Container Ship Breaks In Two, Sinks 361
Cliff Stoll writes "Along with 7000 containers, ship MOL Comfort broke in half in high seas in the Indian Ocean. The aft section floated for a week, then sank on June 27th. The forward section was towed most of the way to port, but burned and sank on July 10th. This post-panamax ship was 316 meters long and only 5 years old. With a typical value of $40,000 per container (PDF), this amounts to a quarter billion dollar loss. The cause is unknown, but may be structural or perhaps due to overfilled containers that are declared as underweight. Of course, the software used to calculate ship stability relies upon these incorrect physical parameters."
Declared underweight? (Score:5, Interesting)
so they operate on an honor system?
One would think they'd weigh the container themselves and charge accordingly. But then I'm not in the shipping business so I dunno...
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While I agree... I can only imagine the time cost involved in doing so... unless the cranes used for loading have a built in (and very precise) scale that could be used for such purposes.
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How precise does it need to be, I wonder? If the purpose is to avoid having the ship exceed its load specifications, I suspect it wouldn't have to be precise to the ounce.
"And now, one wafer thin mint."
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You mean a strain gauge on the winch? Yeah, NFW anyone could set that up
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Informative)
Many cranes DO have a scale built in. 250,000 Kg capacity accurate to 50Kg. That should do the job.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, +/- 1000 pounds would probably be good enough, and even that might be more sensitive than actually needed. A typical shipping container weighs on the order of ~30,000-50,000 pounds (~15,000-25,000 kg). A ship isn't going to sink because a declared-as-40,000 lb container was actually 40,050 lbs. Even if a company loading 1,000 containers systemically mis-declared by 50 lbs and they all got loaded in some asymmetrical way, that'd still only be a 50,000 lbs error, equal to about one shipping container. A modern cargo ship is not going to sink because of an asymmetric load, or an over-load, equal to one shipping container.
If underdeclaring weight became a stability problem sufficient to sink the ship, my guess is that a substantial number of the containers were reporting numbers way off the real values.
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Residential weight scales, when they're digital, are generally accurate to 1, .5, or .2 pounds. Figuring that people who worry about that are 200 pounds(for ease), that's around .5, .25, .1% margin of error.
A standard 20' container can weigh as much as 53k pounds [wikipedia.org]. 5 pounds for that would be .009% error. Or around 10 times more accurate than the best commonly available bathroom scales.
I'd call that 'precise'. Of course, given industry I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they're accurate to within th
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a 10 lbs (4.5kg) variation is pretty precise on a thing that can weigh up to about 30 ton - that's 0.015 percent - a precision lab scale is typically 0.05 percent precise. Besides the technical implementation of a scale on a crane (something that won't break after being repeatedly strained), even a 300kg precision (1%) would lead to a worst-case scenario deviation of 3500 * 300kg = 1050 ton which is a LOT on a ship.
The only thing I can think of is using some type of solid-state scale on the ship itself but
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Informative)
It was my understanding that the cranes weigh each container as they are loaded on the ship. This is done because they can't afford mistakes in calculating the center of gravity of the ship. There is no honor system.
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What if somebody is bribing the crane operator or whoever collects up all the paperwork? Sadly, in the world of business you have to count on corruption more than not, especially outside the USA.
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How is that any different than in the world of government where the right greased palms can get this project approved or policy approved or killed?
At least with business you can choose who you do business with, not so with government.
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Then they would also have to bribe the captain, because the ship can detect imbalance when adjusting the ballast tanks. And bribe the crane operators at the destination port. And since it is usually country-to-country transport they may have to bribe the customs at the final destination.
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Well, if your software relies on incorrect parameters (as stated in the summary), you wouldn't want to go fixing that.
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so they operate on an honor system?
One would think they'd weigh the container themselves and charge accordingly. But then I'm not in the shipping business so I dunno...
The Maersk EEE class ships can hold roughly 18,000 20-foot containers. Do you think it is practical to weigh all of them?
