Guide to the Largest Ocean Carriers in the World | Hacker News Reader

Guide to the Largest Ocean Carriers in the World

flexport.com

31 pointsdanwyd18 comments

It staggers me that if you unloaded the largest one at Southampton Dock and laid all the containers end to end, the line would stretch to London. That's at least an hour on a fast motorway by car.

Not to mention that it's a highly relevant comparison, since many of those containers will be carried overland before/after unloading, and this gives an idea of just how much traffic it can generate, even if spread out over a few days and exit routes.

Indeed, a relevant comparison. I've counted the visible portion of one of the ships and I've got a length of more than 38Km.

I am more interested in those Ships, how large are they? Are they standardized? How do they compare to something like largest Aircraft Carriers?

The longest ones are approx 400 m long. The Nimitz class which is the largest aircraft carrier class in the world is 333 m.

As to standardisation then no. A certain number of each (typically owner specific) type is built, and within that type the vessels are more or less identical.

I wonder why they don't nuclear power the tankers, like they do aircraft carriers.

"The objections against nuclear-powered ships are numerous and well-founded. It could be catastrophic if any of them sank or leaked waste into the sea. Terrorists could find few targets more enticing. They’re a nightmare to insure. There are few ports with facilities that can accept nuclear waste and offer refueling services. And it seems unlikely that the public would accept them any time soon; consider that both the Russian and the Japanese ships encountered popular opposition that wouldn’t allow them to dock." (https://www.flexport.com/blog/nuclear-powered-cargo-ships/)

Discussed a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10664819

Thanks for the link. I'll take a read :-)

It's important to consider them in context though. The very same article states:

"More importantly, consider its effects on pollution. Just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may emit as much pollution as all the world’s cars. Nuclear-powered ships emit no CO2 or greenhouse gas. Replacing just a few of the biggest ships with nuclear reactors would make a significant dent in air and ocean pollution."

Given what kind of fuel current ships burn, I wouldn't be surprised if the damage to the ecosystem of such sheap leaking or sinking would be much greater than of nuclear-powered ones (people like to forget that nuclear waste is less dangerous than many of the chemicals industry deals with, and dumps into the environment without much supervision). I still feel that the opposition is mostly grounded in public's unfounded fears.

Wow, that is a lot, I wonder if there could be some innovation done.

Although that numbers sounds suspiciously large.

Here's a list of the longest ships - I was surprised to see how much larger the largest cruise liner is to the largest aircraft carrier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world's_longest_ships

If you click through to the Seawise Giant, this image is pretty cool: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawise_Giant#/media/File:Bate...

"Are they standardized?"

Well, they have to respect the bounding boxes of various infrastructure requirements which they plan to use. It seems that the most of the largest ships ever built were scrapped and the current ones are limiting themselves to a length of up to 400 m, a beam of up to 65 m (Chinamax), and a draft of 16 m: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_container_ship...

If anyone wants to know more about container ships and while they're so critical to global industry, read "The Box" by Marc Levinson. It was on Bill Gates' reading list a few years back. A bit dense, but fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-ebo...

This is a good read too: http://rosegeorge.com/site/books/ninety-percent-of-everythin...

"Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam through Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships are inflicting on on endangered whales. Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization."

Another interesting look would be the countries where these fleets are registered.

Now make "self driving container ship".

Would that scale them down? The crew cost/cargo value would go to zero. So you could optimize for singe size of ship that is mass produced.

The relevant cost for container ships are fuel, not people.

Self-driving container ships don’t run on less fuel and considering the massive size of these ships. For example, Maersk’s Triple-E class ships are manned by 22 people (according to the German Wikipedia at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple-E-Klasse).

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