Here is a link to another post with an article.
I feel like the whole thing shouldn’t have come down as easy as it did…
Edit: Nevermind, I didn’t realize how large this ship actually is.
I don’t think integrity after getting a support annihilated by a massive ship is a reasonable design objective. You’d need way more supports and structure, at least doubling the weight and cost of the structure, I’d guess maybe 4x. As far as stress tests go, getting one of your two supports knocked out is an extremely stressing condition.
I learned recently that in engineering there’s a saying that anyone can build a bridge that will stand, but only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands.
Which seems dark, but bridges are built on budgets while adhering to aesthetic, material, and site/traffic (on, under, and sometimes over) requirements.
And besides, that ship was between 210 to 257 million pounds, traveling at whatever speed it was going. I’m not a physicist, but I recon that’s enough force to knock down a bridge. (As evidenced.)
Even moving very slowly, that’s a hell of a lot of force exerted on something designed to take a sideways load caused by, at most, wind.
Lights on boat began to flicker before incident, suggesting some sort of power failure. Steering a full size car without power steering is possible, but spoiler, steering a huge container ship ain’t.
Someone commented that exhaust increased noticably as well, possibly because pilot put ship in reverse after losing power (with prop walk veering the ship into the support).
All just people talking on the Internet at present, but “asleep at the wheel” isn’t necessarily what happened.
Given how “easily” the bridge fell… Why aren’t ships that size required to 100% be escorted by tugs???
At the risk of sounding too Clarke and Dawe, it is very rare that a ship loses power and control, and somewhere it could hit something important, and hits that thing, and the thing is apparently so fragile that it just falls to pieces. It’s been there for 46 years, and the Port of Baltimore currently sees an average of 53 ships in and out per month, so about 3.5 big ships under the bridge per day. That’s a lot of passages over the years without incident.
and the thing is apparently so fragile that it just falls to pieces.
I mean, it just got hit with a hundred thousand ton hammer. That’ll do a pretty good number on most structures, I imagine.
