
Building the Largest Ship in the World - taytus
http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/building-largest-ship-world-south-korea/
======
Already__Taken
20, they ordered 20 of them.

I'm just in awe of such a thing, who even gets to make that phone call "Yep,
well take 20". I imagine the amount of people involved in such an undertaking
dwarfs a few entire industries.

~~~
funkyy
When I was contracting for some undisclosed financial company in Ireland I was
doing some work around the building and one evening I was said there will be
Director coming from a meeting, so I should be around to open doors for him (I
was only in the whole office atm) - the guy was pretty happy about deal so he
started talking that he just made a deal for delivery of fleet of lease planes
to some airline in EU. When I said the team must be really happy, he answered
it is his own project, only few people in office knew about it.

This illustrated to me that directors of finance companies can make multi
billion deals and yet only few people knew about it... There was no teams
working on it, bunch of risk management people trying to figure if this is
worth it. Just one guy encouraged by few of his employees...

~~~
notahacker
One of the major reasons why the finance industry works such ridiculously long
hours is that small, arguably-understaffed teams are better at keeping secrets
and maintaining client relationships and more easily held accountable for
their errors.

Aircraft leasing is a well-defined, finite market with most of the commonly-
leased aircraft types having well-understood risk characteristics, and the
lessors can and invariably do buy reputable independent opinions on market
lease rates, residual values and empirical data on market activity (they can
buy them by contacting me, actually :-) ) In many respects it's more risky to
throw a large team at building a model to come up with a contrarian view.

Needless to say, the airline will throw far more people at trying to ensure
they can keep up with the lease repayments and bills from actually operating
the aircraft and there are quite a few lawyers and technical consultants
involved in the final signoff and aircraft redelivery. Similarly, some teams
involved in supply chain management and business development at Maersk must
have spent a vast amount of time figuring out the logistics of filling larger
ships in future, which based on how little time the last generation of
"biggest ships ever" stayed in service is a much bigger gamble than most
airlines will ever make.

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jsdir
What a massive project. The images remind me of Shell's construction of the
Prelude FLNG at Korea's Samsung shipyards a couple years ago.[1][2] Regarding
the Prelude, it's interesting to see the ways in which the industry values
operations and processing performed on-site rather than on land.

[1]: [http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/major-
projects-2/prel...](http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/major-
projects-2/prelude-flng.html)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660isW3W95g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660isW3W95g)

~~~
liotier
It only remotely reminds of FLNG, FPSO & al. because they all float - a
container ship is orders of magnitude simpler those pipe dreams !

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javert
I don't understand why the article calls this the largest ship ever built,
since (going by Wikipedia, [1]) it is not the largest ship in _any_ metric
(gross tonnage, deadwight tonnage, or length).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_longest_ships](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_longest_ships)

~~~
EliRivers
Using the metric "number of containers it can carry at once", which is the
metric that formed the basis of the purchase and the key metric for a
container vessel, it is the largest.

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invictusjs
I'm a South Korean and quite amazed by this article, and the fact that this is
the most popular link in HN. Visited a shipyard several years ago but I didn't
think it's interesting place. Now I realize it is and even can be a great
tourist attraction.

~~~
DenisM
I would certainly visit a giant ship yard given an opportunity!

~~~
theintern
Same. I love these giant ships, there's something just incredibly interesting
about the technical challenge they solve.

------
Someone
When finished, [http://www.deltamarin.com/reference/pieter-
schelte/6](http://www.deltamarin.com/reference/pieter-schelte/6) will be
slightly shorter, but about twice as wide, so I think it will be larger in the
sense that it will have a larger maximal displacement (surprisingly, I could
not find that number for the triple E class), at 932.000 tons. There are
several different 'tons' used in shipping, but I think all would make it
larger than the Seawise Giant was.

------
DenisM
In related news Maersk, the company ordering ships, is responsible for 15% of
Denmark's GDP. [1]

Talk about huge!

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/f...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/features/2010/all_at_sea/a_dangerous_isolating_and_essential_job.html)

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Gyonka
That seems like a comically small steering wheel for such a large ship.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Near a harbor, ships with azipods or other similar rotating propulsion units
are steered by joysticks instead of wheels. I've seen a reasonably large ship
like that being steered with a mass-market gaming joystick. It plugged in
through usb.

