OT ship stuck

Those big ships are pigs to drive.

My first closed-loop control system design was the throttle control system for the Avondale LASH ships. I simulated the ship and the control system on a 4K word PDP-8, in FOCAL. 32K horsepower.

Steam flow into the turbines is controlled by the fairly linear mult-section steam valve with a gearhead motor, lead screw, and hydraulic servo.

Steam hits the HP turbine and then the giant LP turbine. The HP makes most of the power and dominates the system moment of inertia.

All that spins the propeller. I assumed that thrust is proportional to the diff between prop speed and hull speed squared.

The hull accerates according to net thrust (prop push minus drag) over mass. Drag goes as hull speed squared, which makes for interesting slo-mo collisions. The reverse turbine is wimpy too.

I used a nonlinear function generator to map throttle position into steam valve position, with a constrained-influence PID loop (throttle setting vs prop tach feedback) added.

It was fun. I went out on sea trials in the Gulf. They gave me my own cabin.

Modern ships are all reversing diesels now. Steam plants are efficient and burn the cheapest fuel, but are complex, and it became hard to find crews to keep them running.

Hydraulic systems move the ruddders too, and they can fail. Losing power or losing steering is troublesome with that much mass in motion.

All those containers stacked up must make a big sail.

I think you give Wikipedia too much credit. I have made many corrections. One in particular was because I read the reference which said exactly the opposite of what Wikipedia said. I made the correction. Sometimes the corrections are removed if an editor doesn't agree with you.

In practice anyone can't really edit it; the bulk of high-traffic articles on the site are jealously guarded by the type of person who strives to become e.g. Wikipedia-master of all articles regarding say the Glorious Revolution in 17th century England and views this as an authority-figure role they're willing to spend their time on, for free.

Lending credence to the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and so do tiny, pitiful amounts of it.

This individual, who normally does aircraft crash investigations, put up some interesting numbers about this incident. For one thing they made a panic bank avoidance maneuver that exacerbated the crash. They have them on the recorder data so there's no denying it. Then they were going way too fast for the conditions which made the crash banking as bad as it could get.

It's a CANAL, an artificial channel, and there's no ROOM in this place for all the bits that would be left... there's no way to move those containers faster than to refloat the hull.

Canal barges were designed for the locks on the Great Lakes, with less clearance than zero...

See pages 54-56 here

Interesting video, except that it is not yet a salvage operation. It is still a rescue operation to free the ship with all cargo intact. Salvage operation is when they take whatever measure necessary to remove it, including dumping cargo containers in the water. At this rate, the cost of keeping the cargo might exceed the "loss of use" claim by the canal and other shippers.

Yet they *still* had to rely on fiddling the figures to get ol' Joe in!

It's not called fiddling (that refers to musical instruments), but 'counting' or 'adding'.

Including Cursitor Doom, pr s he claims.

By which Cursitor Doom means that Wikipedia frequently fails to support the silly ideas to which Cursitor Doom is addicted.

John Larkin, Cursitor Doom, Flyguy and Ed Lee, all experts in the gullible acceptance of implausible information.

The claim that Joe Biden didn't actually get way more votes than Donald Trump, has actually been argued in court, and slung out - rather rudely - as unsupported by any evidence at all, but Ed Lee is gullible enough to still swallow it.

You say that, yet in every case it was those who did not want Joe in office who certified those elections and vote counts.

Hey SL0WMAN, winners like Shrillary NEVER complain about the outcome. OOPS! Shrillary LOST and DID COMPLAIN!!

But she didn't waste any time or money trying to argue fatuous cases in court. Granting what a disaster Trump was - 500,000 Civid-19 deaths and counting - it would clearly have been in the national interest if Trump's tiny margin in the Russian-influenced states that gave him his electoral college margin had been thrown out, but the hopelessly defective US electoral system wasn't set up in away that would have let her do that.

Nah, nah, the canal itself is going to be much wider in that area after we're through with it. That ship is going 3,000 feet in the air and do a jig!

Kaboom!

I don't suggest that Wikipedia is always correct - it is very rare that any single source can be considered entirely accurate. I merely suggest that Wikipedia is, on the whole, pretty good. It suffers less from political or national bias than many other medias, and most (though not all) of the editors are interested in getting as close to "correct" as they reasonably can.

If you want a overview or introduction to a topic, it generally makes a good first point of reference. But that does not mean I think it should be your /only/ point of reference.

In particular, I asked if anyone had found fault in that particular article. It seems no one here has.

Yes, and if any given person is offended by the discussion of a subject, then such discussion must immediately cease.

Not offended, just confused. Just don't see the racist angle of a ship crash.

Hey SL0WMAN, she spent FOUR YEARS arguing to anybody who would listen that the election was stolen from her. She DID provide money to fund that phony Russian "dossier" (really just a bad rumor rag sheet) that resulted in that failed Mueller investigation.