I was wrong. They had 90 seconds. There was no way they were not going into the water. Actually less unless they were monitoring police frequencies which they likely were not.
All this talk about how they must have had no safety training is just bashing BS.
From the New York Times - Here is a transcript of audio from a Maryland Transportation Authority Police channel, revealing how officers responded to the mayday call and successfully halted traffic.
1:27:53 a.m. Speaker 1: I need one of you guys on the south side, one of you guys on the north side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge. There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering. So until they get that under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic.
1:28:09 a.m. Speaker 2: (inaudible) I’m en route to the south side.
1:28:13 a.m. Speaker 3: (inaudible) I’m holding traffic now. I was driving but we stopped prior to the bridge, so I’ll have all outer loop traffic stopped.
1:28:25 a.m. Speaker 1: 10-4, is there a crew working on the bridge right now?
1:28:29 a.m. Speaker 4: (inaudible)
1:28:35 a.m. Speaker 1: Got it.
1:28:37 a.m. Speaker 4: Want me to stop traffic along this side right now?
1:28:42 a.m. Speaker 1: Yeah if we could stop traffic, just make sure no one’s on the bridge right now. I’m not sure where there’s a crew up there. You might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we could get them off the bridge temporarily.
1:28:58 a.m. Speaker 4: 10-4, once the other unit gets here I’ll ride up on the bridge. I have all inner loop traffic stopped at this time.
1:29:17 a.m. Speaker 4: Once you get here, I’ll go grab the workers on the Key Bridge and then stop the outer loop.
1:29:27 a.m. Speaker 5: C-13 Dispatch, the whole bridge just fell down! (inaudible), whoever, everybody, the whole bridge just collapsed.
1:29:35 a.m. Speaker 6: 10-4. Dispatch is direct.
1:29:35 a.m. Speaker 4: That’s correct. (inaudible) First time.
1:29:48 a.m. Speaker 1: Do we know if all traffic was stopped?
1:29:51 a.m. Speaker 4: I can’t get to the other side, sir, the bridge is down. We’re going to have to get somebody on the other side in Anne Arundel County, M.S.P. to get up here and stop traffic coming northbound on the Key Bridge.
1:29:51 a.m. Speaker 5: C13, I’m holding all traffic northbound.
And then there's the one I don't understand AT ALL: how the hell do you run a ship this huge with a crew of 23 (the Edmund Fitzgerald had 29), and of those... 10 were officers, and there was one Sri Lankan electrician.
]]>So is mining a harbour, or shooting down a civilian aircraft, or any number of activities that countries have done while insisting that they are entirely in the right and not at war.
Leaving aside the legal definition (which has a loophole big enough to sail a carrier task force through), it comes down to real-politik — is the act serious enough to provoke increased hostilities?
This is asymmetric: acts that powerful countries do regularly would be considered acts of war if targeted against them. So the weak face the task of choosing acts that are serious enough to get attention (and possibly action) without being so serious that they get flattened.
Circling back to my original post, this would make a decent technothriller plot, because the attitudes in technothrillers (at least when I was reading them) were still rooted in the Cold War.
Doesn't have to be official policy, either. How many times has someone here posted comments about something done by an American official only to be told by Americans that that official's actions don't represent the entire country? Politics in the real world is messy. Politics in technothrillers isn't.
Do I believe this was an attack? No, not really. (Even if accidents are increasing, as SFReader wondered about, I think the relentless elimination of safeguards and redundancy in quest of every-higher profits is likely the cause.) But if I was a better writer I would have a Jack Ryan clone discovering and thwarting a plot to cripple the Free World — which would net me enough money that I could hire Charlie to write the third novel in the Halting State trilogy, as well as a sequel to Glasshouse. :-)
]]>The EF was lost 48 years ago. And launched in the later 50s. Long before automation was normal.
Big ships now require someone to read the gauges 24/7, point it where it needs to go, man handle the deck ropes and anchors when needed, and do light repairs to machinery. Those huge single diesel engines are very reliable when maintained. Maybe this one wasn't maintained. Or just had a cylinder rod or fuel line fail at the wrong time in a one in a million thing. We'll know more in a month or so. First they have to untangle the ship, tow it to a dock and unload it.
