[HN Gopher] France cuts two nuclear-powered submarines in half t...
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France cuts two nuclear-powered submarines in half to make one new
one
Author : gscott
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-04-15 07:40 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (abc17news.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (abc17news.com)
| nikita-leonov wrote:
| What a waste of material. They cut them in half, they had four
| halves, they can make two submarines, not one!
| r00fus wrote:
| Looks like one of them wasn't deemed seaworthy.
|
| > Luckily for the French navy, one of the Perle's sister boats,
| the Saphir, which was retired from service in 2019, was
| awaiting dismantling at a shipyard in the northwestern port of
| Cherbourg.
| zymhan wrote:
| Those silly French, always throwing away perfectly good
| submarine halves
| paxys wrote:
| This is a wild twist in the Ship of Theseus thought experiment.
| luplex wrote:
| I wonder how they will name the frankensub. Saphle or Perir?
| superzamp wrote:
| Ha, Perir meaning "to die" in french I hope they'll go for
| Saphle!
| teel wrote:
| Reminds me of Finnish "Frankenhornet"; they attached the
| forward-section of Canadian F-18 to their own damaged F-18.
| Unfortunately the thing crashed during test flight after the
| modification.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I see what you did there, however they are keeping the name of
| the back half: Perle.
| astura wrote:
| Super common to do stuff like this, when the USS San Francisco
| struck a sea mount (killing 1) she was repaired by replacing her
| bow with the bow of the soon-to-be-decommed USS Honolulu.
|
| >In June 2006, it was announced that San Francisco's bow section
| would be replaced at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard with the bow
| of USS Honolulu, which was soon to be retired. San Francisco is
| four years older than Honolulu, but she had been refueled and
| upgraded in 2000-2002. The cost of her bow replacement has been
| estimated at $79 million, as compared with the estimated $170
| million to refuel and overhaul the nuclear reactor of Honolulu.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711)
|
| It's also common to cut cruise ships in half and add to the
| middle to make them bigger
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-04/why-cruis...
|
| Of course, now that I read the article they actually mentioned
| the San Francisco.
| perlgeek wrote:
| A great uncle of mine back in Eastern Germany (DDR back then)
| purchased a decommissioned pleasure boat, but it was longer than
| 25m so he would have needed a captain's license to operate it.
|
| Instead, he cut out a part (most of the aft deck), and welded it
| together so that it was just below the 25m limit.
|
| I joined him for a tour on it once, it was pretty awesome. The
| proportions looked a bit off, but it was much more spacious
| inside than typical hobby boats :-)
|
| He and his family spent many vacations on that boat, touring much
| of the big European rivers.
|
| Update: found some pictures of it: https://www.ddr-
| binnenschifffahrt.de/fotogalerie-gross/Passa...
| https://www.skipper-bootshandel.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/1...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Very well done, I can't spot the seam.
| 75central wrote:
| Kind of reminds me of the M/V Stewart J. Cort:
| http://www.interlake-steamship.com/our-fleet/m-v-stewart-j.-...
| The "before" pic is amazing: https://imgur.com/dBydq17
| duxup wrote:
| That 'before' ship looks borderline unstable being so short and
| looks like it is riding WAY high in the water.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's amazing twice over, apparently they also _widened_ the
| ship.
|
| "She also got 30 ft of width added"
| atum47 wrote:
| I cannot stop thinking about flex tape when I read this headline.
| That's a lot of damage...
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This also happened with the USS San Francisco and USS Honolulu
| after an underwater mountain strike.
|
| Ref: Former US Submariner
| sn_master wrote:
| Meanwhile, Britain has retired twenty nuclear submarines since
| 1980. None have been disposed of, and nine still contain
| radioactive fuel in their reactors.
|
| https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/royal-navy-having-rea...
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Here's a photo of the two cut halves:
| https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/210414041423-perle-sa...
| Sparkyte wrote:
| I was going to say, not the onion.
| danboarder wrote:
| This story reminded me of a project my father did with two 1965
| Mercedes sedans; one was hit in the front, the other in the back.
| He cut them both in half where the roof meets the rear window,
| and welded and reassembled the two good halves into a perfectly
| functional car that we drove for years. Not the scale of the
| French submarine project, but the same kind of ingenuity -- it
| was still a big project to get everything rewired and all put
| back together, including bodywork and paint!
| bloak wrote:
| That sounds like the notorious "cut and shut" thing where
| criminals create a dangerous vehicle for the second-hand
| market, except that it's from a different era. Seeing as a 1965
| Mercedes is built rather differently from a typical modern car,
| and safety standards have changed since then, too ... any
| comments on how hard it is to this without compromising safety?
| bunje wrote:
| I would guess that it is much more dangerous to modify a
| modern car because they utilize nontrivial shell geometry to
| improve the rigidity or to reduce weight. When I was
| attending driving lessons, my teacher claimed that the
| specific shape of the windscreen or rear window was a very
| important safety feature in the scenario that the car rolls
| over.
| sgt101 wrote:
| The big one is the A pillar on the front. This tends to
| corrode over time and is often why cars are written off. If
| it is corroded then the structural integrity of the car is
| compromised. There is really no repair for it - but a bit
| of welding can disguise things and get a write off sold as
| a potential project. The new owner can find out when they
| take the wings off... or they can find out when the front
| of the car comes off in the event of a shunt, but in that
| scenario they only find out very briefly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That write-off is an economic affair, not a technical
| one. A-pillars too can be re-manufactured, but it is
| usually better not to because if the A-pillar is
| compromised you are looking at a body that will have a
| whole lot of other damage as well. The bad part about
| damage there is that you need to build it up from the
| inside out which means 'undressing' the whole box layer
| by layer so you can rebuild it properly, and most people
| will not have the time, the skills (or the jigs) to do
| this properly. But it definitely can be done, but likely
| not in a way that is economical.
|
| I can't imagine an A-pillar that is damaged with the rest
| of the car being deformed as well, the A-pillar of a
| modern car is ridiculously strong and meant to be the
| outer boundary of the safety cage for the passengers. Any
| deformation there and you'll have a deformed bottom,
| roof, firewall and probably other parts as well.
