September 6, 2007: World's largest cargo ship
 

http://cellar.org/2007/cargoship1.jpg

xoB sends along this item with the following details:

http://cellar.org/2007/cargoship2.jpg

Wow: it takes 13 people to transport 15,000 shipping containers? Quite low operating costs other than the fuel, I suppose, then. I guess if you were an accountant you could figure out the sunk costs, and then how much it would cost if it were sunk.

What would the engine for this beast look like? We've already covered that. Looking at the specs, 14 cylinder, 110,000 HP, that engine is the one powering this big-ass ship.

http://cellar.org/2007/cargoship3.jpg

What ports are able to accommodate this vessel?

Something about those pics just doesn't seem right. Is it just the sheer size that makes me think it looks shopped? I assume it isn't, because what would be the point, but the turquoise seems too bright for the rest of the pics, especially in the first one. In the second one the edges seem to have a black line around them too.

Only 13 people on a ship that size -you could avoid seeing another person for days!

13 men and a ten story building for a command tower?

How much does it have to suck when you are the bottom six guys on the totem pole and the captain says, "You six, you don't get your own floor of the tower, you have to share."

I read they are planning to build 5 more just like it.

It's brand new. you expect to see rust around the edges, maybe? that's what struck me....too clean and crisp.

Can someone exstrapolate, if it was filled with IKEA furniture, how long would it take one guy to put it all together?

Either it's not brand new, it was brand new when they toke the picture, that silicone stuff really hold up, the Sept. 8, 2006 date for the first trip is wrong, or it's also a time machine.

If they shipwrecked on Gilligan's island, ....

OH, YEAH! it's 2007 now.

holiday weeks always fuck up my calendar.

I was going to ask what was inside, but now I know...its all engine and fuel tanks.

Very impressive. But what happens if Al Gore decides it's causing global warming?

Wow, fantastic pics!!

I posted about the ship a while back:

A big ship like that will consume less fuel per unit transported than a smaller one. Especially with a brand-new engine and silicone paint. The less fuel it burns, the less CO2 it'll push into the atmosphere.

Yeah and 10,000 containers are lost overboard every year.. Now more can be lost!

Wow, yikes!

They'll probably start searching it for WMD. They'll send in the troops. It could take months. Maybe Osama is holed up in there -has anyone checked?

Why is it riding so high in the water in the last pic? I would think it would flip over in heavy seas that way.

Looks like it's been partially unloaded.

Not sure how big that is in relation to a aircraft carrier but I have heard it said boats that big don't even feel waves. It would take a hurricane to make a person on deck feel any motion at all.

Here is the size dimensions of the Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier if someone can interpete the strange notation the Navy uses for size. If that is feet then that cargo ship is bigger.


USS RONALD REAGAN (CVN-76)
Specifications
Class: NIMITZ

As built: Displacement: 77,600+ tons (98,235+ fl) — Dimensions: 1,040' wl (1,092' oa) x 134' (252' fd) x 37' / 317 wl (332.8 oa) x 40.8 (76.8 fd) x 11.3 meters

Cost
 

Hard to believe but it actually costs less to transport a container from China to Europe on the ship (which will be one of the ships probable routes) which is around 6000 miles than to transport it from the port where the ship arrives to it's final destination which is generally less that 50 to 60 miles

Dave

Cruise speed-31 mph?? Jeez, you could ski behind that behemoth. Also, you don't usually see such a yacht-like pointy nose on a container vessel. It would make the Sultan of Brunei a nice little yacht conversion don't you think?

For a sense of scale, look at the Emma Maersk docked next to a normal sized container ship.

That's only above the water line, though. Below the laden water line they could rent rooms in the nose.

It looks like a flat, fin-like projection to me. Especially in glatt's post, two up.

Flat? Do you mean narrow? It's narrow compared to the size of the ship, but still huge. Look at the width in Gravdigr's picture compared to the other boats.

I realize it's probably the width of a house, but it still qualifies as "pointy" as a feature on that particular ship.

I'll grant you that.

Oh thank you, my generous master.

It'd be a pretty wet place to live...in that pointy bit.

Anybody know what that pointy bit does? Why do modern ships have them? Seems counterintuitive. You would think a knife edge would slice through the water better and offer less resistance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbous_bow

Cool. Thanks for coming out of lurk mode to post that link. I wonder how the first people to build one thought of doing it? It seems like nobody understood how they worked until a few decades after they started making them.

This is the Jap Battleship Yamamoto, with it's 18 inch guns, sunk in 1945. I don't know why they were using a small bulbous bow, 40 years before the effects on speed and efficiency were really understood. Maybe for ramming whales.

Does that work for whales too? Because thats what I thought of when I saw this pic:

are we back to whale penis?