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Comment by divbzero | Hacker News Reader

Strap it to a Falcon Heavy.

How many falcon heavies would we need to lift 200,000 metric tons?

Apparently Falcon Heavy has 5 million lbs of thrust, so about 88 Falcon Heavies?

SuperHeavy will have 17 million lbs of thrust so if Elon could deliver 25 SuperHeavy boosters with a total of 700 Raptor engines it could lift the Ever Given? Someone should simulate this in Kerbal.

If we're going unrealistic, there are even better plans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5guMumPFBag&t=123s

I'm no naval architect, but wouldn't the ship break in two once the robot tries to pick it up? It would for sure break apart due to centrifugal force while being swung.

I like movies where I can suspend belief (monsters and giant robots), but I hate it when they get the regular real stuff wrong.

You mean those tiny helicopters that can each lift thousands of tons of super robot mass, right ? And they can do that while flying in perfect formation! ;-)

To be clear, 200,000 tons is the weight of the cargo+fuel this ship carries, not counting the structure of the ship itself. I haven't found a good number for the displacement (the total weight, including the ship), and would be curious to know what it is.

Wikipedia says the Triple-E class container ships have an empty displacement of 55Kt. Assuming the Golden class is similar, with a summer deadweight of 200Kt, it seems a loaded displacement of 250Kt is possible.

I read in a random news story that the Ever Given's displacement on this voyage is about 220Kt.

Note that the units are long tons, which means that ship weighs close to 250,000 american tons, or five hundred million pounds.

I feel like it’s generally more helpful to stick with SI units if you’re already there :)

I agree, and I think these weights are in fact now reported as metric tons, not imperial long tons. The difference is insignificant for purposes of casual conversation.

Thank you, that is exactly the sort of info I was looking for!

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