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Not to mention crumple zones and how the car is intended to
| protect the people inside
| jacquesm wrote:
| Those are typically outside of the safety cell.
| blagie wrote:
| I can't imagine it'd be all too tough with a 1965 car and
| good welding technique. At the time, cars were still pretty
| over-built and over-engineered. Good welds are pretty darned
| tough. Most things, you can cut-and-dice without problems.
|
| With a 2020 car? I wouldn't trust it unless the person
| performing the work was a pretty good engineer. As
| engineering is more optimized, you can't just do stuff like
| this without being very careful:
|
| 1) Welds do leave a heat-affected zone around the weld which
| is weaker. If you're overengineered (1956) and everything is
| thicker than necessary, this doesn't matter. If you're near-
| optimal (2020), and using the exact amount of material needed
| to avoid failure under expected driving conditions, you might
| weaken things enough to see failures.
|
| 2) If reinforced, you'll affect the overall systems design.
| Engineered objects flex. Making one part more rigid than
| expected will put additional strain on other parts.
|
| Counterintuitive as it might sound, optimal engineering makes
| designs safer. You analyze failure modes, put in appropriate
| safety margins, and do things right. Engineering classes
| drill that over-engineering is bad engineering. The flip
| side, though, is that if you can't tweak optimized designs
| like you can over-engineered ones without being careful and
| thoughtful about it.
|
| Same thing with bikes. You can fix up a $100 Huffy with any
| old welder. A $2000 steel frame with thin-wall double-butted
| tubes? You want a really skilled welder and close inspection
| to make sure it's not compromised.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Please stop throwing generalized internet engineering
| tropes at the wall. Just because it all looks like rocket
| science to someone who doesn't have industry experience
| doesn't mean it is.
|
| The repairs you are proclaiming to be impossible are
| perfectly possible to do with good results. These repairs
| are often performed often, just not in the high cost of
| labor parts of the world where HN lives (the low cost areas
| buy our wrecked cars to fix and sell to the point where
| sourcing parts for major repairs is often easier there than
| in the vehicle's country of origin). There's autobody
| industry specific tools and literature that help
| professionals in the industry perform the repairs properly.
| It's perfectly possible to take a car apart and reassemble
| (with good parts) the way an OEM would have if you're
| willing to invest in the tooling (mostly for welding in
| hard to reach areas). Car passenger cabins aren't supposed
| to flex (but in practice they do so within acceptable
| limits) and OEMs provide service literature telling you
| what you can and can't modify, much repair info can be
| gleaned by reading between the lines of such service
| literature. The welding issues you are describing are
| simply not an issue for skilled welders. Your opinion of
| engineering education is hard to reconcile with the
| observed performance of new engineers in any/every field.
| dekhn wrote:
| I disagree; I think the person you're replying to is
| completely correct. To rebuild the safety of a modern
| engineering system isn't somebody in their garage can
| easily do. With skills, you can definitely improve
| things, but not to the statistical level that modern car
| manufacturers have achieved.
|
| It's similar in microelectronics. I can do a ton of stuff
| with an arduino because it uses really basic old, tough
| eletronics. I can put too much current into a pin, ok the
| pin dies but the AVR is still fine. A modern ESP32? A
| little bit of current or voltage above the rating and the
| whole thing is toast.
| phaedrus wrote:
| It's a numbers game, and you're overlooking the other
| side of it. The automakers have to engineer to a very low
| probability of failure because they deal in large
| numbers. It's true a person in their garage can't match
| that engineering - but they don't have to. They only have
| to get to "reasonably" safe not "absolutely" safe.
|
| It's just like people putting turbochargers on their 90s
| Hondas. Naysayers could claim it's a fool's errand
| because if Honda, with all their engineering resources,
| didn't feel they could add turbocharging to their engines
| in the 90s and have it be cost effective and reliable
| enough, _surely_ someone in their garage can 't do it?
| But what they overlook is that if 5% of one of Honda's
| mass market cars blew an engine that would be a disaster,
| whereas a 5% chance an individual blows his own engine,
| which he may be able to replace for $500 to $1500: that
| may be a risk an individual is willing to take that a
| carmaker cannot.
| blagie wrote:
| Did you even read what you were replying to?
|
| The conclusion of what you're replying to: "You can fix
| up a $100 Huffy with any old welder. A $2000 steel frame
| with thin-wall double-butted tubes? You want a really
| skilled welder and close inspection to make sure it's not
| compromised."
|
| Yes, it's possible, and yes, I know folks whom I'd trust
| to do it. The guy in my local auto shop? Definitely not.
| Random car shop in the developing world? I've seen the
| results. They'll drive, but they're far from save by
| Western standards.
|
| What you wrote: "if you're willing to invest in the
| tooling" "The welding issues you are describing are
| simply not an issue for skilled welders"
|
| I mean, seriously. You responded to a something entirely
| different from what I wrote, repeated roughly what I
| actually DID write, and mixed a few errors in (if car
| cabins weren't made to flex, they'd be using a very
| different type of steel; virtually everything made to be
| tough is made to flex).
|
| Please find a place in my post where I "proclaiming
| [repairs] to be impossible"
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Anyone who has jacked up a car at one wheel and tried to
| open a door knows that flexing is very real.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > Anyone who has jacked up a car at one wheel and tried
| to open a door knows that flexing is very real.
|
| Have you tried doing that to anything other than a 1960s
| convertible?
|
| My 90s junk handles that just fine (and they're not
| particularly rigid cars). Matter of fact I did it
| yesterday afternoon to change rear pads.
