Interesting. Seems like a coupla tugboats could free it, but what do Editorbs know.
The Suez doesn't tow vessels from the shore within its confines. It's looking like there was an engineering casualty that locked the rudder, driving the vessel into the sidewall at transit speed. So, the bow dome is buried pretty deep in the sand at the edge of the canal.
200,000 metric tons plus doesn't stop on a dime, and that's a lot of force behind it, even at just a few knots. And, in that stretch of the canal, there isn't a good way to unload the vessel.
Blow up the ship! Don't try to preserve the ship and containers. The loss of shipping delays are much greater than this. Try to salvage the containers on the water.
200,000 metric tons of vessel and more mass in containers doesn't evaporate. A sunken hull will be harder to remove.
200,000 metric tons is weight of water it expels. The ship is much lighter.
Eureka as Archimedes probably said! Thank you, someone, who went to first-year physics at last!
My suggestion is to use land-based pulleys to rotate the ship around its center both working in unison, not tugs. Rough sketch... Image from the Dail Mail. I added the green.
There's no infrastructure to support the pulleys. And, it's all sand.
Where there's a will there's a way. They've built entire cities in the sand in the Middle East.
Agreed, but it didn't happen in a month.
The mechanical advantage that a land-based pulley system would have over tugs would be massive. A fleet of land-moving trucks with pulleys could pull more with their brakes on in sand than tugs in water. I am being flippant, but concrete can be poured quite quickly into big holes. Not to mention the angle the tugs have to pull at is incorrect for the desired turning moment. The original Daily Mail diagram is wrong, my green addition is the most efficient angle to pull at.
Even assuming all that could be deployed and installed in a timely/affordable fashion, brute force is not always the best way. Those angles and forces sound like a great way to severely damage the keel, the front of which is buried in the canal bed/bank and may already be damaged beyond seaworthiness by running aground and being twisted to the side once already. Usually, when you think of an idea that is obviously so much better than what the experts are doing, especially when it's an engineering problem and not a social/political one (though often even then) there's probably a very good reason they're not doing it your way, perhaps a reason you'd have to be an expert (or just have more information) to realize.
I don't disagree, perhaps a mix of the many of the suggestions on this thread might eventually be employed. I just hope they read AI out there! HAHA!
The scale of these massive container ships is mind boggling, about 30% longer and twice the displacement of the largest US Navy super carrier - and these ships are not the largest ships on the seas. Over 20,000 containers on board.
As an ex-Navy guy, I'm not at all surprised that this type of ship with its massive sail area could be moved by the wind. I've seen much smaller (10,000 ton cruiser sized) ships with far less sail area snap their mooring lines during a thunderstorm. No doubt that they will have to bring in some seriously large dredging equipment and floating cranes to extract that thing from the sand banks, assuming the rest of the canal is navigable to bring in the equipment needed.
It sounds like they now have exactly the right people working the problem.
I did a back of the envelope calculation based on length and an assumed height, with a bit of adjustment, and got an area of 1200 feet x 140 feet, and at 30 mph, it's on the order of 300,000 pounds of pressure on the ship, assuming that the wind was orthogonal to the ship's side. Since pressure is a function of velocity squared, there are certainly worse cases to look forward to.
I was working a the Naval Air Station Alameda when the Enterprise got stuck in the mud off of the ship channel. My recollection is that the tide came in and with the help of tugs, the "Big E" was freed within the day, but it certainly wasn't blocking traffic into Oakland.
"Have you tried turning it off, then on again?"
Love the last sentence.
As a kid, I spent hours damming small streams on beaches with my bucket snd spade just so I could eventually play dam busters and watch the (to me) massive outflow that followed. I was thinking, block the mouth of the canal and wait for the Red Sea/Mediterranean to rise a few feet then pull the plug... whoosh... ship moved. Apparently, it flows opposite ways in winter and summer.
My suggestion is to use land-based pulleys to rotate the ship around its center both working in unison, not tugs. Rough sketch... Image from the Dail Mail. I added the green.
