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Comment by lmilcin | Hacker News Reader

There are 20 thousand containers on that ship. No, that's not a mistake. It says it can carry 20 thousand and I assume it travels at capacity.

Even if you could somehow launch one every minute that would still take 2 weeks of non-stop bombardment.

Fascinating how much stuff you can put on a ship and the scale of loading/unloading operation.

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Huh, a case where using kubernetes is actually justified.

Thank you, I needed that laugh.

Also like kubernetes, here's a picture of 20,000 zombie containers, getting no work done.

I was thinking, no way isn’t there a 10k container limit?

Nope 300k appr ! https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/best-practices/cluster-larg...

Well, using helm certainly would have been advisable.

Maybe they did! Modern helm doesn't have a tiller ... seems like this explains the mid-canal steering problem!

It has a max capacity of 20 thousand TEU, which is "20 foot equivalents". Most of the containers on the ship appear to be 40 foot ones. So 10,000 is probably closer to the total number.

Edit: It may also not be "full". Here's a top/bottom picture with the most "full" I could find on the top, and the current situation on the bottom. https://imgur.com/a/b8neNkR

Edit: So maybe 6000 40 foot containers, current state?

Thanks for the correction.

Then a week of bombardment. Still impressive.

In the photo where it looks quite full, the visible edge containers appear to be about 10x24x28 or 6,720 not accounting for missing ones on the top layers. In a photo from today it looked closer to only 6,000. Of course this methodology may be flawed or have some bad assumptions. Like containers below the visible deck layer??!

Pretty sure they would all be above and visible. Here's the ship empty: http://www.shipspotting.com/photos/middle/7/2/1/2892127.jpg

And a good photo to confirm your 28 bow-to-stern number: https://photos.fleetmon.com/vessels/ever-given_9811000_26410...

Nice! There do appear to be gaps reducing that 28 a bit, too... So I can't imagine there are 6,720 containers on the ship today.

They hold containers inside, too. Or else the ship would get too top-heavy. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dd/72/f2/dd72f2e14fa997abad81...

Oh wow. Not enough to double it but this could get it right to around 10,000 forty foot containers or 20,000 TEU.

Which also suggests if they start pushing containers off to lighten the load, they’ll be easy to push, but they’ll need to push off more.

How do they load and unload these things in a port in only a couple of days?! Do the cranes take off several containers at a time? It's hard for me to imagine they can move a container off the ship and get back to another container in less than a minute.

You can have multiple cranes working on a ship in parallel, like in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=590t6mbebsc

And they are unloaded onto something that can transport them out of the way. Even in the desert, after 3,000 or so containers, finding room in the big pile to unload number 3,001 without moving the crane to make a new pile might be problematic.

Yeah, and those systems are fully automated too - years if not decades before e.g. Amazon started doing something similar in their warehouses. Mind you, containers were standardized in the 60's so there's a bit of a head start there.

This video really shows the process up close:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj7ixi2lqF4

The cranes take one container off at a time (except when the container underneath sticks to the top one, which is not good). Actually, wikipedia says some cranes do two to four containers on purpose now.

Usually the crane operator will load/unload several containers without moving along the dock; because they're all lined up, the crane only needs to travel in two dimensions (vertically and across the boat from port to starboard). The cranes are specialized to pick up containers by the top corners, which makes connecting fast. Standardized containers means the corners are at the same place (ok, there's a few sizes, but 40 ft containers are the vast majority of ocean shipping) and lining up is easy. On the dockside, there's a crew of longshoremen that move chassis (trailers) into place for the crane to drop (gently, usually) the containers on, those are then parked nearby, etc.

Depending on the ship (and the dockside staffing), you can have multiple cranes working the ship. Planning is required to keep the ship balanced and minimize the number of containers moved. These ships generally visit several ports in order, and usually both unload and load at all of them, so it's complex.

Depending on the traffic (and pandemics), the port runs up to three shifts.

So no way you're doing it in less than a few months without a port facility. A year would be 1 every 25 mins which I think is more likely.

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