|
| Generally speaking you need to get a floppy vehicle
| really bound up (think 80s Jeep Cherokee or minivan off
| road) in order to have issues with doors and even then
| it's usually rear hatch only. OEMs specially try to avoid
| having bodies that flex enough to be noticeable to
| consumers, let alone to the point of doors not opening.
| Heck, I'd be surprised if you can even design a car to
| pass modern roof strength requirements without also
| making it stiff enough to have the doors open and close
| regardless of how bound up it is. (Pickup tailgates are
| another thing since the bed is open top and bolted to a
| frame designed to flex somewhat and even then being able
| to open the tailgate with two tires off the ground is not
| unheard of)
| dekhn wrote:
| When I gave a friend a ride in my 2001 Miata, the very
| first thing he said was 'huh, you have a rigid frame, if
| I'd done that turn in my old MG, you could see the frame
| flexing'
| jacquesm wrote:
| Old MG is bodypanels over chassis, a Miata is a unibody.
| Totally different construction.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| You're overstating the difficulty/brittleness of
| "engineered" objects.
|
| I used to be around the rally racing scene, and it's
| utterly routine there to weld tons of re-enforcements into
| the unibody. Most people with the money will straight up
| laminate the suspension mounts with plate. The safety cage
| makes the car incredibly rigid, as does replacing all
| bushings. The cars work just fine. The people doing this
| have relatively ordinary welding skills. Modern cars are
| not some sort of high tech magic that can't be modified or
| repaired with ordinary metalworking skills... it's just
| usually not cost effective to do so.
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is all true as long as the base material is steel.
| When you get into aluminum the number of people capable
| of producing good welds drops rapidly.
|
| But you are on the money with the cost effectiveness bit,
| that's exactly why it is perfectly possible to do these
| modifications with confidence: you are not operating
| under a budget that gets counted out to the last 1/10th
| of a cent, so you can do it right, even if it costs a few
| bucks more. Something a car company operating at scale
| would never do. Once the cost constraint disappears there
| isn't a whole lot you can't do.
| southerntofu wrote:
| > any comments on how hard it is to this without compromising
| safety?
|
| I would say it greatly depends on your welding skills. The
| same welded materials can be very solid of very weak
| depending on how they were welded. I would not dare to do
| that, personally.
| tyingq wrote:
| Older vehicles are frame+body, such that the body integrity
| is less important than current unibody cars that don't have a
| frame. This would be a much more significant change on a
| unibody car.
|
| Though any sort of big modification like this probably
| changes the characteristics of how it crushes in a crash,
| flexes under load, etc.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My friend is a car mechanic and his weekend car is a 1985
| Nissan Z31, which he welded from two halves - front and back.
|
| It's physically _possible_ to do it and maintain reasonable
| safety but you need proper equipment, skills and time.
|
| The frame is generally not designed to be welded like that,
| so without reinforcement it will be significantly weaker.
|
| He did is as a hobby project but generally done properly such
| operations are not cost-effective.
|
| Nevertheless it's still a service some shops provide at the
| cost of safety.
|
| My aunt used to have such a car - she only noticed because
| she was blowing through sets of tires - the halves were
| misaligned(rotated) by less than one degree in each axis, but
| it was enough to make proper tire alignment impossible.
| extraAccount wrote:
| Depending on where you live, buying a car with this
| modification may require disclosure. There are plenty of
| videos on youtube about people buying cars which end up
| being two parts welded together. I don't think it is safe
| at all.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Poland - we're in the "sweet spot" of having:
|
| -Schengen(so a steady stream of cars imported from
| Germany with no additional fees).
|
| -A Skilled workforce.
|
| -Cost-conscious customers.
|
| -Badly enforced regulations.
|
| Which create an ideal environment for a cottage industry
| of shops which will take your storm-damaged aluminium
| roof sheets and turn them into an inspection, passing,
| moving car with a real VIN by next week.
|
| I could create a Blade Runner'esque quote on stuff I've
| seen on the roads around here - especially regarding
| commercial vehicles.
|
| It's less so like that than comparing to the 90s, but
| still.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > The frame is generally not designed to be welded like
| that, so without reinforcement it will be significantly
| weaker.
|
| Welds can definitely be strong enough if done properly, as
| evidenced by the fact that welded parts involved in
| accidents can often be found to have broken somewhere other
| than a nearby weld.
|
| However achieving the proper level of welding is easier
| said than done, and in particular being confident that a
| particular weld is done properly requires advanced
| equipment for non-destructive testing (x-ray, conductivity,
| echo ...)
| RugnirViking wrote:
| You can hit it with a hammer and listen carefully! (No
| really, i've done some work on industrial robotics
| welding and it does this to produce a map of the weld it
| just performed for strength testing purposes - it can be
| done at the same time as peening)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, that's a good idea to get an idea of the hardness of
| a weld. Better yet: anneal your welds.
| csunbird wrote:
| Welding chassis of a car is a practice strongly recommended
| against, since it makes it significantly weaker at the
| welding point(s). It is very unsafe, although since it is
| an oldtimer restoration project, I salute your friend with
| respect!
| userbinator wrote:
| Welding done correctly is as strong if not stronger than
| the base metal.
| meowster wrote:
| The weld will be stronger, but the heat-affected metal
| will become weaker than the rest of the metal, which is
| why if it breaks, it will be next to the weld.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Only when done improperly. Yes, this is a common failure
| mode, no, it does not have to be that way.
|
| Typically the reason is not that the heat affected metal
| will be come weaker, typically the reason is that the
| weld is thicker than the material right next to it
| creating a stress point in the structure. The hardening
| can be taken care of by annealing.
|
| The best way to fix cars is to increase the length of the
| weld if you can, the original weld points are there for a
| balance between economy and strength. If you start
| welding in 'original new and interesting places' you need
| to plan how you want to achieve the required strength
| since economy is likely the least of your worries.