Part of the problem is not making the situation even worse by breaking the ship in two. And a 400 meter lever puts out a lot of leverage.
They can't even unload weight from the bow alone as that could do it. They think unloading fuel might be the best, but still inadequate answer.
Interesting. Seems like a coupla tugboats could free it, but what do Editorbs know.
The Suez doesn't tow vessels from the shore within its confines. It's looking like there was an engineering casualty that locked the rudder, driving the vessel into the sidewall at transit speed. So, the bow dome is buried pretty deep in the sand at the edge of the canal.
200,000 metric tons plus doesn't stop on a dime, and that's a lot of force behind it, even at just a few knots. And, in that stretch of the canal, there isn't a good way to unload the vessel.
Blow up the ship! Don't try to preserve the ship and containers. The loss of shipping delays are much greater than this. Try to salvage the containers on the water.
200,000 metric tons of vessel and more mass in containers doesn't evaporate. A sunken hull will be harder to remove.
200,000 metric tons is weight of water it expels. The ship is much lighter.
Three minor corrections.
That 200 metric tons is the "maximum load" that the ship can carry (including fuel, ballast, crew & provisions). Normally it carries less than maximum capacity.
Historically shipping was always measured in Long Tons, which are NOT metric tonnes. Metric tons should be spelled "tonnes." And Imperial (Long) Tons should be spelled with a capital "T." So "metric tons" is technically an oxymoron (it should be "metric tonnes"). However starting around 2010 the shipping industry (including the US) appears to have settled on using "metric tonnes" rather than "Imperial Tons." One has to be careful because lots of documentation (pre-2010) still refers to Imperial Tons. The difference between the two is about 10%.
It's not "the weight of water it expels", it's actually "the weight of saltwater it expels" which is 2.5% more weight than regular water per unit volume.
So if you pause to think about it, a large salt water ship that enters the Panama Canal's freshwater system (or the freshwater in the St. Lawrence Seaway which begins at Quebec City) will sink (about a foot, I think) because fresh water is less dense. It just instantly sinks by a foot the moment it reaches fresh water... amazing.
AFAIK. the GT, not displacement, is about 200,000 mtn, but I could be wrong and I don't think I'm going to be able to break my use of the '90's mtn abbreviation in logs. Also afaik, the ship is listed as presently loaded at 275,000 mtn.
Regardless, the comment that spawned mine remains a bad solution. Even 2,000 tons of metal won't evaporate if detonated, and a carcass on the bottom of the canal is a worse engineering problem.
Enough aluminum powder and ferric oxide powder to cover the ship could do the trick, touch light with a magnesium strip and stand back. Once all the air cleared there might be a massive glass bead from all the sand though. Wait, my Chinese Gibson guitar might be onboard!
My suggestion is to use land-based pulleys to rotate the ship around its center both working in unison, not tugs. Rough sketch... Image from the Dail Mail. I added the green.
Part of the problem is not making the situation even worse by breaking the ship in two. And a 400 meter lever puts out a lot of leverage.
They can't even unload weight from the bow alone as that could do it. They think unloading fuel might be the best, but still inadequate answer.
Back of envelope physics here, of course, but with equal force applied at both ends to an object in rotation about its center, where is the shearing force that would 'break it in two?' Leaving one end stuck and pulling the other as the original images showed does have such an issue, except tugs would exert a tiny force compared to land-based pulleys, of course. At no point was I suggesting brute force, simply adding these pulleys to the other measures, my main concern was that tugs pulling parallel to the shoreline are not rotating the ship as is needed. They could even be exerting a force driving the ship further into the bank.
My suggestion is to use land-based pulleys to rotate the ship around its center both working in unison, not tugs. Rough sketch... Image from the Dail Mail. I added the green.
Part of the problem is not making the situation even worse by breaking the ship in two. And a 400 meter lever puts out a lot of leverage.
They can't even unload weight from the bow alone as that could do it. They think unloading fuel might be the best, but still inadequate answer.
