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Cruise Ship "Costa Concordia" Salvage Attempt To Go Ahead
dryriver writes "A daring attempt to pull the shipwrecked Costa Concordia upright will go ahead on Monday, Italian officials have confirmed. The Civil Protection agency said the sea and weather conditions were right for the salvage attempt. Engineers have never tried to move such a huge ship so close to land. Thirty-two people died when the cruise ship hit rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio in January 2012. It has been lying on its side ever since. Five people have already been convicted of manslaughter over the disaster, and the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, is currently on trial accused of manslaughter and abandoning ship. The salvage operation is due to begin at 06:00 (04:00 GMT) on Monday, and it is being described as one of the largest and most daunting ever attempted. The head of the operation, Nick Sloane, told AFP news agency that it was now or never for the Costa Concordia, because the hull was gradually weakening and might not survive another winter. Engineers will try to roll the ship up using cables and the weight of water contained in huge metal boxes welded to the ship's sides — a process called parbuckling. This procedure must be done very slowly to prevent further damage to the hull, which has spent more than 18 months partially submerged in 50ft of water and fully exposed to the elements. The salvage project has so far cost more than 600m euros ($800m; £500m) and could cost a lot more by the time the operation is complete."
You can watch the salvage attempt live here: http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/videozone/livestream/MV_LIVESTREAM_CostaConcordiaRechtop
Neither of those were loading for me and/or seemed to be broken. This one works for me...just in case anyone needed more options: http://media.theage.com.au/national/selections/livestream-costa-concordia-salvage-4751321.html
For half that you could have had 100 sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads, they would have been quicker, not to mention more enjoyable to watch.
In many cases broadcasting companies are only allowed to let domestic IPs access the stream even though practically every broadcasting company acquires access to the same stream. Here's one for Finland:
http://areena.yle.fi/tv/2032049
and for Sweden:
http://www.svt.se/nyheter/varlden/bargningen-av-costa-concordia-inleds-pa-morgonen
Why all this effort to refloat her? As has been pointed out, she's been partially and asymmetrically submerged for the better part of two years, surely it'd be easier to just send in the divers with cutting torches or shaped charges, split the hull, and float her off in sections on barges (as they ended up doing with MSC Napoli)?
Is this a dress rehearsal for RMS Titanic? If so, I've got news: she's been under for 101 years, is in far worse condition and is apparently split into at least two sections.
Is there something aboard Costa Concordia that we shouldn't know about? (yes, I'm thinking of a certain book)
Either way, I personally think the only decent thing to do here is to leave her be, apart from draining off any remaining fuel oil, as a marine grave marker, and let the seas reclaim her. What's happening right now is a desecration.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
http://nieuws.vtm.be/buitenland/60408-live-berging-costa-concordia
http://imgur.com/wbgWn
Why are you speaking up now?
I'm sure the bumbling amateurs who are making it up as they go along could have benefited from your vast knowledge and experience if only you'd bothered to share them earlier.
You're a hoarder, that's what you are.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
are merely an extension of the McDuck, et al. sunken vessel refloatation innovation?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Wait it cost 600 million usd so far in salvage without even being rited?? I'm fairly certain I could build a similar ship for less than 800 million..
Any ship aficionados please report in on what will be done with this ship, will it be dry docked and repaired? How much will that cost? Sent to India to be torn down for scrap? How much does it cost to build one of these anyways?
scrapped
Why putting that pile of rusty metal upright?
Can't they just dismantle it piece by piece?
I'm fairly sure the cost of a new ship and the cost of salvage have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It's like saying "Why both removing the tree that fell on my roof? It's cheapest just to plant a new tree!" That's what the Costa Concordia is right now... a tree that fell on the roof. It needs to be chopped up and hauled away for scrap and they're trying to do it without causing more damage to the roof (which is largely the marine environment and tourism in this bad analogy).
I'm interested in seeing this floating unfold.
But, what I'd really like to know/see here on Slashdot is how exactly they are streaming this event on the web. From the cameras in use to the uplinks, to the media server software, to the CDN, everything. Basically a how-to for efficiently and cost effectively broadcasting a HD stream from a remote location to millions of live viewers.
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
I would think that most ships spend most of their lives partially submerged.
Put some fuel back in do you think it would start?
Finland does not have it all. Finland does not have any native armadillos. You lie. Troll.
One of the things about this story that has been driving me crazy is the continual reporting that the ship "weighs" 114,000 tons. It's a big ship, but it isn't THAT big. The 114k number comes from the ship's gross tonnage, which, despite its name, refers to volume, not weight. The Costa Concordia's displacement, which is essentially its weight, is probably around 55,000 tons.
Proverbs 21:19
Doing that in a marine sanctuary would have a significant environmental impact.
That's part of it. The other part is that the ship is on the edge of a slope into deeper water. There was real worry that she'd slide down the slope while passengers were still being evacuated. After that, the big worry was that she'd slide down the slope, break up, and leak bunker oil for years, producing a long-term oil spill. The first phase of salvage (by Smit, the Dutch salvage firm) was to drain the fuel tanks and stabilize the hulk. They did that with few problems.
Then it got political. If Smit had been given the contract to finish the job and get rid of the hulk, it would have been cut up and out of there by now. That was their proposal. But there would have been some medium-term damage to the environment in the area.
Hence the rather elaborate plan currently underway. The ship isn't just being pulled upright. That's not enough; it's full of water and wouldn't float. An underwater platform was built to support it, and it's being pulled onto that. Then it gets re-floated and towed away.
This is probably the most elaborate (in the overkill sense) marine salvage operation since the Army Corps of Engineers removed the wreck of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor in 1911. They built an enormous temporary dam around the entire area. Then they pumped out the entire area around the ship. Then they cut up the wreckage and hauled it out. Then they let the water back in and dismantled the dam.
I feel your analogy would've been improved by making it about cars, rather than a roof.
The ship is now upright. It's not floating; it's sitting on the underwater platform built for it, sunk several decks deep, and still full of water. Next step is to patch the hole in the hull, get pontoons on both sides, and start pumping. Big job, but now a routine one for a salvage company.
At least it's a job in a nice climate, near shore, in a friendly country. Most salvage jobs are in worse places.
So it should be interesting to see how long this takes to change, https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=42.365663,10.919133&spn=0.005026,0.010622&t=h&z=17