|
| Every stretch limo is essentially a demonstration piece
| to show that this does not need to be a problem, and that
| you actually can re-inforce a body quite nicely. Keep in
| mind that the wheelbase of a stretch limo pretty much
| guarantees much higher forces on all of the welding in
| the body including the existing seams.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The devil is in the details. I know people that could pull
| this off. I could pull this off. But I also know people that
| would try to pull it off, it would look good and maybe even
| pass inspection but I'd never want to be seen in or near that
| vehicle.
|
| I've welded up cars that were so rusted through that you had
| to re-inforce the body before you could start working on them
| in order for them to stay true (tubeframe inside the main
| body to fixate the remains). It's all doable, mostly a matter
| of time and skill.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Combining vehicles like this is one of those things that
| isn't bad but gets the Reddit experts screeching because
| their only experience is that their mom's sister's
| boyfriend's uncle's roommate got swindled by someone doing a
| crap job on a Civic that they thought they were getting a
| good deal on.
|
| Vehicles build on frames are cut and extended/shortened all
| the time as a part of routine modifications for commercial
| use and it's far less labor intensive to "do right" than a
| unibody vehicle. Putting two good halfs together is no big
| deal and is a relatively standard operation, all the known
| techniques and whatnot transfers right over. (I assume a 60s
| Mercedes falls into this category.) Unibody vehicles are also
| routinely repaired in this manner in eastern Europe where
| it's cheaper to buy wrecked stuff from the west and fix than
| to buy new. In the west the limo and mobility van industry
| does very similar things (only they're inserting stuff in the
| middle rather than repairing the car)
|
| People do cut and weld jobs all the time for their own
| personal vehicles and classic cars. When you're doing it for
| your own car or a car you don't intend to flip you can afford
| to spend the time to do it right.
|
| Quick hackjobs are the issue, not the technique.
| [deleted]
| hwillis wrote:
| There is/was lots of speculative armchairing as well, when
| HSLAs started coming into the picture. Structural adhesives
| also get pointed to as a reason not to do big repairs like
| this. In practice it isn't really borne out.
|
| HSLA (high strength low alloy) steels are stronger (and
| therefore lighter) than mild steels. Many alloy steels
| (non-HSLA) are sensitive to heat treatment and improper
| welds make them weaker, so tons of people were being very
| vocal about HSLAs ruining cars, making repairs impossible,
| etc etc. Things like saying you'd need proprietary filler
| to match the composition, that welds would be poison, etc.
| In reality it doesn't really make a difference.
|
| Adhesives are also sometimes/often used to secure panels
| together instead of welds. The theory was that subtle
| differences in shape would introduce tensile stressed that
| would cause adhesives to pop in a crash. Not real.
| Alternatively stress during modifications could introduce
| cracks and weaken the adhesive- also bullshit, those
| adhesives go through stress every time they drive. They're
| fine.
|
| They aren't _invalid_ concerns, but unless you 're putting
| a torch to the adhesive or welding seams down the middle of
| alloy beams, you aren't doing anything that will cause
| problems.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I think with the benefit of hindsight structural
| adhesives make things easier. Way easier to apply glue
| and clamp (or whatever the instructions are) than to weld
| somewhere you can't see without a mirror or building a
| custom spot welder tip that replicates what the robot
| used in the factory. I also like that you can not ruin
| the paint around an area where you apply adhesive whereas
| welding usually cooks off the adjacent paint. This is
| very beneficial in environments with corrosion. Holy crap
| are the consumables expensive compared to welding though.
|
| > Things like saying you'd need proprietary filler to
| match the composition, that welds would be poison, etc.
| In reality it doesn't really make a difference.
|
| The nice thing is that the car OEMs are high enough
| volume that even if they use something exotic someone
| will come along with special consumables or procedures or
| procedures or whatever that makes it trivial to work
| with. I hope some other OEM's follow Tesla with the
| stainless and we get cheap weld backing tape as a result.
| robbiep wrote:
| While travelling in Cuba 2 friends and I hired a cab to drive
| us to Vinales from Havana - we ended up in a stretch Lada!
| Front 2/3 of 1 car, back 2/3 of another.
|
| Felt very unsafe but we got there
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Felt very unsafe but we got there
|
| I'm pretty sure 99.999% of HN would say the same thing about
| a normal Lada.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| You've signed up with a throwaway account and started the
| last three comments I've read in this thread with a
| sneering "I'm pretty sure screeching HN/Reddit morons would
| think X but I know better"; it's against the HN guidelines
| to comment in that style:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| " _In Comments
|
| Don't be snarky. [...] Please don't sneer, including at the
| rest of the community.
|
| When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of
| calling names.
|
| Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents.
|
| Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle._"
| imwillofficial wrote:
| That was a joke, and I loled. I don't even know what a
| lada is and I still laughed.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Ladas are(were) Eastern European Soviet block cars, with
| a reputation for being cheap and low quality, and in the
| UK, a low social status indicator used to mock people[1].
| The joke could be that a Lada is already an unsafe car so
| a stretch-Lada can't be any worse (the joke is that you
| say one Lada is unsafe but actually they are ALL unsafe,
| ha ha). But then it doesn't need any mention of "99.999%
| of HN".
|
| The joke could instead be that Ladas are safe enough, the
| stretch Lada was probably safe enough, and the thing to
| laugh at is the 99.999% of HN who can't judge the safety
| of cars, or naively aren't used to a world outside their
| Silicon Valley spafe-space luxury. i.e. it's a sneering
| putdown at HN users and nothing to do with Ladas per-se.
| Given the context of the last two comments I read by
| throwaway account starting with sneering at HN and Reddit
| users, and the need to specify "99.999% of HN users would
| say X", I lean towards this interpretation.
|
| That doesn't mean you can't find it a hilarious witty
| comment, sneering at some "inferior" group is a popular
| thing people laugh at. (Weirdly?[1]) You might find it a
| funny joke, and it might be sneering and against the
| guidelines, both at the same time. "I loled" isn't
| sufficient to say it's on-topic, you should be arguing
| that it wasn't sneering. Better again, arguing that it
| was within the spirit of the guidelines more than the
| letter of them; just jokes alone are not against the
| guidelines explicitly but are frequently frowned on.
|
| Sneerclub and status grabbing are my own personal
| soupnazi topics of the moment; once you see comments
| where the main purpose is to sneer at how dumb some large
| disparate group is, or the flip-side to claim status as a
| superior, you see them everywhere. e.g. these two just
| seen in tabs I have open:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26821673
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26822285
|
| both where the point is to call someone dumb/inferior.
|
| (And e.g. much of my internet commenting history, tbh)
|
| [1] (is it more social signalling than humour?)