It is no longer 1975. The huge UF6 gaseous diffusion plant my father spent most of his working days at was designed / built in the early 50. At it's peak it had 2400 workers. When he retired in the 80s it had less than half of that, was more efficient, and produced more product than when the 2400 were there. Much less manual fiddling with valves and controls over the 30 years.
]]>Good point. Thing is, novelizing incitements to WW3 are dangerous right now.
If you want to find a conspiracy, point at the extremist cult of Mammonism, whose drive to fiscalize everything more likely actually contributed to the crash. Maybe have your Jack Ryan clone give them the ISIL treatment.
And, to stop the anti-Semitism that's a fellow-traveler with rich illuminati conspiracy stories, have a plot about how the apocalyptic cult of Mammon has infiltrated and subverted every institution, every religion, music, art, the internet, relationships...It's far worse than even ISIL, because it's so good at forcing everyone to become complicit with it as its basic protection scheme.
]]>GASI == generalized artificial superior intelligence
why build something only as smart as a human? semi-demi-deity would be better especially if it came with mercy, patience and justice
...and was assign monitoring every piece of complex machinery to spot problems prior to epic fails
problem would be in keeping it from getting bored...
if not cat videos what then!?
]]>Good lead for a journalist: find the ship's officer(s) who presented the 'ship's been repaired' papers and the navy officer(s) who checked that the repairs had in fact been done. (Also check their bank transactions.)
Meanwhile ... you're welcome to wade through this 106 page doc to see how Chile is supposed to run their ports. Looking forward to your 8-slide PowerPoint summary presentation. :)
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/docs/ports-policy-review-chile.pdf
]]>$52 million in aid for civilians primarily through legit international aid orgs.
]]>First: All shipping companies have that policy, because all harbors are /very/ corrupt, so revealing anything which could give a corrupt harbor masters any leverage over the ship would become very expensive, very quickly.
Second, as far as I can tell, Mærsk is not in control of this ship: It is not their ship, it is not their crew, it is not their captain.
That's not to say that Mærsk's performance concerns will not have had (undue) influence, I'm sure there are very tangible economic incentives involved, but the blame lies with the company in control of the ship, and that does not seem to be Mærsk.
]]>Wonder if that's in response to their increased mining*. Their geography - 4,000 mile long coastline vs. 61 mile depth into the Andes - complicates logistics.
The Chilean gov't is explicitly pursuing open-market policies - ports are considered part of the 'export' industry therefore most are privately owned and operated. BTW - there's some mention about increasing rail.
https://boris.unibe.ch/97919/1/working_paper_no_14_2016_garcia_and_quindimil.pdf
*The only Chilean products I'm familiar with are wines. :)
]]>an unnecessary allocation of resources not used oft... maybe once every three years for heavy driving along poorly maintained roads... with most drivers never ever using it in ten years
but...
you want one... the sense of having a 'margin of safety' and some control over your fate
problem has been megacorps having their own agenda have whittled away at those things that provide a 'margin of safety' and not just those 'donut spares' now standard in most cars
by reducing the numbers of quality assurance checks and eliminating inventory of spare parts idling in warehouses and firing anyone too focused upon detailed inspections it is possible to lower costs... increase profits... and much of that newly sourced profit ends up as executive bonuses
so long as nobody important dies, there will be executives at every megacorp urging the narrowing of every 'margin of safety'
problem?
we are all important
]]>Nope. It is all about meeting CAFE standards for MPG. If the "standard" package doesn't have an extra 30 pounds then it adds a fraction to the MPG rating. For most cars you can buy it as an option.
And to be honest, modern tubeless tires don't go flat all that often. AAA is a better investment.
I know a bit about this. I've manually changed tires on rims (what fun), spent a summer in a tire store with the special machine. And dealt with flats in all kinds of odd spaces. Water filled tires in fields for one. I've changed a tire once on my passenger things in the last 20 years. I curbed a truck tire and 99% of the people in the US would NOT have been able to change it. For various reasons.
]]>