Key Bridge in Baltimore collapses after being hit by a container ship

Thats why i think they had started their turn just before the power failure, on a boat of that size and weight it takes time for the rudder to have an effect and equally so it takes time for an adjust back to centre to change the course so the power going out when it did meant that when they were meant to being centreing the steering again they had no control so the turn went on longer than it should and left them on course with the bridge pylon.

It makes a certain amount of sense that powering the engines to make that desired slight turn is exactly when the failure occurred. Like a bulb blowing when you turn the light on, things usually break when you use them.

Power engines for slight turn, systems fail, now you can't stop and the slight turn becomes a large turn.

National roads would be far more comparable... Major port for the region, takes huge car traffic ordinarily I imagine including trucks.

Saw a new report this morning that they dropped their anchor when the power failed, if they dropped starboard side then that could also be what caused the turn.

He should have at least tried

Unless I’m mistaken emergency power would only cover nav lights, radar, radio, living spaces, heating, etc. not provide sufficient power for the boats drive system. The only way you’re turning those massive screws is with direct engine drive.

i remember reading somewhere years ago that a fully laden supertanker travelling at full speed would take 16 miles to come to a complete stop in the event of power failure.

I know this ship wasn't travelling at full speed but that gives some idea of the type of momentum and energy that these ships have

Backup generators would probably just power electrical stuff I guess? Without the main diesel engines running the ship was adrift.

Hard to know if dropping the anchor helped or hindered. These big ships normally have multiple anchors I wonder were they all deployed?

Hindsight and all that, but you'd wonder why ships are even allowed get alongside the main bridge support pillars. They all seem to have a pier or buffer directly in front. But it seems it makes more sense to have a number of buffers parallel to the direction of travel and centred away from the main bridge supports. But it doesn't seem to be the done thing.

True, I'm sure there's a reason, and they could effect flow and cause silting of river bed. Although unfortunately it could be as simple as cost savings and not deemed a big enough risk before yesterday's tragedy.

Biden urged the federal govt to front 100% of the funds to replace the bridge ASAP. Congress would have to appropriate afaik. Getting insurers etc to pony up could be a protracted process with no ETR.

In all likelihood it’s going to face a culture war from the right (who didn’t make a peep out of line when Biden pledged 100% of the costs to florida to recover from an apartment complex collapse in 2021), the right has already been calling the bridge disaster a product of “DEI” “wokeness” “open borders”, attacking the “DEI Mayor” ie. Black mayor of Baltimore, etc etc.

I’d say the bridge did most of the stopping.

LOL won't it just stop people from getting their cheap Chinese crap, same as you said about the Red Sea?

Or is it different when it's America being inconvenienced?

Pity about the people who died of course, but there's that risk with ships being bombed in the Red Sea too, and you didn't have a problem with that.

I'm sure this was an attempt at some kind of gotcha but unlike the Red Sea, the US east coast is the exclusive remit of the United States. The Red Sea is international waters. So as a gotcha, this falls incredibly flat. Baltimore harbor is well inside our exclusive zone.

If Europeans want their goods to flow safely and reliably through the red sea, perhaps they can defend it their damn selves, instead of relying on my taxdollars all the time to do so, for cargo ships which don't even fly US flags but flags of convenience. But as your post alludes, there's already a thread for that where you can leave your diatribe.

It was also much shorter, 1.6 miles vs. 28.3 miles (with multiple access points for the latter). Hard to directly compare an entire city's bypass to a single bridge.

I only traveled through Baltimore on my way to Maine the one time, over 10 years ago, couldn't tell you anymore if we took the francis scott bridge or the toll tunnel or Ft. McHenry, but pretty sure one of the latter because the FSB snakes a while before returning to I95.

LOL different point though. If you agree that marine traffic to/from the US being blocked is as important - or not - as traffic through the Red Sea to Europe, that's fine. It's just you came across as rather glad that European populations were going to lose out, and that it was all only "cheap Chinese ****" anyway, and never mind if sailors from poor countries died - so I think you should take the same approach when it's the place you live in.

Unsurprisingly though, you haven't. But I notice you were as quick as Donald Trump to forget America's role in the shitstorm that is the middle east, though even he hasn't yet tried to blame the Irish for it.

They let go the port anchor, in the hope of turning the vessel to port.

At the speed that they were doing and the proximity to the bridge it's unlikely that it would achieve much. It's more of a Hail Mary move.

Ships need a bit of work to keep them on one heading(keep them going straight). They'll usually want to turn one way or the other.

When a ship like this blackout, it's rudder is stuck in the position it was in when the power went. So unless the rudder was midships (centred as you call) it's going to keep turning.

When the emergency generator was up and running and feeding power to the ships steering gear they would have been able to steer again. Although with the engines not running the steering won't be as effective. And it will be slower to respond as only one steering pump would be running.

Then you have the wind, current and tides acting on the ship as well possibly making the situation worse.

Hope that explanation makes sense.

A rudder without power/hydrodynamic pressure, is next to useless. The ship was already moving quite slow. And those big cargo rudders work mainly by deflecting the power directly coming from the screws. At best it could have a marginal effect on spinning the ship's mass without power to the drive, but that would only affect which end of the ship hits whatever the center of mass is already headed toward. For those speeds and that relative mass and size, the direction it's pointed is not going to have the dominating influence on where the ship goes, not without engine power to forward/reverse.