Re:Is It Possible to Build an "Unsinkable" Ship?
by hef19898 on Monday April 16, 2012 @05:48AM
(#3846686)
Baseline for me is, the Titanic was built in 1912 to the standards they had back then (afaik even the insufficient number of live boats was accepted then), SOLAS was aresult of that disaster.
Imagine the Costa Concordia would have been lost not at shore but at high sea, the same result.
What happened in both cases, or is currently happening, is a review design and operating guidelines, which is good. And double-hules are still not common place, even today.
And yes, after all it has been, is and will most likely be for quite a long time about the trade off between safety and profitability.
Extending the watertight compartments up into the ship makes passenger movement much harder; a killer for a ship built around luxury.
The double hull would have added a lot of weight to the ship. Titanic's sister ship Britannic required a bigger engine to maintain the same speed and was less economical as a result. Titanic was expected to perform weekly Atlantic crossing over a very long lifetime and the cost would have been substantial.