way, this ship is Italy's Exxon Valdez¹. Irresponsible ship's captain crashes into a reef... ¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez
- kbenson 13y agoOkay, I'm curious, why is rotting food is toxic? Edit: Okay, so it's a cruise ship, and I can see that amount of rotting (or otherwise) food possibly causing problems on a reef. I was thinking it was the cargo ship that capsized that was referenced in the wired article linked in another comment, which I had read about before. Still interested in specifics of what rotting food may do to an environment if anyone knows though.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoI figured it would just bring a whole lot of crabs, lobsters, and fishy bottom-feeders who would make short work of it, get fat, and breed a little more than usual.
- chiph 13y agoAside from possible toxicity to the animals (like how onions are toxic to cats), I think the enormous quantity is a big problem. The crabs, etc. just couldn't eat enough of it, fast enough, to prevent the sea becoming nasty. I suspect also that the rotting food would consume oxygen in the area, and that would kill some sea life.
- JonnieCache 13y agoHere you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication Ecosystems in general are chaotic and extremely sensitive, and aquatic ones more so afaik.
- aaron695 13y ago
- dagw 13y agoItalian taxpayers will have to pick up the tab The stories I've seen claim that that salvage operation is covered by insurance, so Lloyds (and whoever Lloyds is re-insured with) is picking up the tab.
- IlPeach 13y agoI heard Italians would have preferred the Concordia to be converted in a restaurant with Schettino as a waiter.
- themckman 13y ago60 Minutes did a piece on the salvage effort a while ago. You can find the video here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137223n http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137223n
- cypherpunks01 13y agoOne of my favorite Wired articles ever was back in '08, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas"[1] which is about the Titan Salvage crew saving a massive sinking cargo vessel off the coast of Alaska. Titan Salvage is one of the lead teams on the Costa salvage operation today. It's a really thrilling read, with some great insight into the technical aspects of ship salvage. [1] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_s...
- cdjk 13y agoI was thinking about that article too - I've read it a couple times, and it's always interesting. Reading about things like this makes me question whether I should call myself a software engineer or programmer - somehow what I do doesn't seem in the same category of things these people do.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThere is a lot to be said for really big engineering projects :-). I found the cassions idea to be particulary cool although welding on a bunch of cassions on the damaged side seems like it will be quite challenging. Now that the "hard" part is done though, the rest should be pretty boring from an external perspective.
- david_shaw 13y ago> One of my favorite Wired articles ever was back in '08, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas"[1] I actually came to post about this, and was pleased to see your comment in the top spot. The writers of this article (and many other great reads) have since started their own magazine--called Epic Magazine--and feature this story as one of their primary attractors. Perhaps more relevant to the Hacker News crowd, they use a really neat display format for their amazing (but true) stories: http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-cowboys/ http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-cowboys/ Highly recommended.
- krisoft 13y agoI so love that article! On multiple occasions I have played with the thought of turning Titan Salvage into a physics based simulation game. Haven't got the right vibe yet tough.
- Matti 13y ago20 min interview with the "captain", recorded a month ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bodv2P19Vc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bodv2P19Vc
- jgross206 13y agowhy "captain" in quotes?
- scott_karana 13y agoBecause of his dubious actions in contrary to his rank, I imagine? :)
- viggity 13y agowhy the hell would they do this at night?
- IlPeach 13y agoI think it just took long enough and once started they couldn't just pause it overnight.
- adambard 13y agoFor anyone that hasn't seen it, the Google Maps view of the situation is quite impressive: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=costa+concordia&data=!1m4!1m3!1d4103!2d10.919649!3d42.3634487!2m1!1e3!4m11!1m10!4m8!1m3!1d26081603!2d-95.677068!3d37.0625!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!17b1&fid=7 https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=costa+concordia&data=...