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Comment by ziml77 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much the couple of excavators helped. I saw people on HN saying having two measly excavators was just to give the appearance of doing something and not an actual attempt to get the boat unstuck. But when I saw a photo of the digging, it looked like there was some serious progress made.

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I read it was six, running 24 hours a day, which moved 27,000 metric tons of sand.

Which, sounds like a lot of sand to me. Seems like software engineers would have the best understanding of slowly but steadily working towards a goal since that's been my life since I started in this field!

But, also, I admittedly bit the hype train too on how hard it was going to be to get this thing dislodged.

I think that number is from the dredgers rather than the excavators. Dredgers (ships) can shift sand faster than dozens of excavators.

It looks like you would be correct! Although the 27,000 metric tons appears to have been on point.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-56547383

Thanks for providing a source!

A cubic meter of wet sand weighs about 2 metric tons. 24/7 excavation is easy to underestimate like sailing ship traversal under way: yes, a sailing ship only makes 4 knots (or whatever), but it dies so for 168 hours a week.

Apparently the high tides were maximized and were a big factor. Credit to the Moon!

so you're saying wallstreetbets played a hand in this?

Diamond hands on the dredgers. We like the ship!

Aye by dredge boats running massively large slurry pumps. My partner works for a company that manufactures said pumps, they can MOVE SOME SLUDGE. Think the same sort of setup they use for underwater gold mining, but on a way way more massive scale. You can literally stand up inside some of the impellers they make.

One picture from very early on in the crisis (the one with the single excavator) was used as the mental model for the site long after pictures stopped being seen from there.

I wonder how they think the canal was created.

I’m actually really curious about this! It was built in the mid 19th century, was there excavators then? Or was it shovels and manpower? I looked on wikipedia hoping to find some info, but was sadly disappointed. I would TOTALLY read an in depth article on how, practically, the Suez canal was actually built.

"Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced laborers. Later, European workers with dredgers and steam shovels arrived"

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/suez-canal-opens

Depiction of a steam dregdger working on the Suez Canal

https://www.alamy.com/suez-dredgers-canal-build-dig-excavate...

I'd imagine a lot of explosions too. Most big excavation back then used explosions but also a lot of individual manpower as well.

Slaves, lots and lots of slaves, many of whom died. Exactly as you'd imagine something of epic proportions being made in the 19th century.

It was built with corvee labor, which is not quite the same thing: unpaid, yes, but done by farmers etc as a form of taxation in kind.

Taxation imposed by the state, but I haven't been able to find any citation of a tax code so to speak.

It seems like state sponsored slavery, without a trade. That is no persons are being sold because they are simply using citizens

Brutal.

Oh come now, governments can’t impose slavery - it was just taxation after all /s

Slavery doesn't have to do with whether it was paid or not (many slaves have historically been paid as well) but rather the voluntariness of their work.

Measly in comparison to the ship, but by no means measly in an absolute sense. Those were pretty impressive excavators.

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