Giant Ship Is Moved To and Fro to Break Suction: Suez Update
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
(Dutch source: https://www.trouw.nl/buitenland/vastgelopen-containerschip-s...)
1. They can’t manoeuvre tugs into the right location due to the aforementioned silt and dirt the Ever Given is stuck on/dug up.
2. Tug bow trusters are difficult to aim. Plus how do you hold them steady? They can only fire in one direction at a time, so you have no ability to create a reaction thrust to prevent the tug from moving.
3. Tug thrusters don’t enjoy ingesting huge amounts silt and earth when they’re operating. Which invariably will happen if they’re close enough to banks to have a useful erosive effect.
All crises, worldwide, are eventually solved by the American military blowing shit up.
https://twitter.com/Kurz_Gesagt/status/1375607865721958403?s...
https://youtu.be/xLh1676KRaE?t=20
another interesting view:
https://images0.persgroep.net/rcs/GXjmBPgKzxDcYYksztfQHjNhNl...
If the following video explanation is accurate, a tugboat's turbulence can't scour down to ~50 ft depth of sand: https://youtu.be/zBvFuq7Mkzs?t=1m00s
I think the confusion we have with all these news reports is that we really don't have a definitive visualization or geometry of how its actually stuck in the sand that's accurate/authoritative. A bunch of overhead drone shots don't really reveal to us the true extent of the problem that's hidden underneath the waterline.
We just see words about tugboats arriving and water spraying so our instinct is to simplify the problem to "I don't understand why they can't just do <X>?!?"
EDIT to add informative deep link of how the ship got stuck mentioned by another thread: https://youtu.be/5iyn2q6s1Sk?t=4m28s
"Don’t demand that people stop doing a thing until you fully understand why they think it was worth doing.
Only when you fully understand their perspective should you then argue with their specific reasoning."
Closing Chesterton’s Gate:
“Don’t ask rhetorically why people don’t simply do a thing, until you fully understand why they considered but rejected that thing.
Only when you fully understand their perspective should you then argue with their specific reasoning."
Though asking with curiosity, humility and joy, can convert an "argument from failure of imagination" into a "It seems my understanding of the world isn't matching the world! Yay! Learning opportunity! Help me leverage this, let it not slip by unexploited, please?". Those can be wonderfully Aha! fruitful. First step of a bugfix is finding a failure case.
Every now and then, the reply is "that would have been a good idea actually" in which case you still get to look smart. So it's a win+win really.
What if you add in the value of all the memes it has generated though? Definitely a net positive for the world overall.
Would it have been cheaper to build and maintain two canals? And it's not the end of the world if ships have to go the long way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal
Doubt there's any alternate paths for a Suez Canal.
It would be something like ten times the length of Suez, and I think there are mountains in the middle, but it would be pretty cool! :)
"In March 2021, the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications gave approval for preparations to begin, with the Norwegian Coastal Administration expecting construction to begin in 2022."
It would be less than 3x the length, not 10x. The mountains are a problem; it could go around but would still need to dig a lot. And it doesn't seem feasible politically right now, but it could be a really cool project.
(If it was built, then a side-canal to irrigate the Dead Sea would be a relatively cheap value-add.)
A pristine lake doesn’t have infinite value, right?
But if there were enough benefits it could still be worth it. Brining 50k people out of poverty for example? Reducing trucking pollution by a large amount.
Or would it just lead to ships being made that can accomodate the entire width of the super-wide canal? :P
The vessel is completely filled with containers. To discharge a container you need a crane. Further, some perishable things, that's why shippers have insurance.
Not sure what you mean with 'dismantle' though. It's rather obvious you never seen such a vessel up close. It's nor like a pc. If you want a specific container, it can often be a complete hassle to get to it. This as loads of other containers are stacked on top.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/26/at-least...
What do you think they use reefer containers for? Container vessels often have loads of perishable goods on them. Though it's often biased one-way. E.g. Latin America to Europe? Loads and loads of bananas. Norway to anywhere? Salmon!
The bananas are green when plucked; they ripen during the voyage.
But over the last few decades we have been much more efficient with globalization, but the just-in-time aspect is like a traffic jam, where one slow spot makes everyone everywhere back up and wait in traffic affecting everything.
SARS in 2004 primed Hong Kong for a robust virus response in 2020. As much as the HK government gets wrong, they've done a really good job so far with SARS-CoV2. We have 7.5 million people, and about 120 deaths so far from SARS-CoV2.
Though, a lot of this boils down to the fatality rate of the original SARS being something like 10%, so it was more terrifying but ultimately less dangerous on a population level due to lower transmissibility.
I think Egypt will more seriously consider twinning the southern part after this event.
Impressive. That's around 55,000 metric tons of wet sand, or a bit more than the mass of the Titanic.
https://www.suezcanal.gov.eg/English/About/SuezCanal/Pages/C...
https://www.dredgepoint.org/dredging-database/owners/suez-ca...
