Hubris

Well, have you ever stood on a lift like that? I did, on a regular basis. You can lean over quite a bit with them.

Also, the lift itself already has play. You can easily get it to swing 4 centimeters while the base is stationary. It's just play in bearings and metal slightly bending.

I agree that the lift is not made to be like that. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. I've done worse, that is for sure. But you have to use your brain.

Clearly the platform has great floating capacity. If the platform would not be capable of carrying that load, it would have sunk by now. The lift is in the middle, who j means the load is putting equal pressure on all sides. That has a stabilizing effect.

Water also pushes back. If you've every tried to flip a raft in the pool, you know that it is much easier if you move it side to side a few times, the water wil help you push it over, as long as you keep adding energy at every swing. If you don't, you will stabilize.

Unless something keeps adding energy to the swing, the swing will only get smaller and smaller. If it's swinging too much? Just stand still, don't move and let it stabilize.

The one thing to keep in mind is that the higher you go, the bigger the leverage is. At some point it will probably tip over if you swing it too much, but I don't think those guys are at that point.

But in the end, this is probably not the proper way to do the work. It's fun to discuss it, but a professional company would arrange something else.

Still legendary though, I've worked for companies that would do sketchy shit sometimes and while dangerous, it was also kind of fun. And I always checked for myself first if it was safe. Because I want to go home at the end of the day. Doesn't mean you have to be scared of everything though.

What makes you say the dock isn't designed to carry equipment?

If they have to get out of the lift, it is at it's lowest position. That means all the weight is in the middle of the platform and the weight of 2 man will not be enough to make the platform flip over.

They will have to jump to the side I suppose. Just step off. Maybe the can even paddle the platform around, I imagine there is at least one piece of rope to manipulate the platform when there is nobody on it.

The lift will go off, the same way it came on. Probably some sort of crane. I cannot imagine they just drove it on there, but maybe they did. Maybe even a forklift with long forks. There are forklifts that could probably handle that kind of weight so far away on the forks.

My emotional support boar

They're a vacation where everything is taken care of for you. Find a spot, read a book, get all the drinks you want. Need food? Walk over to the chosen food place. Even with thousands of people on board, you can generally find a quiet spot with drinks.

There's all-inclusive resorts, yes, and I've found they're generally more expensive than cruises. If you make your resort hotel float, it's cheaper. I don't know why.

I'd only go anymore if it's a trip that would show things you generally can't see other ways, such as the coast of Alaska or Norway, or going through the Panama Canal. Caribbean cruises are an absolute waste.

Apart from the terrible environmental effects, they're a blast. I'm not in for slides and shit, but the full experience is generally really enjoyable. If you like to travel, it's also a good way to trial destinations before committing to a long vacation somewhere.

Cruises would be pretty interesting if once out at sea they released 30 wild boar.

there is absolutely nothing i find appealing about going to a theme park that's been crammed onto a boat and being surrounded by rich tourists and screaming kids. and of course someone picks up some exotic flu strain on an excursion and now the entire ship is sick.

thanks, but i'll pass

If you are talking about the shape (wider on the top than on the bottom), it's not really a problem.

If you are talking about any other thing, you are probably right.

I’ve been invited on a few cruises.

I was in the navy, and immediately launch into a tirade about how top heavy and unsafe those things are.

“Well it’s never been a problem for us”

Okie dokie, I took statistics, so hard pass all the same :)

Because they're fun.

I'm from the city which builds these.

We built the previous largest record ships as well. I drove people to an event when Oasis of the Seas launched, iirc.

This somehow seems much taller from this perspective. Bet it's the lense a bit, but also, it's the fact that the ships are so big that driving next to them gives you no sense of their scale. Or height, at least.

Although I know that in comparison to the ferries we actually use, these are humongous.

And even the ferries feel absolutely huge when you're standing on the top deck and looking down at the sea.

I don't have like much thalassophobia or the fear of heights, but leaning over a railing on a cruise ship in the middle of the night to gaze at the abyss really does chill a person a little. I just wonder how that would feel at the top of one of those highers decks. Especially in a storm.

That looks to me like a drawing by the design/architecture team, but there is a real boat like that and it's a pretty close match for the design. Here's a video with drone footage from the launch; 1:39 you can see a view kinda similar to the drawing.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bw4_PUtqdF4

It's real! https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/icon-of-the-seas

If you showed a picture of a standard tower crane to someone with a decent understanding of physics but had never seen one before, they would similarly recoil and go "WTF why are you suspending a bunch of concrete blocks high in the sky on what looks like a pencil thin beam!" and it would take some explaining, OR it would take seeing it regularly for that person to become okay with it.

People don't see this every day, so they don't take it for granted, and therefore it looks insane. Just like tower cranes look insane.

I'm familiar with both of those words. Ok also familiar with the idea of a lever-arm, and this one is too long for my sense of safety.

The floats are EZDocks, each with a carrying capacity of 3,000lbs, total capacity is 12,000lbs.

The lift is a JLG 3246es, which has a weight of less than 5,000lbs.

I have done way sketchier shit than that. That is like a 4/10.

I mean, you can see in the picture it's being done successfully...

Presumably they're not frozen in time. The post was made a day ago, so at least several hours before your comment, and the picture was probably not taken minutes before the post was made. I'd imagine they got out of the water long before any of us were aware that they were ever in the water. And given that the picture isn't accompanied by a second picture of everything in the water or a story about them falling in, it's reasonable to assume that nothing as notable as that happened.

Maybe so but a boat isn’t submerged flatly like the square span of this floaty thing on the picture. If it also had some pole thingy underwater we can’t see then I wouldn’t be surprised people felt ok climbing this machinery

Additionally if it’s like filled with air, empty inside, then it would be really hard to capsize this thing at all because of how it refuses to sink from any corner or side

It’s not as dramatic as it looks is my point, looks funny but actually it’s probably pretty safe because we under appreciate the lifting force of floaty shit filled with air. Boats need to be hydrodynamic so they are naturally more prone to shenanigans like a barrel on the water would be but this square thing is dedicated to sole task of not capsizing with great resistance to being submerged at any point of itself

Actually the rule is that if they were fully just over water they would be ok to not wear a harness but due to there being a platform beneath their working area OSHA would require harnesses with connections made to ceiling or a guide line installed for working at those heights. This is also true if you are between 2 boats for work as they are still seen as more dangerous.

But open water in a boom lift? Yeah, no harness needed.