Costa Concordia: Stricken ship set upright in Italy | Hacker News Reader

Costa Concordia: Stricken ship set upright in Italy

bbc.co.uk

78 pointsk33l0r34 comments

One of my favorite Wired articles ever was back in '08, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas"[1] which is about the Titan Salvage crew saving a massive sinking cargo vessel off the coast of Alaska. Titan Salvage is one of the lead teams on the Costa salvage operation today. It's a really thrilling read, with some great insight into the technical aspects of ship salvage.

[1] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_s...

I was thinking about that article too - I've read it a couple times, and it's always interesting.

Reading about things like this makes me question whether I should call myself a software engineer or programmer - somehow what I do doesn't seem in the same category of things these people do.

There is a lot to be said for really big engineering projects :-). I found the cassions idea to be particulary cool although welding on a bunch of cassions on the damaged side seems like it will be quite challenging. Now that the "hard" part is done though, the rest should be pretty boring from an external perspective.

> One of my favorite Wired articles ever was back in '08, "High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas"[1]

I actually came to post about this, and was pleased to see your comment in the top spot. The writers of this article (and many other great reads) have since started their own magazine--called Epic Magazine--and feature this story as one of their primary attractors. Perhaps more relevant to the Hacker News crowd, they use a really neat display format for their amazing (but true) stories: http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-cowboys/

Highly recommended.

I so love that article! On multiple occasions I have played with the thought of turning Titan Salvage into a physics based simulation game. Haven't got the right vibe yet tough.

I read it too ... and that article also points out how dangerous it can be (one of the Titan workers died when he slipped on the wildly tilted deck).

This is a great engineering hack especially the part about building a platform underwater for the ship to roll over and set upon. Impressive!

True, a sad story , but i'm impress that they have been able to do that. But the salvage is expected to cost more than a billion , and italian taxpayers will have to pick up the tab... the question is , was it worth ? what about just tearing down the ship and dispose of it ?

> what about just tearing down the ship and dispose of it ?

That's exactly what they're planning to do once they clean it up enough to be towed away. They seem very worried about the surrounding ecosystem which is, my guess anyway, why they're not just doing it where it lies.

The insurers are said to be picking up the tab, and the ship will be scrapped, but it had to be moved in a proper place first.

>> the ship will be scrapped, but it had to be moved in a proper place first.

You mean a POORER PLACE first?

I don't know what you want to imply with the comment, could you please explain?

It will be moved to a close harbor that can hold the ship (to my knowledge http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piombino is discussed, currently). That sounds like reasonable thing to do.

I was specifically referring to the nightmarish working/living conditions of most ship-breaking yards. Bangladesh, etc.

Which is out of place, as the ship will be scuttled in Italy, so why the comment?

Let's start with the assumption that the coast of Giglio is not the proper place... maybe a facility that specializes in scrapping and recycling of disused vessels would be better?

That said, the ship breaking yards in Bangladesh don't look like pleasant places.

I believe what georgeott is referring to is the fact that ships are often scrapped in poorer places like India where it's possible to deal with toxic materials with minimal oversight.

Yes, but the ship has to still be seaworthy to make it to India in the first place. The CC is definitely not seaworthy, so I expect it will be towed to the closest shipyard that can handle it.

No, he means proper for scrapping.

You don't scrap a ship in the middle of the sea, you don't want oil, rotten food, battery acid, sewage, cargo, and any other random stuff that might exist on a ship floating around freely.

The reports I've seen say that Costa (and Carnival) are paying the bills but their insurance company will be reimbursing them for much of the cost.

It contains a lot of toxic stuff -- left over fuel, oil, and especially rotting food. It's also sitting on top of an environmentally sensitive area. So cutting it up in place is not a good option.

In a way, this ship is Italy's Exxon Valdez¹. Irresponsible ship's captain crashes into a reef...

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez

Okay, I'm curious, why is rotting food is toxic?

Edit: Okay, so it's a cruise ship, and I can see that amount of rotting (or otherwise) food possibly causing problems on a reef. I was thinking it was the cargo ship that capsized that was referenced in the wired article linked in another comment, which I had read about before. Still interested in specifics of what rotting food may do to an environment if anyone knows though.

I figured it would just bring a whole lot of crabs, lobsters, and fishy bottom-feeders who would make short work of it, get fat, and breed a little more than usual.

Aside from possible toxicity to the animals (like how onions are toxic to cats), I think the enormous quantity is a big problem. The crabs, etc. just couldn't eat enough of it, fast enough, to prevent the sea becoming nasty.

I suspect also that the rotting food would consume oxygen in the area, and that would kill some sea life.

Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication

Ecosystems in general are chaotic and extremely sensitive, and aquatic ones more so afaik.

I'd say at some stage someone has made the quote and all the news stations ran with it, never fact checking.

Most of the people watching can't get complex ideas, but everyone knows rotting food is smelly so it's a story that sells. And you can't have a smelly beach, it's not like there are starving people in the world.

I can't see it much different to a whale beaching.

Back of the envelope -

4000 eat ~ 1kg per day times 10 days

So approx 40 tonnes of food is in the ship.

You'd have to imagine you'd easily recover 80% and remove it.

Italian taxpayers will have to pick up the tab

The stories I've seen claim that that salvage operation is covered by insurance, so Lloyds (and whoever Lloyds is re-insured with) is picking up the tab.

I heard Italians would have preferred the Concordia to be converted in a restaurant with Schettino as a waiter.

60 Minutes did a piece on the salvage effort a while ago. You can find the video here: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50137223n

20 min interview with the "captain", recorded a month ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bodv2P19Vc

why "captain" in quotes?

Because of his dubious actions in contrary to his rank, I imagine? :)

For anyone that hasn't seen it, the Google Maps view of the situation is quite impressive: https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=costa+concordia&data=...

why the hell would they do this at night?

I think it just took long enough and once started they couldn't just pause it overnight.

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