Back of envelope physics here, of course, but with equal force applied at both ends to an object in rotation about its center, where is the shearing force that would 'break it in two?' Leaving one end stuck and pulling the other as the original images showed does have such an issue, except tugs would exert a tiny force compared to land-based pulleys, of course. At no point was I suggesting brute force, simply adding these pulleys to the other measures, my main concern was that tugs pulling parallel to the shoreline are not rotating the ship as is needed. They could even be exerting a force driving the ship further into the bank.
It's stuck in the sand at both ends. Even pulling on both ends, you don't know which end will come free of the sand first -- which leaves you pulling while the other end remains embedded in the sand and muck and still immoveable. Pulling on that from the far end of a 400 meter lever could produce a lot of torque the ship was not designed to withstand.
Interesting. Seems like a coupla tugboats could free it, but what do Editorbs know.
The Suez doesn't tow vessels from the shore within its confines. It's looking like there was an engineering casualty that locked the rudder, driving the vessel into the sidewall at transit speed. So, the bow dome is buried pretty deep in the sand at the edge of the canal.
200,000 metric tons plus doesn't stop on a dime, and that's a lot of force behind it, even at just a few knots. And, in that stretch of the canal, there isn't a good way to unload the vessel.
Blow up the ship! Don't try to preserve the ship and containers. The loss of shipping delays are much greater than this. Try to salvage the containers on the water.
200,000 metric tons of vessel and more mass in containers doesn't evaporate. A sunken hull will be harder to remove.
200,000 metric tons is weight of water it expels. The ship is much lighter.
Three minor corrections.
That 200 metric tons is the "maximum load" that the ship can carry (including fuel, ballast, crew & provisions). Normally it carries less than maximum capacity.
Historically shipping was always measured in Long Tons, which are NOT metric tonnes. Metric tons should be spelled "tonnes." And Imperial (Long) Tons should be spelled with a capital "T." So "metric tons" is technically an oxymoron (it should be "metric tonnes"). However starting around 2010 the shipping industry (including the US) appears to have settled on using "metric tonnes" rather than "Imperial Tons." One has to be careful because lots of documentation (pre-2010) still refers to Imperial Tons. The difference between the two is about 10%.
It's not "the weight of water it expels", it's actually "the weight of saltwater it expels" which is 2.5% more weight than regular water per unit volume.
So if you pause to think about it, a large salt water ship that enters the Panama Canal's freshwater system (or the freshwater in the St. Lawrence Seaway which begins at Quebec City) will sink (about a foot, I think) because fresh water is less dense. It just instantly sinks by a foot the moment it reaches fresh water... amazing.
AFAIK. the GT, not displacement, is about 200,000 mtn, but I could be wrong and I don't think I'm going to be able to break my use of the '90's mtn abbreviation in logs. Also afaik, the ship is listed as presently loaded at 275,000 mtn.
Regardless, the comment that spawned mine remains a bad solution. Even 2,000 tons of metal won't evaporate if detonated, and a carcass on the bottom of the canal is a worse engineering problem.
Actually you did get it wrong. The GT is 220,000 and the DW is 199,000. Here's the link:
You are correct that blowing it up is a bad idea. The very first video to go viral on the internet, about blowing up a beached whale, is still one of the funniest videos on the internet and proves your point. It went viral around 1995.
My suggestion is to use land-based pulleys to rotate the ship around its center both working in unison, not tugs. Rough sketch... Image from the Dail Mail. I added the green.
Part of the problem is not making the situation even worse by breaking the ship in two. And a 400 meter lever puts out a lot of leverage.
They can't even unload weight from the bow alone as that could do it. They think unloading fuel might be the best, but still inadequate answer.
Back of envelope physics here, of course, but with equal force applied at both ends to an object in rotation about its center, where is the shearing force that would 'break it in two?' Leaving one end stuck and pulling the other as the original images showed does have such an issue, except tugs would exert a tiny force compared to land-based pulleys, of course. At no point was I suggesting brute force, simply adding these pulleys to the other measures, my main concern was that tugs pulling parallel to the shoreline are not rotating the ship as is needed. They could even be exerting a force driving the ship further into the bank.