It is relatively easy to put a load cell on a crane and weigh a container there. One could envision a system where the crane weighed the container and then decided where it should go. However, this is tricky because these ships are usually loaded by many cranes at once and you can't decide that the container is too heavy and should be put in place by a different crane.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You might be able to just put the container away, continue loading and then at the end correct the center of gravity with a container filled with the correct amount of bricks (the idiot who misdeclared the weight was nice enough to leave room on the ship for the brick container).
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Interesting)
A more prone failure point is corruption among the dockyard workers - they get bribed to ignore that a container is overweight. This used to be common at airports before 9/11 and before they started charging for every checked bag. If you had an overweight bag which the airline would charge $75 for, you simply went to curbside checking. Slip the airline employee there a $20 and he'd tag it as if it were a regular bag. I was shocked the first time I saw my uncle do it (for a Delta flight at LAX), but the employee was blase about it as if it were normal. And now that I knew what to look for, I saw it happen several times in the few minutes I was there.
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The Maersk EEE class ships can hold roughly 18,000 20-foot containers. Do you think it is practical to weigh all of them?
Of course it is. They all have to get loaded by crane, so the crane can weigh them all. The crane also knows where it puts the containers, so once the load is complete then the port can spit out a map showing the location and weight of each container (and charge the shipping line for the report, if they want it). It doesn't matter if the ship holds 1,000 containers or 100,000.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps they could paint a line on the side of a large vessel floating in water and see if the containers displace enough water to submerge the line. Oh wait, that's what they do with all container ships. It's impossible for the whole ship to be over weight. It is possible to have a poorly distributed load, but that's not likely to cause the type of accident that happened here (it would more likely lead to capsizing).
Overweight containers are more of a financial issue than a safety issue. Leaving 500 containers on the dock or leaving under-loaded are both bad for business.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they could paint a line on the side of a large vessel floating in water and see if the containers displace enough water to submerge the line.
Eureka!
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Here's a thought experiment for you: Take a humongous cargo ship of some displacement. Now, gather enough shipping containers to achieve a weight close to, but less than that displacement. Now, put one in the center of the ship. Then, stack the rest on directly on top of that. If they don't fall directly through the bottom of the ship, they will break the ship in half. Which is what happened here.
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Even if that was what happened, that has nothing to do with overloading. Verifying container weight wouldn't solve the problem.
BTW, did you even look at the pictures?
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I didn't mention overloading, did I? I specifically stipulated a cargo weight less than the displacement of the ship. In the best case, this arrangement would float just fine.
However, if you don't get the weight distribution right, a safe load becomes unsafe. And, as I said, if the bow and stern both crest on waves, with an improperly loaded ship, the middle could collapse.
Now, I will concede that I didn't look at the pictures before posting. Now that I have, I feel vindicated. Look at those pictures a
Hogging (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks to me more likely the problem was excessive weight at the bow and stern rather then midships, the effect is called hogging and is a known way to snap a container ship (or oil tanker) in half, both have occured in the past.
Basically the keel (The BIG beam running all the way from bow to stern down the bottom of the hull) can only take so much sheer stress and if the weight distribution does not match the localised boyancy implied by the current displacement you can very easily bend the ship.
If and how it came to be loaded that way will be one of the things on the investigators list.
There is of course software used to look at this stuff but it cannot realistically be run on the dock during a very tight turnaround, so the declared weights are used as the only data available in advance of starting loading. Not only does that mess of linear algebra have to give a fully loaded ship with the centre of mass and moment of inertia in the right regions (Important for stability and handling), it must also ensure that the total cargo mass per linear meter is roughly the same as the boyancy of that meter of wetted hull at all times during the loading.
Further shippers will sometimes pay a premium for say not having a can of high value goods put in a corner on top of a stack where it is somewhat more likely to be lost, and some of those cans may be 'reefers' (Refridgerated containers) requiring both power and ventilation to remove waste heat, the problem swiftly becomes complex, doubly so as the ports stacking order also feeds into this if you want loading to go smoothly.
