Re:Rolls-Royce Drone Ships Challenge $375B Freight Industry
by dalke on Wednesday February 26, 2014 @06:49AM
(#7304299)
First, that's a conjecture. It assumes that uncrewed ships will be safer. (Eg, it may end up colliding into other ships more often.)
Second, you don't know what you are talking about, because there's no way to get "vastly fewer ships".
There are some four million fishing vessels, of which 1.3 million are decked and about 40,000 of them are longer than 24 meters (over 100 tons). These are not going to be uncrewed because we haven't automated fishing.
According to the CIA factbook at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... there are 16,406 vessels in the world's merchant marine. Of those, over 1,722 (I stopped counting at Norway) are passenger or passenger/cargo ships which cannot be uncrewed.
Removing the crew from the 14,000 remaining ships is not going to "vastly" reduce the number of ships with crews that will need to be rescued. It will, on the other hand vastly reduce the number of ships with the capacity to help in an offshore rescue. (A commercial troll vessel with a crew of 4 doesn't have the extra safety equipment that a, say, Handymax bulk carrier carries, and can't handle the same weather conditions.)
Second, you don't know what you are talking about, because there's no way to get "vastly fewer ships".
There are some four million fishing vessels, of which 1.3 million are decked and about 40,000 of them are longer than 24 meters (over 100 tons). These are not going to be uncrewed because we haven't automated fishing.
According to the CIA factbook at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... there are 16,406 vessels in the world's merchant marine. Of those, over 1,722 (I stopped counting at Norway) are passenger or passenger/cargo ships which cannot be uncrewed.
Removing the crew from the 14,000 remaining ships is not going to "vastly" reduce the number of ships with crews that will need to be rescued. It will, on the other hand vastly reduce the number of ships with the capacity to help in an offshore rescue. (A commercial troll vessel with a crew of 4 doesn't have the extra safety equipment that a, say, Handymax bulk carrier carries, and can't handle the same weather conditions.)