It's stuck in the sand at both ends. Even pulling on both ends, you don't know which end will come free of the sand first -- which leaves you pulling while the other end remains embedded in the sand and muck and still immoveable. Pulling on that from the far end of a 400 meter lever could produce a lot of torque the ship was not designed to withstand.
Yes if one end were stuck... snap! But as I said, used in conjunction with other measures including freeing from the banks by digging, it would probably work better than the tugs. But whatever floats your boat!
If nothing else, this shows how interconnected and vulnerable our international systems are.
One bad driver, gums up half the world.
But was it just a "bad driver"? I'm reading that it was either engine failure, or high-winds and a sandstorm that did it. Maybe it's a combination but if the engines dead, no amount of driver-skill would have helped.
If nothing else, this shows how interconnected and vulnerable our international systems are.
One bad driver, gums up half the world.
But was it just a "bad driver"? I'm reading that it was either engine failure, or high-winds and a sandstorm that did it. Maybe it's a combination but if the engines dead, no amount of driver-skill would have helped.
In the future a ship wider than the canal should not be allowed to pass through with its own power. It needs to be towed.
If nothing else, this shows how interconnected and vulnerable our international systems are.
One bad driver, gums up half the world.
But was it just a "bad driver"? I'm reading that it was either engine failure, or high-winds and a sandstorm that did it. Maybe it's a combination but if the engines dead, no amount of driver-skill would have helped.
In the future a ship wider than the canal should not be allowed to pass through with its own power. It needs to be towed.
There's no shore infrastructure for that, like there is in the Panama.
If nothing else, this shows how interconnected and vulnerable our international systems are.
One bad driver, gums up half the world.
But was it just a "bad driver"? I'm reading that it was either engine failure, or high-winds and a sandstorm that did it. Maybe it's a combination but if the engines dead, no amount of driver-skill would have helped.
In the future a ship wider than the canal should not be allowed to pass through with its own power. It needs to be towed.
That would pretty much shut down every canal in the world.
My suggestion is to use land-based pulleys to rotate the ship around its center both working in unison, not tugs. Rough sketch... Image from the Dail Mail. I added the green.
Part of the problem is not making the situation even worse by breaking the ship in two. And a 400 meter lever puts out a lot of leverage.
They can't even unload weight from the bow alone as that could do it. They think unloading fuel might be the best, but still inadequate answer.
Back of envelope physics here, of course, but with equal force applied at both ends to an object in rotation about its center, where is the shearing force that would 'break it in two?' Leaving one end stuck and pulling the other as the original images showed does have such an issue, except tugs would exert a tiny force compared to land-based pulleys, of course. At no point was I suggesting brute force, simply adding these pulleys to the other measures, my main concern was that tugs pulling parallel to the shoreline are not rotating the ship as is needed. They could even be exerting a force driving the ship further into the bank.
It's stuck in the sand at both ends. Even pulling on both ends, you don't know which end will come free of the sand first -- which leaves you pulling while the other end remains embedded in the sand and muck and still immoveable. Pulling on that from the far end of a 400 meter lever could produce a lot of torque the ship was not designed to withstand.
Yes if one end were stuck... snap! But as I said, used in conjunction with other measures including freeing from the banks by digging, it would probably work better than the tugs. But whatever floats your boat!
Yeh, For some reason that digging seems to be a problem....
There are memes out on social media showing a guy with a shovel beside this huge boat saying "I'll do my best, but no promises!"
If nothing else, this shows how interconnected and vulnerable our international systems are.
One bad driver, gums up half the world.
But was it just a "bad driver"? I'm reading that it was either engine failure, or high-winds and a sandstorm that did it. Maybe it's a combination but if the engines dead, no amount of driver-skill would have helped.
Drunk driver?
... Wouldn't be the first time!
But, isn't it strange that they do not yet seem to know the cause?
If nothing else, this shows how interconnected and vulnerable our international systems are.
One bad driver, gums up half the world.