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Thank you for your in depth reply! Considering the author
| responded with His intention, it seems you have read the
| tea leaves wrong on intended meaning.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| My point was that even a normal Lada is going to feel
| like a tin can compared to what most people here have as
| their frame of reference. I'm not sure why anyone found
| that offensive. In retrospect I like the "stretch Lada is
| 5/3 as safe as normal Lada" line of reasoning better.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| I have seen a few Volvo 240 pickup trucks online.
|
| https://www.justacargeek.com/2013/11/1984-volvo-240-pick-up-...
| fifilura wrote:
| These are pretty common in Sweden because, if properly
| modified, they can be driven by a 15 year old as a tractor.
| While 18 years old and a more complete drivers license is
| required for a regular car.
|
| And obviously because Volvo is swedish, that is the most
| common model to modify.
|
| One of the required modifications is to remove the rear seat
| so that it is no longer built for personell transport. It
| should also not be possible to drive faster than 30km/h.
|
| You can see the images here, but there is no corresponding
| page in english. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-traktor
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Pretty wild. Expense and hassle aside, it makes me wonder how the
| pressure hulls are fabricated to begin with.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Reminds of the stretched VW bus that a former hippy landlord of
| mine had. It was made from two buses, the front of one and the
| back of the other cut off, welded together. It was great for
| hauling kayaks in the back. I think the two constituent buses
| were from different years, so the model year of the welded bus
| was a 1966.5 or something.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| This has happened before. After USS _San Francisco_ collided with
| a seamount, her bow section was replaced with that of USS
| _Honolulu_ , which was being decommissioned.[0]
|
| These things make economic sense because nuclear refueling is a
| capital cost, and navies are loathe to waste a submarine reactor
| that has a decade or more worth of fuel left.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711)
| [deleted]
| realreality wrote:
| Why does France need six nuclear powered submarines?
| Glawen wrote:
| they are silent, and my guess is that it maintains expertise in
| designing military nuclear reactors which France need in their
| SNLA (submarines launching atomic bombs).
| nullserver wrote:
| Ask people from Ukraine.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No land-based ICBMs, and nuclear armed aircraft aren't a great
| deterrent these days, especially with the distance France's
| would have to go to reach a likely adversary.
|
| You need a bunch because half of them will be docked (repairs,
| replenishment, R&R, etc.) at any particular time, and having
| just one at sea risks an adversary taking it out in a first
| strike.
| angry_octet wrote:
| As icegreentea2 says, these are attack submarines, not part
| of the French strategic deterrent.
|
| In a surface attack role a nuclear sub has a significant
| speed and endurance advantage. Conventional subs are can't
| adjust to course changes in targets very easily; of course,
| they are quieter and smaller, so choke point ambush becomes
| more feasible.
|
| A nuclear boat also has the speed to keep up with a carrier
| battle group or a fast convoy. The ability to use SLCM to
| strike land (MdCN) or maritime targets (Exocet) without
| obvious forewarning is also useful.
|
| Strategic boats are not used for conventional attack because
| it would reveal their location, and the launch of a ballistic
| missile could trigger real escalation towards nuclear
| exchange.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The Saphir and Perle are attack submarines - they aren't
| France's nuclear missile subs (that's the Triomphant class,
| and they have 4 of them for exactly the reason you
| described).
|
| France "needs" all this equipment because France (or least
| enough of its governments) have decided that it's important
| for France to have an independent capability to influence the
| world beyond "soft power".
|
| It's easy to understand why they might want an independent
| SLBM force. And if you're going to be building nuclear
| submarines, may as well make nuclear attack subs so you can
| try to keep the knowledge and industry base more continuously
| active.
| [deleted]
| openasocket wrote:
| The best answer is an explanation in their own words, the
| French whitepaper on defense and national security:
| https://media.nti.org/pdfs/15-Fr.pdf . "Nuclear attack
| submarines carrying cruise missiles are a priority. Due to
| their stealth and virtually unlimited range, they represent
| versatile strategic systems that can be used for intelligence,
| protection of the nuclear submarines [here they are referring
| to their ballistic missile submarines], escort of the aircraft
| carrier or special operations. The White Paper sets a target of
| six submarines."
|
| In addition, they can be used on their own to launch strikes
| against high value targets (things like the chemical weapons
| facilities in Syria). They are also very useful in the Indo-
| Pacific to deter China (France still has territorial
| possessions in southeast Asia):
| https://warontherocks.com/2021/04/how-franco-australian-coop...
| .
| rsynnott wrote:
| They need nuclear subs for their nuclear deterrent anyway, so
| presumably may as well make the attack subs nuclear as well.
| corentin88 wrote:
| If you want to see more photos of the work:
| https://2rqr3rwveady2kt4ixbo2lghi4-adwhj77lcyoafdy-www-meret...
| maeln wrote:
| The link without the google translate thing:
| https://www.meretmarine.com/fr/content/perle-0
|
| Btw, mer et marine is probably one of the best media if you are
| looking for french news relative to the maritime defense
| industry and the maritime industry in general.
| bathtub365 wrote:
| It's amazing to see what can be done via the application of
| centuries of Baguette Science
| Ikatza wrote:
| They'll keep the name, but is it still the Perle? It's a modern
| "ship of Theseus" situation
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _They 'll keep the name, but is it still the Perle? It's a
| modern "ship of Theseus" situation_
|
| It's the Perle if the crew believe it to be the Perle. That's
| how ships - or regiments, or squadrons - become "living things"
| almost.
| [deleted]
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Now we have experimentally established the half-life of French
| nuclear-powered submarines.
| WJW wrote:
| Interestingly ships get cut in half and reassembled "all the
| time". Certainly way more than people think.
|
| See for example https://www.maritime-
| executive.com/article/photos-fincantier..., where an entire
| cruise ship was cut in half and an extra section was inserted
| into the middle before welding everything together again. I will
| also never forget the training ship of the Dutch Navy, which was
| shortened by cutting it into half and removing a section from the
| middle. Sadly this messed up the hydrodynamics fiercely and it
| was extremely seasickness inducing in even moderate seas. The
| ship certainly was effective as a training vessel though.
| pengaru wrote:
| Ford lengthened 50s-era freight ships used for hauling raw
| materials in the Ford River Rouge Complex an additional
| 120-feet in the 70s for increased capacity. [0]
|
| Someone uploaded a TV special centered on the SS Byron D.
| Benson and its captain, in which he speaks to the lengthening
| and how it affected the ship. [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_William_Clay_Ford
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFiF5LUsi1A
| underwater wrote:
| They spent 450,000 man hours to extend the ship from 195m to
| 210m long. That is a 7% increase in length. That seems like a
| lot of work for a tiny bit of gain.
| WJW wrote:
| They will spend a lot more man-hours than that, since the
| 450.000 hours only included welding the ship back together.
| The article also mentioned that the operation represents
| about a 12% increase in passenger capacity, since it's mostly
| cabins and amenities rather than non-money generating stuff
| like engines or anchors. According to wikipedia passenger
| capacity went from 540 to 608 passengers.
|
| So let's do the math: The article states that "Pricing for
| the 7-day cruise starts at $5,600 per person." Presumably
| some passengers will pay more, let's assume an average of
| 6k/passenger/week. Assuming 45 sailings weeks per year (the
| rest being relocations and maintenance periods), the 68 extra
| passengers will bring in slightly over 18 million USD per
| year in extra revenue. Wages in Italy are not that high, so
| even assuming all workers are welders making the maximum from
| http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-
| survey.php?loc=105&loct..., it would only be about 20
| EUR/hour. That makes the price of the 450k manhours "only" 9m
| EUR, so it seems likely they'll make back the total price of
| the expansion quite quickly.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I've no particular knowledge in this case but presumably
| they would undertake such work at a time when the ship was
| due or nearly due a refit.
| depaya wrote:
| Your analysis doesn't include the engineering to make this
| possible, the materials and labor to create the new
| section, the fees associated with using the dry dock, the
| lost revenue while the ship was out of service...
|
| I find it hard to believe they will make it back quickly.
| WJW wrote:
| Yes, I made a few shortcuts. But is it really so hard to
| believe that the shipping company made a much more
| detailed analysis beforehand and decided it was worth it?
| It's not like you just YOLO a cruise ship into drydock
| and find out it's too expensive halfway through the
| project.
|
| (Insert joke about software engineering budget bloat
| here)
| nikanj wrote:
| In software the losses would not matter, Softbank would
| be happy to throw more money into the bonfire
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is the volume increase what really counts.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And the fact that it is pure payload as well as two
| restaurants. 100% of the ship's length is much more than
| the payload area.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What strikes me about your comment is that you think that a
| cruise ship company and their army of consultants and
| engineers would not have done the required calculations to
| figure out that they would make substantial profit on this
| over the long term.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The front 1/3rd of the Maersk Honam was burnt beyond repair in
| a fire in 2018. That included the bridge and accommodation
| block. They cut it off, took the rest of it back to the
| shipyard on a heavy lift ship, and built a new front...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Honam
|
| on fire:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=maersk+honam+fire&client=ubu...
|
| here's some photos of it on the heavy lift ship:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=maersk+honam+heavy+lift&clie...
| typon wrote:
| I can't help but feel God playing jokes when you see a fire
| in the middle of an ocean
| WJW wrote:
| you could say the front fell off?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
| ronsor wrote:
| I'm sure we can move the wreckage and other waste outside
| the environment.
| walrus01 wrote:
| that's what happens when you make it from cardboard
| derivatives
| nightfly wrote:
| > With demand soaring, many cruise shipbuilders are booked into
| the early 2020s...
|
| That didn't work out so well for them.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Cruise lines seem to have survived just fine and are starting
| operations back up (for vaccinated passengers). And if you
| believe that all publicity is good publicity they should have
| no problems filling those ships
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| This is turning out to be an interesting business model -
| there are obviously the "pay us and we keep your money, but
| keep offering you future cruises till the pandemic is over"
|
| Additionally they are now offering "single country cruises"
| - start in one country, sail from port to port in same
| country - which radically simplified the vaccination
| doikor wrote:
| The cruise line business is very cyclical so the
| companies hold really big piles of cash for when things
| get slow (like 2007-2008 financial crisis)
|
| All the big companies had a couple billions each sitting
| around just for shit like this. They just fired most of
| the crew (they still need to have 100+ crew per ship to
| keep them in good condition) and anchored them waiting
| for better days.
|
| With this reduction in costs they could easily wait out a
| year or two for business to come back.
|
| Wendover Productions did an excellent video on the topic
| https://youtu.be/N4dOCfWlgBw
|
| (including how they solved getting their tens of
| thousands of employees back home when planes were not
| flying really)
| thrower123 wrote:
| It'd be nice if the US would ditch it's statutes from the
| late 19th century that make it illegal for foreign-
| flagged vessels from taking passengers from one US port
| to another.
|
| This is why, for example, almost all Alaskan cruises sail
| from Vancouver.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| The problem isn't so much the flag requirements as the
| other ones- especially the requirement that the ship must
| be _built_ in the US.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Without those rules, what is to stop foreign vessels from
| replacing domestic passenger ships? The Staten Island
| ferry might just adopt a foreign flag and staff the ships
| according to foreign (ie cheap) labor laws.
| excalibur wrote:
| What could be more American than that?
| thrower123 wrote:
| What domestic passenger ships?
|
| There's a handful of cruise ships that are US flagged
| specifically for the Hawaii route. That's it.
|
| If you're concerned about car ferries, you can make
| specific laws about them. Or better yet, New York state
| could, since that's in their jurisdiction.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's a bit of a few different thigns. There are tons of
| ferries across the US and getting rid of that rule would
| require either rewriting the law to maintain the change
| for them or for every state along the coasts to do their
| own regulating. Then there's a desire to maintain some
| domestic shipping and ship building industry from a
| national security standpoint and from the goal of
| protecting the environment immediately around the US.
| thrower123 wrote:
| > Then there's a desire to maintain some domestic
| shipping and ship building industry from a national
| security standpoint and from the goal of protecting the
| environment immediately around the US.
|
| This is the original purpose of the law, but it has
| failed completely and utterly. At some point you have to
| stand back and survey what the actual results of
| legislation are, as opposed to the intended results, and
| if those two aren't in any way congruent, scrap things
| and start over.
| vkou wrote:
| It only 'really failed' Puerto Rico.
|
| Airlines have similar rules, yet I never see people
| grousing that you can't take an Air Malay flight from
| Chicago to LA.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The domestic ship building industry imploded. America is
| an economic empire built on maritime shipping with only
| one remaining commercial shipyard capable of producing
| large vessels, and it is being kept alive with government
| contracts.
| netflixandkill wrote:
| A better law that more precisely addresses the various
| situations instead of depending on the verbiage chosen by
| the long dead.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> verbiage chosen by the long dead.
|
| Look at the average age of the people writing laws. I'd
| say that 90% or more of current law was created by people
| now "long dead".
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Where would those foreign workers live? In the ship?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yes. That is exactly how such things are done.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| The USS George Washington was originally going to be an attack
| submarine, but instead they decided to lengthen it by 130 feet
| & make it a ballistic missile sub. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_George_Washington_(SSBN-59...
| mandevil wrote:
| Those changes were made without any actual cutting though:
| the decision was made early enough in the process that there
| was nothing to cut apart. They just put some different pieces
| together than originally planned.
|
| Source: personal conversation with Dr. Gary Weir, US Naval
| History and Heritage Command.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| SSBN-626 and -635 were both ballistic missile submarines that
| were converted into training ships by going the other way and
| ripping out the missile compartment.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| That's cool. I hadn't heard that before. Thanks for
| sharing.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I'd feel a lot more comfortable in a ship that's been cut apart
| and welded back together than I would in a submarine.
| eternalban wrote:
| That cruise ship is a great example of a well designed
| extensible modular monolith.
| 51Cards wrote:
| That cruise ship example is wild. To do all that work (450,000
| man hours) to just add 50 feet to the length of the ship... a
| 12% increase in passenger capacity. Obviously it must be cost
| effective but on face value it looks crazy.
| henshao wrote:
| back of envelope:
|
| 450k man hours = 225 people full time, 1 year @ ~ 70k a year
| = 15m
|
| They added 34 more suites * 2 people * $1000 per person per
| cruise week = 78000 more per trip
|
| ~200 trips to pay back the cost - not sure what the
| utilization of cruise ships is usually, but if they do 40
| packed cruises a year, they're at a ~5 year ROI.
|
| I guess I forgot the cost of the new section itself, but I'm
| going to guess all in, < 10 years ROI?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Don't forget the opportunity cost of the ship being out of
| commission during that work.
| [deleted]
| ansible wrote:
| Though it is quite possible the ship was due for refit
| anyway.
| alexpotato wrote:
| They key thing here would be to factor in all of the costs
| for a new ship e.g.
|
| - Design time
|
| - building time
|
| - "fit and finish" time etc
|
| - cost for all of the above
|
| It's very possible the cost (or even ROI) would be
| larger(longer) than your calculations.
| resonantjacket5 wrote:
| I think it was more of they were already going to
| refurbish the ship. I doubt extending a brand new ship
| would make any sense.
| throwaway201606 wrote:
| The ship is a luxury cruise liner: the article, somewhere
| close to the bottom, says "Pricing for the 7-day cruise
| starts at $5,600 per person"
|
| that 'starts" in the last part is kinda-important ... I
| took a look and they have 1 week cruises for $22,000
|
| So, its really more like
|
| 34 more suites * 2 people * $5600 per person per cruise
| week = $380,000 more per trip at the low end
|
| 34 more suites * 2 people * $22000 per person per cruise
| week which is just over $1.4M more per trip at the high end
|
| Assuming $15M from the 450k man-hours and $23M in materials
| for the retro-fit, (seriously over-estimating materials
| because I want the nice easy math that goes with a $38M
| total), it would be:
|
| - 100 cruise-weeks or about 2 years to re-coup at the low
| end
|
| - ~30 cruises (not cruise weeks, literally cruises ) to re-
| coup at the high end
| khc wrote:
| if you have more passengers, you will also have more cost
| to service these passengers per trip.
| dspillett wrote:
| My dad used to work for a ship servicing & repair shop
| ("Humber Ship Repairers"), now defunct. I remember them doing
| this to a Sally Line ferry. It was fascinating seeing the
| progress when we occasionally drove past the dry dock. Very
| little for a while as things were cut through internally,
| then suddenly one trip the thing was in two halves and the
| new middle was being put in place.
| zymhan wrote:
| It does seem crazy. This bit in the article claims that a
| retrofit would be faster than building entirely new ships.
