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Re:Is that ship still stuck? by xg15 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:38PM (#26587556)
Dumb question: How about evacuating and then blowing up the ship?

Yes, the loss of the ship and all its cargo will be immense, but that seems to be dwarfed by the damage the blocked canal causes.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by dragontamer on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:39PM (#26587558)
Then how do you clean up 220,000 tons of debris?

Turns out: the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out. And its already packed and loaded.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by xg15 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:45PM (#26587600)
I mean, the 220,000 tons of debris are at least not a single solid object - so maybe they'd be moved by the current (if there is any) or could be pushed to the sides by smaller vessels. Then the actual cleanup can happen while the canal is already back in operation.

> the container ship __itself__ is the easiest way to move all of that debris out.

Well, evidently not if it is stuck.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by Denvercoder9 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:54PM (#26587671)
You'd need a nuclear-level explosion to blow this ship up into small, practically movable pieces that aren't connected anymore. Everything on that ship is steel. Conventional explosions would just blow a few holes in it, and deform everything enough that moving things becomes impossible.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by xg15 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:02PM (#26587724)
> You'd need a nuclear-level explosion

Yup.

...I mean, come on. After the last five years, it wouldn't even be the craziest thing to happen.

I admit, fallout could be a problem though, especially with all the other ships in close proximity.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by dragontamer on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:40PM (#26587931)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

A nuclear explosion probably would damage the canal itself. But its said that USS LSM-60's pieces were never found again...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_LSM-60

Just 170 yards away was USS Arkansas, a battleship. The hull mostly survived (though was deformed and melted).

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by YarickR2 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:53PM (#26588006)
Build a huge cover all around the ship, plant the nuke under the keel, boom we have a splash and the ship evaporates , canal is deeper and wider there
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nomy99 on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:58PM (#26587698)
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nwallin on Thursday March 25, 2021 @11:49PM (#26588574)
Won't work. Thermobaric weapons are very good at killing people, and breaking equipment, but aren't particularly good at evacuating material.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nomy99 on Friday March 26, 2021 @12:13AM (#26588677)
I was going by the amount of tnt/bomb payload. It’s about 44 tonnes of tnt.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nwallin on Friday March 26, 2021 @01:05AM (#26588912)
Yup, I get it. The energy released by a thermobaric weapon is spread out over a very, very large distance. Inside the blast, people will be killed and equipment will be rendered interoperable by the extreme temperature and the over pressure. Outside the blast you have a very strong (but subsonic) blast wave. But inside the blast, the pressure will envelope stuff, and push on it from both sides. With regards to blasting away a very large ship, thermobaric weapons are not particularly effective.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nomy99 on Friday March 26, 2021 @11:59PM (#26599793)
I understand that it’s not the ideal bomb, but it’s the strongest non nuclear option. Enough of these bombs could disappear the ship and the debris
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by tesseract on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:07PM (#26587741)
A pile of steel that used to be a ship, won't float anymore. It would have to get dredged out of the canal piece by piece.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by VRay on Thursday March 25, 2021 @09:00PM (#26587708)
you just have to blow it up REALLY HARD

Like that old Mythbusters episode where they blow up a car twice

I think the Earth could use just ONE MORE nuclear crater..

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by nwallin on Thursday March 25, 2021 @11:43PM (#26588541)
I think you've overestimating how much stuff an explosion removes, as opposed to breaks. Explosions are very good at making a functional thing not function anymore, but they're not as good as you think they are at evacuating an area.

Look at the aftermath of the Beirut explosion. The metal frame of the building the explosion happened in is still lying there.

The blast radius of an explosion scales with the cube root of the energy of the explosion. So if you want to make the hole twice as big, you need eight times as much explosives. To create a hole the size of a large container ship, you'll need a nuke. A pretty big one too. The Ever Given is 400m long, the crater left by the Trinity test (22kt) was 390m across.

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by malwarebytess on Friday March 26, 2021 @12:04AM (#26588634)
Why not use a nuke?

Modern weapons can be very clean. :]

Re:Is that ship still stuck? by fogihujy on Friday March 26, 2021 @07:06AM (#26590676)
Because you still need to use the canal afterwards. And you need to convince the crews of the ships that the radiation won't be a problem. And the authorities of the ports they go to. And so on.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by rsj_hn on Friday March 26, 2021 @02:52AM (#26589432)
If Elon Musk solves this with some combination of space gadgetry and boring machines, we're going to have to declare him Earth Emperor.
Re:Is that ship still stuck? by Aperocky on Thursday March 25, 2021 @08:41PM (#26587566)
The wreck would continue to sit in the canal...