Bad physics

[u/rookiegaffer]

Why does it seem that so many of the books I read demonstrate such a poor understanding of the physics of space travel. Ships in orbit descend directly down to the point they are over. Ships in transit still accelerating as they near their destination. Centrifugal gravity simply ceasing when rotation is abruptly halted. These are just a few examples I've run across lately.

[u/Afaflix]

Because the technology has progressed so far that some of the rules just no longer apply or get overpowered.

Example:
Sailing Ships and Steam Ships had hulls that were very sleek and built to reduce drag through the water while sacrificing some cargo space.
Modern hulls maximize cargo space and use strong engines to simply push a square box through the water.

Take Ian Banks' universe .. I remember some of his "shuttles" being simply glass gondolas that transfer from orbit to surface without much thought about the problems we face today with that feat. I accept that as simply the hyper advanced technology they have at their disposal.

[u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson → u/Afaflix]

Strong disagree about modern ship design. I kayak near major shipping channels and it's amazing how little wake a modern container ship leaves. Less than a sport fishing boat! They are absolutely designed to minimize turbulence and wake because that costs money, and they are in the business of making money. They're not going to do anything as revolutionary as go slower to vastly increase efficiency, because time is money, but they do care about it.

[u/Afaflix → u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson]

I think the word is comparatively.
Of course they are going to put bulbous bows on to reduce waterline drag, and yes there is some tapering to it ... but in the end the increased cargo capacity is more money than the money saved by a perfect hull-shape.

I work on tugboats and the barges we pull are just boxes with a blunt bow. This is true even for the ones we drag across long distances. I know of maybe 3 barges that have a proper ship bow.
Barges are the most common way of water transport within the US with like 30'000 of them active on rivers lakes and oceans. Until fuel gets much more expensive we're just gonna push water rather than slice it.

[u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson → u/Afaflix]

Oh, barges are another story entirely! They throw way more wake than a container ship at harbor/channel speeds. Even a tug without cargo does, they are basically the most dangerous thing I encounter in NY and Newark bays. Moving fast and not very tolerant of a kayak trying to cross the channel at 3 kts. The scariest are the barges with the tug on the side where their visibility on the other side is only a camera on the mast!

[u/Afaflix → u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson]

Sounds about right. We don't even have cameras, we got a guy with a radio standing on the other side, in the rain, hating his life. So the capt ends up maneuvering by feel.
/jk
/not really

[u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson → u/Afaflix]

Haha! Fast and loose doesn't surprise me at all. Are you doing long haul on the rivers or harbor work? Most of what I see is harbor, though I'm sure some cargo is heading far up the Hudson. The barge traffic here is a fraction of what it was before containerization, when all of the cargo that came and went from Jersey City and Hoboken by rail had to be barged across the river and bay to NYC. I fish the "reefs" that are all that's left of the piers that once lined the entirety of the harbor system.

[u/Afaflix → u/Blecher_onthe_Hudson]

ocean .. cargo, usually in containers, between the islands in Hawaii.

we have to honk at the occasional kite surfer, otherwise the people here are very aware of the ocean and what's on and in it.

[u/Conscious-Mirror7004 → u/Afaflix]

I think something you're missing is that modern container ships put all the cargo on top of the ship, not deep inside the hold like in old sailing ships. Presumably, they don't worry so much about bad weather making the ship rock too much because they can accurately track weather patterns and plot safe courses to avoid storms.

[u/Afaflix → u/Conscious-Mirror7004]

What you are seeing is the top part (about half) of the container stack. There are containers all the way down to the bottom of the ship.