A nasty accident, but nobody died, and the hull and cargo will have been insured, so a better outcome then is sometimes the case.
Hope that explains why it is not just about total weight.
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20 ton metal container floating? i would expect them all to be on the bottom of sea
But that's because you're ignorant of reality, because many containers do in fact float, and are a major hazard to navigation — especially to small craft. They often float in a mostly-submerged state, which makes them nigh-impossible to detect — especially in high seas, when even if you had sonar, it wouldn't actually be able to see it through the troughs.
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That doesn't pass the sniff test: every cargo ship has a built-in way of determining precisely how heavily it's loaded. It consists of a few ounces of paint, and it's called a Plimsoll line...
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These are rather large ships... do we assume they check the line all the way around?
Think of it like Russian roulette... at first glance it seems like your odds are 1 in 6... but with a well-oiled & machined revolver & the mass of the loaded cartridge... the chances of the loaded chamber ending up at 10'o'clock (assuming clockwise rotation) are rather low (not that I suggest trying this)... but still achievable given really bad luck.
Same goes for cargo containers... if the improbable happened and qu
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One would think they'd weigh the container themselves and charge accordingly
One would think the cranes used to load the containers would automatically weigh them, and report that total to the ship. The port could even charge for that service, once loaded the ship receives a layout map of the load with the individual weights and everything.
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Yes... because the shipping company doesn't worry at all about overloaded containers or ships at all.
We'll just ignore the massive costs should go something go wrong that they are oblivious to in your world.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Insightful)
because the shipping company doesn't worry at all about overloaded containers or ships at all.
Why should they? They're insured.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think the customer will be the one to bear the brunt of those costs.
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7000 containers sounds like a real lot, until you put it into perspective. 10,000 containers [mbari.org] get washed overboard annually. Each and every year. And very obviously nobody gives half a shit about it. Losing those 10,000 containers each and every year is apparently still much cheaper than working out something to keep them from going under.
7,000 more is just, well, more cost of operation. That it costed a container ship is unfortunate. For the shipping carrier, that is, but I doubt anyone of those owning the
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Almost as many container as are lost all over the world in an entire year get lost in one incident, and your conclusion is that that is not much?
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Interesting)
But the insurance company needs to prove that first.
Until they cross-reference the claims with shipping weight and account for everything that was supposed to be on-ship, the overweight thing is only allegations.
And frankly, if a ship can be sunk by a few dozens or even a few hundred overweight containers, you have a serious structural or stability problem considering the huge margins that need to be built into ships to accommodate the relentless bending stresses from rolling waves. I would not be surprised if metal fatigue turned out to be the root cause and in that case, overweight containers would merely cause the inevitable to occur sooner.
As far as weight goes, cranes should be monitoring their motor torque (force) and container acceleration when pulling up. This would let them estimate weight somewhat accurately which should prevent major abuse. Since most shipping incidents involving overweight trains/containers have overloads exceeding 100%, +/- 20% accuracy at the crane would already go a long way towards preventing overload-related incidents.
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> Why should they? They're insured.
Wow you're dumb.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't think the insurance company might have a problem with this? If the shipping company was insured, the insurance company will eventually step in and demand the shipping company fix the issue or start denying claims. If the shipping company wasn't insured, well... they end up going out of business. Either way, the problem is self correcting over the long term.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Interesting)
. If the shipping company wasn't insured, well... they end up going out of business.
Wonder the corporate structure of those companies.
Could they run each ship as an independant-but-almost-wholy-owned company and send just that not-quite-subsidary through bankrupcy, pushing the losses to other people? (kinda like the games it seems Cerberus did with GMAC & Chrysler Financial [bloomberg.com] )
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Not sure if you are making a statement or asking a question, so in case of the later:
Yes, that is exactly what they do. A friend of mine works in the industry, managing ships. Ever single ship is legally its own company.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you could stand to learn a lot more about insurance.
