Ghost Ships - What happens when ships become data? | Hacker News Reader

Ghost Ships - What happens when ships become data?

logicmag.io

58 pointskasbah20 comments

Watching some mariners on youtube [1] and they take a pretty dim view on the idea of ghost ships, except in certain short haul scenarios. They cite that almost all of the maintenance takes place continuously while the ship is underway. While automation may reduce the bridge crew, until there are cheap robots that can perform all maintenance tasks - from overhauling engines, maintaining equipment, painting everything to protect from marine air, troubleshooting reefer units, to inspecting internal voids, not to mention routine tasks (docking, cargo operations), and emergency tasks (firefighting, damage control) - there's always going to be a decent number on board.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@JeffHK

Most people seem to underestimate how corrosive ocean water and spray is to nearly everything.

Also the number of people steering a cargo ship isn’t that much, i mean it doesn’t take hundreds of people to sail it so how much is actually gained?

I have chipped, primed, and painted a ship many times because of this. Fortunately it was only around the equipment I "owned" so the space was only about 10x10 ft.

The amount of rust created is INSANE

Just curious, in what kind of situation did you "own" (I read the quotes as implying you had responsibility for the upkeep & use of) a small well-defined piece of a larger ship?

In the Navy, while aboard a ship, you generally have spaces that you or your team "own" whether it's the walkways right out side your work space or aloft.

The Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez, was carrying $750+ million worth of cargo. I do not see how a few sailors on hand does anything for the profitability of the ship. Even if they were idle 99% of the time, seems like a reasonable investment.

Cargo value seems irrelevant to profitability. I wonder what the actual cost and profit for a cargo ship

Fine, but it stands for a proxy for the money involved. Nobody is going to agree to underwrite a voyage worth the better part of a billion on an automated ship. The largest container ships cost well over $100 million.

On that front I agree. The largest ships now push 200 million to build and cost maybe 100k a day to operate. When you're looking at operational and financing expenses of that magnitude, labor seems like a very small portion

> While automation may reduce the bridge crew,

The guys who get paid the most, are also the easiest to replace with computers?

Robot ships crewed with human sailors sounds a bit dystopian.

The steering part has long been automated. Captains are still on board ships to make decisions and to serve a management and diplomatic role. They're there to be the line-boss of the people repairing the engines and doing maintenance. They are the human responsible for port paperwork, and are in many ways the fall guys should something happen. They can fulfil both those roles because automation and that most of the paperwork and diplomacy can be done remotely though it still needs a human present for the important bits.

The Navigator used to be a position, and sometimes still nominally is, but it's now an officer position for management reasons and not because of a high degree of specialized skill.

Elsewhere, “quants” with PhDs in astrophysics collate historical data with information about geography, weather, stock prices, and ship movements, searching for opportunities to place stock market bets on global trade.

I know that this is just an inevitable/necessary part of a functioning market, but it somehow it also seems a little bit sad that this kind of human intellectual horsepower is spent on things like this. I could say the same thing about the smart people who spend their time doing things such as making social media more addictive.

Theoretically market quants are pushing the market to the limit of available info, smoothing over inefficiencies and reallocating risk. In practice they absolutely are not doing that at all and it's all a staggering drain, but the concept is cool. Like futures trading is probably a net positive, though that's the exception.

We should spend more horsepower on high-level resource allocation, not less.

We'll let the market be the judge of that.

Could not agree more.

But my feeling is that there is far too much money sloshing around naively trusting in fortune 500 managements when owners ought to be much more proactive. There is room for more active ownership and capital management.

Well... that's what happens when academia depends on poorly-paid grad student labor. They accept too many people into PhD programs (relative to the demand for PhDs in academia) for the cheap labor. The over-supply also makes it easier to exploit tenure-hungry assistant professors and adjuncts. It's how colleges have managed to make faculty costs go down (in real-dollar terms) for three decades.

Lots of PhDs end up in high paid jobs not because that's particularly what they want to do, but because they literally can't find a job in academia. The fact that finance and tech pay well is just a bonus.

flags of convenience routinely leave crew to fester offshore, and consider their welfare at best an inconvienience, not an obligation. They've left crew for years, not figuratively: literally years, on station, on minimal pay.

https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/crews-are-abandoned-on-...

This is one reason maritime unions are so militant: they have to be, because the respect for rule of law is historically so scant in the shipping business.

"coffin ships" were a thing long before B. Traven wrote about it in 1926. The plimsoll line was invented because of the problems of lading and safety in the mid 19th century

When a ship exists for its insurance payout, then it's truly become data.

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