It’s considered condescending to send help in dire situations?
Damn, everyone is on the edge these days.
On a technicality such an event changes their density considerably, assuming we take that to mean 'everything inside the volume circumscribed by the hull', after all, whether you insert all that water through a hole in the front or in the top doesn't really matter, as long as the air gets displaced that will do the job nicely.
This way Titanic counts as just a heap of steel (and doesn't float) and Ever Given counts as steel-air mix (and floats).
> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
Anyways here is a mirror if you can't read due to the paywall: https://archive.is/RL4my
If the law is bad, breaking it is not a solution. Changing the law is a solution.
Breaking the law is often instrumental to changing it. The progressive collapse of marijuana prohibition wouldn't have happened if people hadn't consistently disobeyed the law. Civil Rights wouldn't have happened without people actively breaking the laws at issue.
And so on.
Should the author of some text have a right to ask money from people, for allowing them to read it? I think they should have such right and it is wrong to break it.
Should the users of Hacker News promote expensive software, websites ... when there are cheaper or free alternatives? The users of Hacker News should be educated. Unless Bloomberg has several HN accounts and upvoted this link itself.
So your issue isn't “if you think the law is wrong, breaking it isn't a solution” but “disagreeing with the law is wrong”. Which may be a legitimate opinion, but it is dishonest to say the first when you mean the second, and your disagreement with the action isn't because you think people should work to change the law without breaking it as a tactical approaches, but because you think people should support the law in the first place.
But if the canal authority's pilot was at the helm when it ran aground, there's likely to be some difficulty getting the shippers to pay without a court involved.
EDIT: ship name was incorrect
Because, if I understand correctly, he had an "impossible" job.
The ship was heading north, with a 30 mph wind from the west. Rudder needed to be applied to counter the wind.
The wind stopped, the ship got close to the left bank, then hydrodynamic forces caused it to pivot into the right bank.
Basically, the ship was far too large for that narrow canal. Everything worked OK under good circumstances, but failed in gusty wind. This accident was inevitable.
I also read somewhere that ship was going 13 knots in an area which is supposed to be 8 knots. But maybe that was also necessary because ships need to be moving in order for the rudder to work properly. No motion -> no rudder.
In any case, that sounds more like the canal authority's fault that Evergreen's. If the ship was too large and wasn't rated for using the canal then that would be different, but as it stands the canal said "ships up to that size can use the canal", and Evergreen built a ship up to that size and used the canal.
Armchair blaming just isn’t a useful exercise, very few people have the context to understand what might have happened and rallying up a chorus of people who know little blaming entities they had never heard of is less than useless.
As to whom is responsible monetarily ::shrugs::, it seemed like an act of God caused this so I have no clue.
Well, their insurance companies maybe... Or maybe they'll just work it out.
But that's not what has happened here. Continually increasing demand (read population growth + geo-conglomeration of industries) has stretched the global supply network(s) to fragility, necessitating JIT in absurd distances and quantities, in turn requiring ships 400mx50m to squeeze through canals they barely clear the bed of at speeds slow enough for them to not cause over-swell but not fast enough for them to have enough thrust to overcome crosswinds.
Toyota isn't the only company that does this. If you supply Toyota they require you to do this in some form, including making your suppliers do it. (this is part of knowing their suppliers 6 levels deep - something they also do to ensure they don't use slave/child labor even indirectly). There are other companies that don't supply Toyota that have also taken this same lesson.
The point is just in time is hard to do right. The simple elevator pitch has many obvious problems that those who do it are careful about ensuring they don't happen.
You cannot just stop buying your chips for a year and then complain when manufacturers re-tooled around you.
I think a more realistic outcome is that ships of this size require auxiliary tugs to transit.
It also depends on what the actual cause was in this case. I think there will likely be an investigation by the maritime authority of the ships flag state.
Requiring more ships to have tugs might limit total throughput - so there is indeed a strategic financial calculation.
It can be boiled down to: Ha! Things can disrupt JIT operations, don't these bozos know that?
In reality these decisions are made by professionals armed with heaps of statistics to make the best decision. I'm a nobody who knows nothing, yet I understand that ships are sometimes late. It is sometimes caused by weather, or mechanical issues, or piracy, or war. I trust that the professional know this too and more. Why do you think you know better than them what fits their reliability guarantees and budget the best?
The point isn’t whether JIT meets “their reliability guarantees and budget the best” — it’s whether what companies guarantee and provide is best for society at large.
That a company benefits from JIT is irrelevant to what OP was saying and your “trust the experts” response is a non sequitur.
Also, I worked on a team doing logistics for a F10 company — your faith in “experts” is wildly misplaced.
For a real world example of bozos not knowing that, see Toyota in 2011.
