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2024-03-26 09:50 by Karl Denninger
in Flash , 7739 references
[Comments enabled]  

The Key Bridge in Maryland was struck overnight by a container ship and has collapsed.

There are plenty of people raising various arguments like "deliberate" or similar.  Observing the video in that link its pretty clear that's BS.

The ship visibly loses electrical power (all the lights go out) just after the video starts, regains it briefly, you can see them attempt to go "full power" and then they lose electrical power again -- although by that point they're doomed.

Rudder authority on ships is to a huge degree generated by the prop wash -- which is in front of the rudder.  The wind was coming across the bay last night and you can see the boat yaw as soon as power is lost.  With a huge amount of windage due to the containers up above the deck the rudder authority under power is what's keeping you pointing the right way and when you lose the screw nearly all of that rudder authority disappears.

You're not stopping a ship like that in a short distance no matter what you do.  I don't know what the harbor pilot(s) (who I presume were on board as that is required in such locations) commanded when the power came back up on the main (which you can clearly see as the stack blasts black smoke; they went to full power) but I doubt there was anything that could be done to prevent the impact given the close quarter situation when they lost electrical and, in all probability, both propulsion and rudder.

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