Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Money can do very little here. The problem is, the solution probably requires rather heavy equipment. Like floating cranes to unload the containers or giant excavators. This equipment exists and the costs for doing the operations would be miniscule compared to the costs of the blocked channel. But the problem is moving such equipment to Egypt. These floating cranes might be in the Netherlands right now and the only way to get them to Suez is to drive them there at perhaps 20kph. So it could take like 2 weeks at minimum to get the equipment there. This is a very fundamental problem. Transport by road or railroad still would take like a week but is limited to things which are not much larger than containers and the maximum weight a helicopter can lift is like 10 tons. The largest aircraft can lift over 300 tons but only as long as the freight fits into the aircraft. Oh, and there is only one of it :p. So anything larger has to literally shipped to the location. The only good news is, the site is reachable by oceangoing vessels :)

So there are two fundamental challenges:

- come up with a good plan how to get the ship out of there

- transport the necessary equipment quickly to the site. This step can easily take weeks.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: