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Re:Is that ship still stuck? by leesec on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:52PM (#26585916)
Dumb question but what about heavy lift helicopters moving containers off 1 by 1?
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by blhack on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:59PM (#26586019)
There are 20,000 containers on the ship. Assuming you needed to remove 1/4 of those containers to get it to rise far enough to get off of the sand, you need to move 5000 containers.

Assume that it takes 5 minute to connect a bridle to a container, hook it to a helicopter, and move it...and then also assume that the helicopters can run 24/7 and never have to refuel, that they can hot swap in pilots, and that there is never a single problem, you're talking about 25000 minutes, or about 17 days of absolutely non stop running helicopters.

And that only gets you 1/4 of the containers, and it might not even work at all.

(It's not a dumb question, and I'm sure that it was already discussed by the team who is dealing with this. It's just that the scale of what is happening here is restrictive.)

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by bkor on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:37PM (#26586499)
Just a small correction: 20.000 TEU is not the same as the amount of containers. TEU is the number of twenty foot equivalent. There will be enough 40 foot containers on there. If it was going to Europe there will hardly be any empty containers.

Amount of actual containers is probably the 20.000 divided by 1.6 or so, though it's not a given that any vessel is fully loaded to max capacity. Sometimes need to deal with restrictions.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by Alupis on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:35PM (#26587534)
The weight is more of an issue. Heavy lift helis cannot lift a fully loaded 20ft container (weighing up to 67,000lbs), let alone a 40 footer.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by souprock on Friday March 26, 2021 @04:41AM (#26589958)
"up to"

Those heavy ones would be evenly distributed in the bottom of the hold, down below the water line. Low-weight ones are on top, for ship stability.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by gizmo385 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:00PM (#26586041)
You'd also need a helicopter than can lift containers that heavy, which might be a long shot.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by kergonath on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:30PM (#26586428)
We really are bad at dealing with large numbers. 20 000 does not seem that much when it’s just written that way. Even looking at the pictures, this is a lot of containers, but the efforts needed to get them out of that ship are hard to imagine.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by neogodless on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:29PM (#26587868)
Just going off "count the candy in the jar" math from this image: https://static.vesselfinder.net/ship-photo/9811000-353136000...?

It appears to be roughly 7 x 20 x 25 containers, or 3500... (height x width x length.)

EDIT: Freezing this video I got a better view of how it's stacked today. I'm sure this is imperfect, like I said trying to count candy in a jar. But I'm curious what the real number of containers is!

H X W X L

10 X 23 X 25 ~= 5750

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-suezcanal-ship/beac...

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by mattashii on Friday March 26, 2021 @03:50AM (#26589693)
Your height number is off by a factor of 2; a significant factor of container storage on these large container ships is below the deck. It isn't uncommon for these large ships to have 9 to 12 containers stacked on top of eachother before the stack reaches above the deck and becomes visible from the side.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by KptMarchewa on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:32PM (#26587890)
The ship is 400 meters long, you can take off multiple containers in parallel along the ship. I'd guess 4 at once.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nullsense on Friday March 26, 2021 @02:01AM (#26589171)
Multithreading!
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by mark_mart on Thursday March 25, 2021 @10:18PM (#26588148)
Don't forget that you need to put containers back. Same or more effort needed.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by lolc on Friday March 26, 2021 @04:22AM (#26589866)
They don't have to put them back.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by jeffgreco on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:29PM (#26586413)
How many copters are you assuming?
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by WJW on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:59PM (#26586028)
Most heavy lift helicopters don't really go above 20 tons takeoff weight, while even a 20 foot container has a max allowable weight well above that. Most shipping containers will the 40 footers, so helicopters will probably be a no-go. There's also 20k of them so it would take quite a while.

That said, taking off some containers is a viable option but it'll probably have to wait for a crane ship to arrive.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by 6nf on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:57PM (#26585991)
The biggest choppers in the world can only lift about 20 tonnes. 20 foot containers max gross is 25 tonnes, and 40 foot containers even more.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by gm3dmo on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:00PM (#26586043)
Typically an empty 20 foot shipping container weighs between 1.8-2.2 metric tonnes (about 3,970 - 4,850 lb) and an empty 40 foot shipping container weighs 3.8 - 4.2 tonne (8,340 - 9,260 lb) depending on what kind of container it is. For example, high cube containers tend to be heavier.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by blhack on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:08PM (#26586143)
Why would these containers be empty?
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by eCa on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:17PM (#26586257)
Yes, especially with the container shortage[1] reported earlier this week, I would be very surprised if empty containers are being sent away from where there already is a shortage.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574077

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by rjsw on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:11PM (#26587764)
They might be empty if it had been going the other way through the canal.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by gizmo385 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:56PM (#26585976)
Based on the information on Wikipedia, it sounds like the ship could potentially hold more than 20,000 containers. Assuming I'm understanding the article correctly, that'd be a lot of containers to move 1-by-1.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by ceejayoz on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:56PM (#26585987)
If it's fully loaded, that'd be something like ten thousand 40' containers to move.