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Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Informative)
Moments, how do they work?
If you load the shit out of the topmost containers, it gets tippy as fuck. As an example of "huh", there's a thing that's going on the mast of a ship that I've worked on. The thing doesn't weigh that much -- although it's being loaded by crane, I could lift it by myself.
To compensate, way more ballast than I can lift is going in the hull.
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So... how does that relate to overloading?
I didn't say anything about how this accident was caused, I only responded to someone who implied that shipping companies overload their ships and let the insurance companies cover their asses with a simple fact that it's not possible to get away with putting too much weight on a ship. I have no idea how you came to the conclusion that I don't know the possible problems associated with a poorly distributed load, since that's not what was being discussed.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Informative)
That line doesn't mean shit when the bow and stern are crested across two wave peaks.
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Are you suggesting that the load limit of this vessel was determined by someone who wasn't aware that it might be used in rough water?
Maybe you're saying that the captain was stupid enough to take the vessel into waters it wasn't qualified to be in. In that case, it wasn't an overloading problem, it was an idiot captain problem. The load line still did its job - it wasn't put there to solve every problem.
Several possibilities (Score:5, Interesting)
I can imagine a few other issues:
- load not being consistent from aft to stern
- a rogue wave (though I didn't see any mention of it)
- buoyancy change due to an area of reduced salt density
- a structural defect
There are all sorts of factors and until a complete investigation has been done, we are only dealing with imagined possibilities. In the case of inconclusive evidence, I would imagine proposals for avoiding this in the future would be based on most likely cause?
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No. I'm saying that the 'load line', 'water line', 'plimsoll line' etc. have almost nothing to do with safely loading a ship.
A C-130 cargo plane has a rated capacity of X kg. But you can't put it all in the tail.
Can you now explain to me how, in this case, the 'load line' did its job?
Thanks
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Funny)
Can you now explain to me how, in this case, the 'load line' did its job?
Well, if the load line is horizontal, things are generally OK. If it's vertical like in the pictures, then your ship is probably sinking.
Therefore if the load line reaches vertical you might want to consider taking some action, and certainly not just sailing off.
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Because businesses are run by people, and people aren't rational.
The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars. However, since it's *unlikely* that a ship will sink, people in pursuit of immediate profits overload them. People love playing the odds.
Also, absent any real numbers about how much extra money companies can make by slipping on tons of extra cargo, you can't say for sure that this *isn't* more profitable than doing things safely. T
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Interesting)
The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars.
It is almost certainly the case that the insurance companies already factor in the risk of overloading, because they've been insuring these ships and their cargo for a long time. I don't see anyone suggesting that overloading (or incorrectly loading) ships is something new. The insurance companies are armed with actual numbers that go back literally centuries to the East India Company and so forth.
The ship sank. Its not an indicator of a failure of free market, nor is it an indicator that the insurance company isnt assessing the risks correctly. Its just an indicator that that particular ship at that particular time experienced a structural failure leading to its sinking.
In all likelihood, the amount of oversight, construction rules, and so forth on the shipping industry is already very near optimal from a cost/benefit viewpoint.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I find surprising is that you'd even be able to buy/operate container lift cranes that don't provide feedback on the weight of items they are lifting.
That's a big, expensive, high-throughput, piece of capital equipment; and if it breaks down outside of a scheduled service window, there's a strong possibility that a container port, one or more shipping companies, and whoever owns the stuff in the containers is going to be giving the crane operator, and the poor maintenance minions, hell until it's fixed and the disruption is cleared.
When my $50 POS hard drive is monitoring a dozen-ish variables to try to predict its own death so as to avoid inconveniencing me, I'd have assumed that a container crane would be providing all sorts of feedback on power consumption, motor condition, strain on various important bits of the structure, etc, etc. such that it would be fairly trivial math for the crane operator to automatically compute the approximate weight of each container loaded as they load it.
