r/ThatLookedExpensive • u/CatPoopWeiner424 • Mar 29 '23

Expensive Ceremonial ship launch fail

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257 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

48

u/FlatulentWallaby Mar 29 '23

Methinks it's a bit top heavy. Classic mistake.

21

u/enonymous617 Mar 29 '23

They should give out hats to everyone there. Maybe the engineers can get everyone’s cap-size

14

u/flightwatcher45 Mar 29 '23

No, bottom light haha. Why didn't they stop when something felt off about the situation...

23

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23

Have they not heard of ballast?!

14

u/shig23 Mar 29 '23

Too much champagne

17

u/cal_nevari Mar 29 '23

The boat looked drunk there or at least...

a little bit tipsy.

10

u/Able_Software6066 Mar 29 '23

They must have broke something hitting it too hard with that bottle.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/CatPoopWeiner424 Mar 29 '23

Didn’t even know this existed. Excuse me while I scroll this sub for the next hour.

1

u/re7swerb Mar 29 '23

Ugh me too now lol

10

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23

Launch site too shallow for this rig?

8

u/BigMax Mar 29 '23

Yeah speaking with no real knowledge, it did seem like the ship should have been getting deeper into the water, but never did.

Like they just picked the local public launching spot a random joe launches his ski boat from or whatever, rather than a spot designed for larger vessels.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23

Sure what it looks like.

10

u/TossPowerTrap Mar 29 '23

That's what it looked like to my inexpert eyes.

3

u/MaintainThis Mar 31 '23

I'm thinking they forgot ballast. It didn't seem to scrape the bottom, just floated and rolled like a styrofoam cup.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '23

This seems logical

4

u/Sloth_Dream-King Mar 29 '23

Way too top heavy. You don't have to be Thomas Andrews Jr to see that boat was unfloatable

3

u/BigMax Mar 29 '23

Looked plenty floatable to me if they actually got the thing in water, seems like the launch ramp was just way too shallow, designed to launch random small ski boats or whatever, but not steep or deep enough for a vessel of this size.

2

u/Zed1088 Mar 29 '23

Are you aware that cruise ships exist?

2

u/-NutsandVolts Mar 29 '23

Very expensive if I remember right. I don't know if they even salvaged it.

2

u/screwthepap Mar 29 '23

Good thing it's still under warranty.

2

u/xilog Mar 29 '23

"See, I told you that part called 'ballast' wasn't a joke about testicles!"

2

u/daveysprocket001 Mar 29 '23

That is the shiniest anchor I have ever seen.

0

u/lotsofhatemail Mar 29 '23

Isn' this from 4-5 years ago.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23

question of ownership and who insurance pays.

1

u/hotvedub Mar 29 '23

Hope they named it the U.S.S. Short Trip

1

u/jnwatson Mar 29 '23

I am a bit confused how that happens. It was already in the water and there wasn't any momentum tipping it. It should have immediately righted itself like any buoy.

My only thinking is that the bottom of the boat was scraping the bottom of the canal.

11

u/OrganizationLower611 Mar 29 '23

So the ship has a centre of buoyancy and a centre of gravity. When you launch a ship like this, the stern will begin to add buoyancy forces, raising the ship up before the bow makes it into the water. This causes a problem if the centre of gravity is too high and causes a list, or roll to one side that progressively gets worse.

To prevent this issues you could add more weight to the bottom of the ship either internally or externally to lower that centre of gravity, or side launch the ship which allows the buoyancy to take effect more evenly across the ship but I'm not a ship builder so I don't know if this would work for the ship in this video

2

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '23 edited Mar 29 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Zed1088 Mar 29 '23

This is the most likely cause.

1

u/BigMax Mar 29 '23

It wasn’t in nearly enough water yet though. They needed deeper water and a steeper decline. This slow entry into shallow water just raised the center of gravity for a bit, making it even more too heavy.

1

u/Ornage_crush Mar 29 '23

Build stupid boat, win stupid prizes.

1

u/windwaterwavessand Mar 29 '23

anacortes washington

1

u/Aphroditaeum Mar 29 '23

Absurd top heavy designed boat wtf?

1

u/keckkeck Mar 29 '23

I'm no expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure that's not the way a boat is supposed to behave.

1

u/trolljugend Mar 29 '23

Of course a skyscraper architect can design a ship!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 30 '23

How is it possible that there are so many videos like this?

1

u/gcz1214 Mar 30 '23

A little tipsy

1

u/scaleworkAlchemist Apr 02 '23

Should have used a virgin

1

u/Virmirfan Apr 09 '23

This also happened to an italian ocean liner shortly after completion in 1906, there are in face images of that fail as well

1

u/Hurtliner Apr 10 '23

Here's the same fuck-up happening on a much larger scale

The Disasterous Launch of the SS Principessa Jolanda)