But was it just a "bad driver"? I'm reading that it was either engine failure, or high-winds and a sandstorm that did it. Maybe it's a combination but if the engines dead, no amount of driver-skill would have helped.
Drunk driver?
... Wouldn't be the first time!
But, isn't it strange that they do not yet seem to know the cause?
It is not strange that the cause is unknown. And even if the cause was already privately known to local investigators, Egypt is a dictatorship and nobody living in a dictatorship says anything about nationally embarrassing incidents without government approval.
It took 20 months before all of the factors in the Costa Concordia sinking were known. But that's because the investigation and trial took place in a free country with human rights. Egypt can expedite the determination of the cause because the government of Egypt is a dictatorship and (from what I read) often uses torture to get information that it wants from prisoners. So maybe Egypt could wrap this up in a week, if it uses torture again. The problem is that this incident occurred in the Suez Canal and that means Egyptian pilots would have been commanding the container ship through the canal. Do you think a dictatorship wants the world to know that it was at fault? I don't think so. They'll just come up with some believable short excuse like "it was the wind." However the ship's operating company said "Initial investigations suggest the vessel grounded due to strong wind." That company is based in Taiwan, which is a democracy, so that information has some credence with me. However the way they worded it sounded like they were deferring to Egypt, which does not have much goodwill with me.
Egypt is not a country that knows how to be honest. For example, Egypt is still in a "state of emergency" since 1981's assassination on Anwar Sadat. (Actually, it has been in a state of Emergency for most of the time since 1967, when it amassed troops to start a war with Israel.) This is dishonest and almost caused a revolution in 2011.
Comments
I don't disagree, perhaps a mix of the many of the suggestions on this thread might eventually be employed. I just hope they read AI out there! HAHA!
As a kid, I spent hours damming small streams on beaches with my bucket snd spade just so I could eventually play dam busters and watch the (to me) massive outflow that followed. I was thinking, block the mouth of the canal and wait for the Red Sea/Mediterranean to rise a few feet then pull the plug... whoosh... ship moved.
And on that very subject...
Funny you say that, 'Elon to the rescue' was my initial thought except I was thinking small silver submarines for some reason....
Enough aluminum powder and ferric oxide powder to cover the ship could do the trick, touch light with a magnesium strip and stand back. Once all the air cleared there might be a massive glass bead from all the sand though. Wait, my Chinese Gibson guitar might be onboard!
You got that right!
It's stuck in the sand at both ends. Even pulling on both ends, you don't know which end will come free of the sand first -- which leaves you pulling while the other end remains embedded in the sand and muck and still immoveable. Pulling on that from the far end of a 400 meter lever could produce a lot of torque the ship was not designed to withstand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest_ships
You are correct that blowing it up is a bad idea. The very first video to go viral on the internet, about blowing up a beached whale, is still one of the funniest videos on the internet and proves your point. It went viral around 1995.
Drunk driver?
It took 20 months before all of the factors in the Costa Concordia sinking were known. But that's because the investigation and trial took place in a free country with human rights. Egypt can expedite the determination of the cause because the government of Egypt is a dictatorship and (from what I read) often uses torture to get information that it wants from prisoners. So maybe Egypt could wrap this up in a week, if it uses torture again. The problem is that this incident occurred in the Suez Canal and that means Egyptian pilots would have been commanding the container ship through the canal. Do you think a dictatorship wants the world to know that it was at fault? I don't think so. They'll just come up with some believable short excuse like "it was the wind." However the ship's operating company said "Initial investigations suggest the vessel grounded due to strong wind." That company is based in Taiwan, which is a democracy, so that information has some credence with me. However the way they worded it sounded like they were deferring to Egypt, which does not have much goodwill with me.
Egypt is not a country that knows how to be honest. For example, Egypt is still in a "state of emergency" since 1981's assassination on Anwar Sadat. (Actually, it has been in a state of Emergency for most of the time since 1967, when it amassed troops to start a war with Israel.) This is dishonest and almost caused a revolution in 2011.