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to automatically compute the approximate weight of each container loaded as they load it.
They're called load cells, and they're in every modern crane.
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I could not find the story on Wikipedia, but the introduction of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterline] was held back for quite a while due to business interests. The death toll at sea was unbelievable at the time and more often than not it was due to capsizing because of overload (reducing severely the reserve float ability). I remember reading that the special Loyds register of missing vessels used to be filled in years (rather large and thick book) whereas the last one is still in use for decades.
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It's not a theory, is it? That's one hell of an implicit fine - loss of mega-dollar a ship and a mega-dollar cargo.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank you for listing the ways in which self-regulation doesn't work. If it worked, then all those penalties should have been more than enough for them not to be so careless with the ship. The idea of regulation is to prevent problems, not to factor into some after the fact "they'll pay their dues" calculus.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Insightful)
The theory about self-regulation works just fine. It just doesn't stand up so well, when governments step in and bail out the industries and or insurance companies.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Insightful)
The theory about self-regulation works just fine. It just doesn't stand up so well, when governments step in and bail out the industries and or insurance companies.
Then I guess it worked real well in the 19th century, when governments didn't step in and bail out the industries and or insurance companies. Except it didn't.
Oh, I know, I know! It works in the Platonic ideal of a libertarian paradise! To the extent that it doesn't work in our reality, it cannot not mean that there is anything wrong with the theory. Rather it must mean that we've deviated from that ideal world in some way, and must pay for our sins.
Libertarianism: being based on axioms, how can it be wrong?!
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Then I guess it worked real well in the 19th century, when governments didn't step in and bail out the industries and or insurance companies. Except it didn't.
Lloyd's of London worked out fine and they weren't the only successful insurer of that era. What example are you thinking of?
Libertarianism: being based on axioms, how can it be wrong?!
Why single out libertarianism? There's a lot of half-baked ideological crap out there which happens to appear on Slashdot. At least, the various flavors of libertarianism are based on various components like reciprocity, contract law, markets, etc which work in practice even if the whole hasn't been show to do so.
Or for that matter why even post at all? The observation made by the
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Insightful)
A town in Quebec was just last week blown up due to deregulation allowing the railroad to self-regulate. While it's true the railroad will go out of business so will most of the businesses in that town not to mention the 50+ people killed. The businesses depending on the railroad may also go out of business as well.
For some reason people want to have the railroads regulated now.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Informative)
I was referring to the regulations about the number of crew required on a train, specifically the short lines. For short lines the number is now one engineer, no conductor, no brakeman. Having two people in the cab allows them to double check their work, not perfect as a recent plane crash shows but it is more likely that the correct number of hand brakes will be set if two people are double checking their work.
Another recent example was the train bridge collapse outside of Calgary due to the CPR inspectors OKing an old bridge when the water was to high to even consider sending divers in to check the footings. In that case disaster was averted through luck as anything.
The large railways have been pretty good about the self regulation but since the CPR has gotten new management who's priority is higher profits things are going down hill. The experienced workers are being heavily encouraged to retire or being let go and the newer, cheaper workers just don't have the experience and have management breathing down their necks demanding more production. A potential for another large accident due to de-regulation and management that is more interested in bringing up the profits this quarter.
The Mississauga accident seems to have little to do with regulations, just a hot bearing that got too hot.
Re:Declared underweight? (Score:4, Interesting)
Having 2 crew members would have increased the chances the appropriate number of hand brakes were set. Often it is good to have people double checking their work.
Seems that there aren't many regulations on the number of handbrakes that need to be set as well.
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Clearly then the regulations are in error as they are not strict enough! ... or they do not apply to all situations.
I sit here typing this from the state of Washington where we had a bridge collapse due to a truck with a rather large cargo behind traveling over it recently and causing the collapse.
Despite following the regulations related to having a pilot vehicle and setting it's pole to the right height.
