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Comment by fumblebee | Hacker News Reader

This incident has already been added to opening section for the Suez Canal Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal

I wonder what makes something significant enough to be added to this section. A quick scan of the page shows some interesting tidbits that aren't present in the opening (to me, more noteworthy - so far - than the ongoing blockage):

> The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade. Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed six months earlier, it allowed the world to be circled in record time.

> In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, the canal was the scene of a major crossing by the Egyptian army into Israeli-occupied Sinai and a counter-crossing by the Israeli army to Egypt. Much wreckage from this conflict remains visible along the canal's edges.

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Once the event is over, I suspect people will review the page and decide that this has no place in the opening section. Then it'll move down to its rightful place.

Right now it's more a matter of racing to be as up-to-date as possible, rather than actually weighing the merits of having this in the opening section.

Presumably, for as long as the ship is blocking the canal, it is important enough to be in the opening section of the article. You can imagine that if the ship is there forever, it would certainly be in the opening section.

This is a big ship. There's no nearby facility to unload or service it. Its not something you bring tools in your pickup truck to solve the problem.

If its not immediately resolvable with the ships own facilities, then its not clear it can be solved in less than a-long-time. Maybe years?

Its 200 million pounds. It holds 20,000 units. To unload it would take building a facility on-site. And maybe a rail line to carry the cargo away.

I have hopes the tug solution will solve it. But if not, then there's probably no easy solution at all. Not one that costs less than a billion dollars?

I think it can be done faster, there are people specialized in such tasks: https://www.smit.com/#view/map but yes, you are right, this is not going to be 2h fix.

> this is not going to be 2h fix

In fact it’s already been 20 hours since the tweet was posted. I think the Twitter UI makes that clear enough, although reading the full thread is probably easier on Nitter https://nitter.cc/jsrailton/status/1374438210315513864

Digging is easier than construction of complex facilities. If simpler methods fail, it won't take very long to widen the channel enough that they can move the ship out.

I will eat my hat if this takes a year to resolve, or costs 1 billion dollars (excluding lost revenue due to closure, I have no idea what that is).

It's already costing 18 million dollars a minute

Sure, in lost revenue, which I specifically excluded.

It’s not being salvaged at the most promising way, the many tugs that surrounds are just not fully capable, the biggest of all is less than 200ton bollard pull, together with 2 less than 100ton. Surely it’s for the reason of both cost saving and only gathering available resources from around? If it get stuck for longer than few days I bet better capable tugs would appear to end the scene

https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/English/Resources/Pages/Floatin...

The Baraka1, which is already on the scene, is described here as the most powerful tug in the Middle East. It would probably take a while to bring in more powerful tugs.

If this was a controlled flight into terrain to disrupt global container shipping, then yes, it will take more than a-short-time. Because drama for consumers of narrative and benefits for certain beneficiaries.

"The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and _breaking global supply chains_" - Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development, 2010.

I don't think unloading it is an option. I wonder if they will get ships to push it.

Sounds like they are digging too.

Maybe "unloading" by dragging some of the containers off the ship. Either into the sea, or on land. Yes, it would be very messy: destroy some goods, damage the ship. But it might still be cheaper than the alternatives.

>The canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade. Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed six months earlier, it allowed the world to be circled in record time.

Interesting! That prompted me to look up Around the World in 80 Days, and it turns it out was published 3 years later (1872), using those pieces as part of the journey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Eighty_Day...

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