As for this specific question, it’s the same thing people said in 2007 about mortgages: “these are experts - what makes you think they haven’t adequately considered the risk?”
What you mistake for an appeal to authority is in reality a plea to consider the question deeper than in a 147 character snide remark. After all there are people who spend day in, day out thinking about supply chains, so maybe they have thought about this deeper than what fits into that many characters?
For example one of the sibling comments here writes that while JIT might be in the companies interest it's not in society's interest. That is a super interesting question. Properly unpacking even just the question would take a lot more characters.
Or maybe there are some systemic biasses which makes logistic experts blind to these looming dangers?
Or maybe actually everything is fine and the sky is not falling? I assume people are not making as much money as they could, but is anyone going to go cold/hungry/loosing their job because of this incident in some way I don't see yet?
All of these questions and more could provide the substance for a worthy discussion in a way a snide remark can't.
I wonder if there will be a project to create a 2nd lane.
It is a quite common misconception that supply chains all run on JIT nowadays.
the short: think of it like the Kelly Criterion. There's an optimal level of risk to take here, which you can update based on real world experiences.
https://community.emlid.com/t/using-a-pair-of-reach-units-as...
He was post processing the data, but part of RTKLIB is RTKNAVI which is real time and I haven't used it but in theory I'd think RTKNAVI would support moving baseline as well. Post processing should be slightly more accurate as you can use measurements in the future as well but it should still be very accurate real time.
As others have mentioned, There's much better you can do if you're going for optimal and you have the raw satellite timing information from both receivers.
You can go to the extreme and build a full blown IMU that's tolerant to GPS outages. If it's sensitive enough, you can even measure the rotation of the planet. Big expensive ships presumably have that. The boats on a tracker that glitch their orientation when stopped seemingly don't have that, or at least don't have it integrated with that tracking system.
http://www.jrc.co.jp/eng/product/lineup/jlr21_31/pdf/JLR-21....
https://comnav.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/WEB_GNSS-G2G2B...
A traditional gyrocompass is the more common option though, I think.
That can get you xyzt position, if you want your three dof direction too, a second receiver/fe/antenna can do a second fix and the differential between the two can be used to find the orientation.
You can do this with a smaller antenna separation better by going down the stack into the guts of the receiver math but it’s difficult because these things are implemented in hardware and encumbered by arms control regulatory hurdles.
Like the Sailor 6222 Class A GMDSS VHF which is found in loads of commercial vessels and still is their "newest" model. That only accepts NMEA 0183 inputs.
I recall asking if this functionality wasn't available off the shelf and the answer was that it existed, but it was difficult without also buying a lot of new equipment he didn't need. It apparently cost a lot less to have me do the data conversions (and I didn't charge much for it) on a small SBC than it would to have to buy new equipment and deal with installation, fitment issues, etc.
Inland-only vessels don't always have a gyrocompass or GPS compass, or don't have it connected to the AIS transponder, in which cases they only transmit course over ground and not their heading.
I am reminded of this website (forgive the profanity):
And this ceramic piece:
Way too many economist were asked their opinions, which were all prefaced with "it could be". Never once did I see an interview with a container ship captain, civil or marine engineer.
Big News these days just seems to be about regurgitating shaky videos from social media.
1) 33%-height ad for IBM at the top. 2) 20%-height offer to subscribe on the bottom. 3) Overlay asking for my email address which greys out the article.
Scrolling down, there is a autoplay video on the right sidebar along with most read content and ads.
The whole page is so bloated it lags my 1 year old MacBook just scrolling down.
Thats the issue with modern web apis: Browsers add them with good intent to allow for modern web apps and improve UX, and advertisers abuse it to cripple UX but bring up "engagement" with the website.
* * * block
* * css allow
* * frame block
* * image allow
* 1st-party frame allow
Even more advanced users can set up uBO to work in default-deny mode to only allow resources from specific 3rd-party domains as needed, and on a per-site basis.[2]
* * *
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...
[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
However, Firefox for Android with uBlock Origin shows the article without a trace of what you're describing.
Not a dig at parent, but a general observation.
That is what I said is a common trope, but is an inconvenience, hard to remember, and likely not done by many if any people. You don’t appear to do it either.
Same with your tip jar. You say small sites which isn’t wrong. However in your case you’re only topping the same 2 dozen sites you go to.
Not every site or app has the same engagement necessities. If a site can be visited much less but is very helpful, it’ll likely get much less tip money than a less helpful but regularly visited site that gets your dopamine going. I’m not saying this as fact. It’s something I believe could be true with no backing.
Needs to be somewhat randomized to simulate a real human, so that the supported site wasn't punished for ad pumping (which I am committing, they are not).
Adnauseam clicks everything to ruin the entire ecosystem.
Instead I looked for something like: hide-and-click ads on selected valuable sites, hide-or-block ads everywhere else.