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Re:Declared underweight? (Score:5, Informative)
The usual tariff is based on a concept called "weight-measure", which works like this:
- For cargo less dense than water, a given tariff is per cubic meter.
- For cargo denser than water, the tariff is per metric ton (one cubic meter of water weighs one metric ton).
If you think about it, this makes perfect sense, because anything heavier than denser than water has to be accompanied by enough air (i.e. empty space inside or outside the container) to make the average density of the shipment equal one, and anything lighter than water takes up just as much space in the ship as heavier cargo would. The result is that if you have e.g. a 2000 TEU ship, and each TEU is 35 cubic meters, a full ship will always generate 70,000 tariff units, whether it be laden with cotton candy or iron pellets.
Of course, shipping companies play both ends against the middle and can, with optimization, get better than 100% billing (e.g. by using fluffy stuff like household goods to provide the airspace needed to compensate for containers full of car engines).
In a previous incarnation I was a Systems Designer at a major container shipping company.
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silly me hitting preview not post.
I meant to add after the snarky joke: the real reason I come to slashdot is because of comments like the one you wrote.
So do those containers sink or float? (Score:2)
If they are airtight, maybe some could float? If you bump into one of those 7000 while you are out jet skiing, can you take it home as yours? Finders keepers? Or does the shipping company still own the containers?
Re:So do those containers sink or float? (Score:5, Informative)
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But the boat was floating at the time, wasn't it? Try that with a shipping container.
No, wait,... Don't try that with a shipping container. I mean it.
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I doubt many of them will. But you can rest assured that we'll be hearing rare stories of these containers washing up in remote locations all over the world for the next 10 years.
Re:So do those containers sink or float? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some float, some sink. 10000 are lost during normal shipping every year. The ones that float tend to float a few feet under the top of the ocean. Making them extremely hazardous for other marine traffic.
For years they have been trying to get all shipping and container companies to equip the containers with a kind of water permeable valve, but I think last time i read about it there was some resistance. Can't find any good articles about it though. Comes up every few years.
http://webecoist.momtastic.com/2011/04/19/deep-cargo-an-ocean-of-lost-shipping-containers/ [momtastic.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization#Loss_at_sea [wikipedia.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/04/06/0158207/10000-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea-each-year [slashdot.org]
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Containers are built to an ISO standard and a new one can stay afloat for quite a while. After it's been picked up and put down by cranes enough times, well...
Titanic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Together with her sister ships, MOL Comfort was the first container ship classified by Nippon Kaiji Kyokai to utilize ultra high-strength steel with an yield strength of 470 MPa in her hull structure.
Stiff brittle ship snaps like golf club in heavy seas?
It was Kaiju (Score:2, Funny)
Tough ship (Score:2)
After "Breaking in half", the apt part stays up for a week. The forward section stays afloat for over three weeks before it bursts into flames before sinking. Sounds like God wanted that ship sunk.
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When you write it like that... all I can think is, "the first piece sank into the sea. The second piece burned down, fell over, *then* sank into the sea." (If only it had broken into four pieces, it would've worked better. Especially if the fourth piece had made it to shore.)
Re:Tough ship (Score:5, Funny)
The forward section stays afloat for over three weeks before it bursts into flames before sinking.
Was it carrying a 787 as cargo?
Great photos (Score:4, Informative)
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I encourage everyone to click on the first link, there are bunch of great photos, all on one page (no slideshow).
That's how these things reproduce you insensitive clods!
Re:Great photos (Score:5, Interesting)
The opposite is sag, where wave crests support the ends and a trough in the middle leaves the center unsupported.
the front fell off (Score:5, Funny)
Here's one relevant question: (Score:3)
Where was it built?
I have an answer: Not the United States, for we outsourced serious commercial ship building, like most critical industries, to "third world" countries, whose sysyetms aren't as advanced or sophisticated as ours...