|
| > The lengthening is a novel approach to adding vessel
| capacity as shipyard availability shrinks. With demand
| soaring, many cruise shipbuilders are booked into the early
| 2020s, and expedition/luxury lines are increasingly ordering
| newbuilds at yards that used to specialize in offshore
| vessels or yachts.
| stephenr wrote:
| It seems crazy to think there is demand for _new_ cruise
| ships, _now_.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The article quoted is from 2018
| jonplackett wrote:
| Is there some kind of standard sizing that makes this kind of
| thing possible?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They'll have the blueprints and the actual ship to measure
| and confirm against. I'd imagine most of these are heavily
| custom jobs.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Depends on the project; for the cruise ship it's a newly
| built section built specifically for that ship and the
| submarines they were both the same design so as long as you
| cut in the same place on both ships they should fit together
| plus or minus 2x the tolerances it was originally built with.
| ansible wrote:
| Note that ships in the same class are rarely actually
| identical. There was also quite a bit of time since they
| were both built, and the later vessel no doubt incorporated
| changes / improvements on the design.
|
| And then you get into the really fun stuff, where what's on
| the plans, and what actually got built are usually at least
| a little different... and maybe the as-built documentation
| was not finished correctly either.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| They also sag. A half of a ship isn't as rigid as an
| entire ship. It changes shape in all sorts of
| unpredictable ways. There is lots of lifting and pulling
| before the two hulls line up well enough to start welding
| them together.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Steel ships are often built in prefabricated sections, either
| from front to back or bottom to top, which are then welded
| and bolted together.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding#/media/File:HMS_D.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipbuilding#Modern_shipbuildi.
| ..
| aardvark179 wrote:
| Yeah, it's surprisingly common. For years when getting the a
| CalMac ferry from Oban in Scotland you could spot that the MV
| Isle of Mull had been extended because they had to repaint the
| ship's name. That was done to fix stability as all the steel
| was right at the thickest end of the specified tolerance
| resulting in the ship being heavier than intended.
| perl4ever wrote:
| I think the "surprising" or unintuitive part for me is that I
| wouldn't have thought that a join could be sufficiently
| strong.
|
| However, in another thread recently, it was mentioned that
| large ships can't support their own weight without water
| anyway, so I guess that the strength needed is mainly just in
| tension?
| angry_octet wrote:
| A real life Boat of Theseus.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Australia is doing cutting edge stuff working with France
| converting nuclear submarines into diesel -
|
| https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/australias-loomi...
| abraae wrote:
| Surprised that Scott Morrison's government didn't elect to use
| coal, given their denialist tendencies.
| [deleted]
| nixass wrote:
| Push me - Pull you
| sigzero wrote:
| Look up "Deepwater Coast Guard". That didn't go well.
| jedc wrote:
| The US did the same thing with the USS San Francisco after it
| collided with an undersea seamount in 2005 and nearly sank.
|
| From:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711)#Co...
|
| "In June 2006, it was announced that San Francisco's bow section
| would be replaced at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard with the bow
| of USS Honolulu, which was soon to be retired. San Francisco is
| four years older than Honolulu, but she had been refueled and
| upgraded in 2000-2002. The cost of her bow replacement has been
| estimated at $79 million, as compared with the estimated $170
| million to refuel and overhaul the nuclear reactor of Honolulu."
| tasogare wrote:
| Perfect example of System D.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_D
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| So basically the first successful front/back submarine
| transplant?
|
| tldr: They basically "stitched" one half of another
| decommissioned sub to this one to salvage it.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Not really the first, as explained in the article, though this
| one seems bigger in scope.
|
| As for success... let's wait and see :)
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| The new boat will apparently still be called Perle, though Royal
| Navy precedent would have it be called Sarle, or perhaps
| Pephir...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Zubian
| red369 wrote:
| I like when the naming convention is consistent with the front
| half of the name going with the front half of the object, so
| the Zubian must have the front half of the Zulu...or the
| Sileighty must have the front of a Nissan Silvia (and the rear
| of a 180SX)
| gregoriol wrote:
| I'm still amazed by this decision that dates from last year, and
| wondering why not re-use the full Saphir: if part of it is re-
| usable like this, why not use the full of it instead of cutting
| it and trying a challenging engineering repair of the damaged
| one.
| [deleted]
| wazoox wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's because of the nuclear reactor which is in
| the rear half. The Perle's reactor has still some years to go,
| and it's much simpler and safer to simply weld the half
| containing the reactor, instead of trying to pry it open and
| move a live nuclear reactor from a boat to the other one.
| bserge wrote:
| That might be harder/more expensive if it was decommissioned
| because of reactor/propulsion/other critical systems in the
| back.
| astura wrote:
| Refueling a nuclear reactor on a submarine is very, very
| expensive. The Saphir obviously would need refueling to be put
| back in service, costing lots of money. If the Perle was
| recently refueled and the back part is where the reactor is,
| then it would almost certainly be cheaper to repair the Perle
| instead of refuel the reactor on the Saphir.
| jabl wrote:
| French submarines are a bit different from, say, US or
| British ones. They are refueled at 10 year intervals, and
| designed accordingly (e.g. there's a big hatch above the
| reactor which can be removed for the refueling), and they use
| LEU fuel produced in an enrichment facility that also
| produces civilian nuclear fuel.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Maybe because the back of the decommissioned submarine was not
| fit to work as well.
| soneca wrote:
| So that's what nuclear fission is?
| m463 wrote:
| Isn't there fusion too?
|
| (I wonder if the new sub weighs microscopically less than each
| of the two old subs)
| Borrible wrote:
| In shipbuilding, it's not that unusual to rebuild an entire ship.
|
| Of course, modern ships are modular.
|
| I suppose with submarines, compartmentalization is a structural
| given anyway.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QirVr-pEVU4
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OEuHPE_cLSI
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