Hooking them up to a helicopter would be a slow, dangerous process as well.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by michaelt on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:28PM (#26586409)
It has 20,000 TEUs (twenty-foot-container-equivalent-units).

Weight-wise, the average container could be lifted with a military heavy lift helicopter: The ship carries 20,000 tons, i.e. 1 ton per TEU, and a CH-47F can lift 11 tons. Although a TEU can weigh up to 26 tons, so you couldn't lift the heaviest ones.

The problem is speed: A ship-to-shore crane at a properly equipped port can do a lift every 2 minutes. Ports can speed things up by lifting several TEUs in a single lift - but you'd also expect a helicopter to be slower, because we haven't put decades of optimisation into the process. So let's assume those cancel each other out.

If they can keep up that rate with a helicopter, and they operate 24 hours a day, it would take 28 days to unload the ship.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by KptMarchewa on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:34PM (#26587902)
Why is everyone assuming that we can do only one container at once? The ship is long, at least few can be done in parallel.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by michaelt on Friday March 26, 2021 @05:37AM (#26590227)
Outside of Vietnam war movies, it's very unusual to see helicopters flying in close proximity.

I suppose it's possible you could find a bunch of pilots confident in cargo handling, landing on ships, and close formation flight all at once. Or that the ship is large enough the helicopters would practically be independent of one another?

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by faldstool on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:53PM (#26588007)
Containers are apparently quite heavy. No helicopter currently in production can lift the weight of a fully loaded container on its own. https://www.aerotime.aero/27542-Could-helicopters-solve-the-...
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by BrianOnHN on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:54PM (#26585957)
It's a lot of containers.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by leesec on Thursday March 25, 2021 @05:58PM (#26586013)
You don't need to remove all of them? Just get it light enough to float it?
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by PeterisP on Friday March 26, 2021 @08:15AM (#26591132)
Removing 10% of containers by helicopter also would take unreasonable time, removing 1% of containers might be plausible but I don't think it would make enough of a difference to justify the risks.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by BrianOnHN on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:05PM (#26586105)
Helicopters also have limited capacity. So it's not like you could pick up the heaviest first. Which brings back the issue of sheer quantity.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by cozzyd on Thursday March 25, 2021 @11:31PM (#26588495)
docker-compose down ?
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by londons_explore on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:03PM (#26586071)
it's a quarter mile long. You can probably have 10 helicopters working at once while still keeping safe distances.

Each helicopter has a crew of 4 on the boat and 4 on the shore. They hook 4 chains to the 4 corner hoists of each container. Say it takes 1 minutes per container to affix the chains, 1 minute to fly to the sand, 1 minute to unhitch, and 1 minute to fly back. Thats a lot slower than agricultural helicopters, but nobody will be very practiced with this yet, so it'll be slower.

The entire ship could be unloaded with this method in 5.5 days. Perhaps less if not all the cargo needs unloading.

The job could be half done by now...

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by yongjik on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:17PM (#26586260)
You're joking, right? It's a quarter mile, or 400m long. Ten helicopters in it means ~40m distance. That's less than safe distance between cars in a highway.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by totalZero on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:49PM (#26586618)
You're assuming that the helicopters approach simultaneously instead of staggering themselves out.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by dghlsakjg on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:19PM (#26586289)
The worlds highest capacity heavy lift chopper (M-26, of which there are 20 operational) has a max take off weight of 44k lbs. A standard 40 ft. container can be loaded to a gross weight of 66k lbs.

It takes a purpose built crane a few minutes to unload a container, so I sort of doubt a helicopter could make it happen faster.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by zokier on Thursday March 25, 2021 @07:16PM (#26586859)
Mi-26 has record of 56 tons lifted: https://www.fai.org/record/2174

Although I suspect you don't want to repeat that trick too many times without serious inspection/maintenance.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by orwin on Saturday March 27, 2021 @02:57PM (#26604534)
Well, 56 tons in cold Russia is not AT ALL the same thing as 56 tons in Egypt. Maybe if you wait for winter?
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by sudosysgen on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:51PM (#26587646)
The Mi-26 is still in production, so you could replace them with brand new ones outright.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by spookthesunset on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:20PM (#26586309)
A quarter of a mile long is a huge ship. Damn. Never really got that until now.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by mahathu on Thursday March 25, 2021 @07:21PM (#26586911)
Coincidentally a quarter of a mile (400m) is also the length of those oval tracks around soccer fields in Europe. we used to run on them a lot in PE back in high school.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by umanwizard on Friday March 26, 2021 @09:01AM (#26591601)
Same in the US for the tracks surrounding football fields (and soccer fields too, for that matter).
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by kergonath on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:33PM (#26586452)
It’s really tall as well. You can’t take any quickly assembled crane to unload that.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by cm2012 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @11:29PM (#26588485)
About the height of the empire state building
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by JoeAltmaier on Thursday March 25, 2021 @06:22PM (#26586335)
Or, depending on how quick it really is, it could take months. Its easy to arm-chair speculate.