Oh wait...wasn't there a fire on the recently overhauled Dreamliner? Wait a second...it's also American built!
Nagasaki, Japan (Score:4, Informative)
According to Wikipedia:
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Nagasaki, Japan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOL_Comfort [wikipedia.org]
So when did Japan become a 3rd world country that lacked advanced and sophisticated systems?
END COMMUNICATION
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It was built in Japan, which has dominated commercial shipbuilding over the past 40 years. It doesn't dominate quite as much anymore, but it still has a large share of the market. It's basically Japan and South Korea building most ships; China is spending massive amounts of money to break into the market, but is still under 10%.
It was a N.Korean Sub! (Score:2)
Aiming at a stationary fishing boat near Sydney, Australia.
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Aiming at a stationary fishing boat near Sydney, Australia.
if that's true, i'd be more worried that North Korea's navy (ahem) apparently has torpedo technology that can hit targets in an entirely different oceanic region.
Arrgh (Score:3)
There goes the package i was waiting on..
Why two? (Score:5, Funny)
Why can't ships break in three or break in four even? I mean really. What ever happened to creative engineering?
Should've just paid the ransom (Score:5, Funny)
I guess the Da Vinci virus wasn't playing around. Bummer.
Container weight? Probably not? (Score:3)
There is an incentive to declare your container overweight, because there is a weight limit for each container. Two containers is more expensive than one, obviously. So you are incentivized to pack your stuff as tightly as possible.
However, there's a limit to how overweight your container can be. The container can hold around 28,000 kg. Its interior dimensions, however, are pretty fixed. How dense can you pack your goods? If you've done any shipping, you know that while you can pack stuff in, there's a point where you'll damage your goods. That's even more applicable for heavy goods, like industrial equipment.
Do they actually use software to place containers? My limited exposure to a container yard says no. They load the boxes on there, and well, where it goes is where it goes.
If it really was due to being overweight, how much overweight would each container have to be to cause the ship to snap in half?
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> Do they actually use software to place containers?
Yes. It is called bay planning software. For larger ocean-crossing ships the process is largely automated, taking into account weight, container type (normal or reefer), dimensions, rules for dangerous goods, etc. For smaller ships (typically feeder ships) the software also has to take into account at which harbor each container will get off in order to minimize the number lifts (rearranging containers to get them out). The software also has to take int
let that be a lesson (Score:3)
Next time, untie the boat from the pier before you give it the gas.
Containers are always overloaded (Score:5, Interesting)
Family friend is a retired truck driver who frequently picked up and delivered containers out of the new jersey ports. One story he told me was he had to pick up a 40 footer and was sent in a single axle tractor. They have scales and you weigh out when you leave the port. He scaled out at almost 90,000 pounds (40,823kg)! For a tractor trailer in the USA, that is 10,000 pounds (4,536kg) overweight. The kicker? The container was supposed to weigh only 40,000 pounds, nearly half of what it weighed. He said they were frequently overweight and it wasn't uncommon for containers to be thousands of pounds over what the paperwork listed.
Bromma has a solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Bromma [bromma.com], which makes the "spreaders" which grab containers at 97 of the top 100 ports, now offers a solution. Their newer spreaders weigh the container as it's being lifted on to or off of the ship. Accuracy is within 1%. The container crane knows where the container is being placed on the ship, so weight and balance information for the whole ship is collected.
It's being installed in Los Angeles now, London next, and can be retrofitted to existing Bromma spreaders. So there's a technical fix to this almost in place.
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You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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News for nerds?
Nautical nerds. Don't you watch SpongeBob?
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently there were no Bitcoin or Raspberry Pi stories to post.
Re: (Score:2)
lol fucking idiots, i hope a lot of people died.
mods, every time you down mod, i will repost.
You show 'em AC. You should try out th e Yahoo comment boards - your kind of folk.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean figure out how much fuel was added to a ship that you just refueled in your harbor? You already have that information.
Still trivial.