 _Feeling_ a mountain of metal the size of an apartment block move under you
to the tune of a plastic consumer toy that looks like a cheap replica of a
fighter jet stick is surprisingly disturbing. I asked them why they used it --
they wanted a mobile wired stick so the guy steering the ship can move to a
good position where he can see whatever he's approaching, and for that kind of
thing, apparently consumer toys are more reliable than specialist marine
equipment. Go figure.

~~~
dredmorbius
And spares are easy and cheap to obtain and keep a few on hand.

Though the idea of losing my steering on account of a joystick or USB fault
... is a bit terrifying.

~~~
yzzxy
Yeah, wouldn't this violate tons of labor laws? Perhaps not on the high seas?

~~~
Dylan16807
I can't imagine what kind of law you have in mind.

~~~
yzzxy
Using equipment that was designed under the assumption that the worst fail
state is a frustrated gamer, to operate a leviathan cargo ship, seems like a
huge liability.

If a ship were to crash, can you imagine the headlines or accusations in
court?

"Video game controller was used to operate billion-dollar crashed cargo ship"

~~~
Lambdanaut
It doesn't matter if it's a video game controller or a high-grade steering
wheel, as long as it works.

Knowing that they've built the ship to operate using these devices tells me
that they have trust in them.

------
ck2
Amazing we have the tech to build that now.

I saw a segment on TV with wind turbines from 30 years ago compared to today
and they were practically toys compared to the current behemoths.

How do the sides of the ship not collapse before they assemble it in this
photo:

[http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2014/...](http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/Maersk-Triple-E-c-Alastair-Philip-Wiper-1-3.jpg)

or is that what the pylons on the side are there for?

------
cdwhite
Cached:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Aalastairphilipwiper.com%2Fblog%2Fbuilding-
largest-ship-world-south-korea%2F)

(I couldn't get to the original; I suppose the site is attracting an entirely
deserved flood of attention.)

------
noselasd
Discovery also produced a documentary on the building:
[http://www.worldslargestship.com/triple-e-
stories/](http://www.worldslargestship.com/triple-e-stories/)

------
vdm
[http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-
shipping/](http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/)

------
avn2109
If ever you were going to make another nuclear powered civilian vessel, this
would probably be the one.

~~~
gaius
The only reason these ships exist is they are cheap per ton per mile. Fossil
fuel would need to get a _lot_ more expensive before a nuke would make sense
here.

~~~
darkmighty
Really? Afaik, the main cost for nuclear isn't fuel. A ship like that would
run for so long that the initial cost seems quite amortized. Also, simply not
having to carry those huge amounts of fuel for weeks/months seems like a big
structural design bonus (and compound fuel economy). Care to ellaborate why
nuclear doesn't make sense?

~~~
krschultz
Nuclear doesn't make sense at all for this. The expense for anything nuclear
is astronomical. Every single component is build out of higher grade material,
has fewer suppliers, needs more inspection, has higher maintenance, etc etc.
The crew needs to be 10x better trained. The system itself is massively more
complicated. I couldn't imagine it ever being more economical. Fuel costs have
absolutely nothing to do why you switch to nuclear.

Note that the US Navy has stopped making nuclear powered cruisers, and only
makes nuclear powered submarines & aircraft carriers. They cost massively more
than other ships of their size, and only 2 ship yards in the USA can build
them.

~~~
Amezarak
To be fair, the Navy hasn't built _any_ cruisers in 20 years and is doing
everything it can to retire the ones still in service - which, as you say, are
non-nuclear.

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iancarroll
Anyone know what the license is for these photos? They're pretty nice...

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bane
A comment I recently made about the shipyard

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406975)

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aligajani
This is hard engineering. Wowzers.

------
notastartup
hookers is a pretty strong word for Doumi girls who are not prostitutes but
just girls who party with you in Karaoke bars. Sure some might spend the night
but for the most part there's no sex involved. Their job is to sell you as
much alcohol as your body will tolerate and get a nice comission off it. Even
if it means dressing like a hooker to get more business.

