Costa Concordia is upright again | Bangkok Post: learning


Perfect job: Costa Concordia is upright again

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OK, engineers. Your job is to get a 290 metre-long, 114,500 ton cruise ship upright and removed from the island harbour where it rests. Find out how it was done, exactly according to plan, in text, photos, graphics and video.

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(Left) The Costa Condoria lying at at 65-degree angle after the accident. Filippo Monteforte/AFP; The Concordia upright again after a 19-hour operation Andreas Solaro, AFP

Costa Concordia is upright again

Engineers get perfect score

OK, engineers. Here's a problem for you. There has been a bad accident off of Giglio island in Italy in which a cruise ship carrying thousands of passengers hit an underwater rock, badly damaging it and killing 30 people. The ship managed to get to a nearby harbour but it has turned onto its side at a 65 degree angle

Your problem: Get the ship upright and remove it.

This photo give a good idea of just how big the ship is. AFP

Basic parbuckling. Graphic from

Oh yes, the cruise ship is 290 metres long (the length of almost three football pitches) and weighs 114,500 tons.

This was the task given to a team of engineers from several countries. To minimise damage to the environment the Italian government decided on a two-step operation: pulling the ship upright through a modern version of “parbuckling” (see graphic) and attaching huge (as high as 11-storey buildings) box-like structures called "sponsons" to its sides to allow the ship to be floated away.

Since the ship was resting on a slope however, a very large artificial platform had to be built underwater to keep the ship from sliding to the bottom.

The operation to pull the ship upright began on Monday and took 19 hours to complete. Everything went according to plan. It was almost perfect engineering at work.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship begins to emerge from the water. Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

A series of 11 towers with hydraulic mechanisms controlling 36 cables under the ship, and attached to its side, slowly rotated the vessel   Once it had risen by 24 degrees, gravity started to help since the sponsons on one side of the ship had been filled with water.

One side of the ship was badly damaged, delaying the installation of the box-like sponsons that will float it away. Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

Since the other side of the ship had been underwater for more than a year, however, it was badly damaged and it is not yet possible to attach the sponsons to float the ship away. That is likely to happen sometime next year.

Adapted from agency stories

19 hours compressed into 40 seconds in this timelapse video by AFP.

Video streaming by Ustream




attach: to fasten or join one thing to another - ทำให้ติดกัน, ต่อ, ยึดติด

compress: to press or squeeze something together or into a smaller space; to be pressed or squeezed in this way - บีบอัด, กดเข้าด้วยกัน


environment: a place, including all the physical conditions that affect it - สภาพแวดล้อม, สิ่งแวดล้อม


gravity (adjective form: gravitational): the force that attracts objects in space towards each other, and that on the earth pulls them towards the centre of the planet, so that things fall to the ground when they are dropped - แรงดึงดูดของโลก


hydraulic: using the pressure of water or oil to make something work - ซึ่งใช้น้ำในการขับเคลื่อน

mechanism: a set of moving parts in a machine that performs a task - กลไก, ตัวจักร

minimise: to reduce something harmful or unpleasant to the smallest amount or degree - ลดให้เหลือน้อยที่สุด

operation: an activity which is planned to achieve something - การดำเนินการ

pitch: an area painted with lines for playing particular sports, especially football - สนามฟุตบอล

platform: a structure built in/above the sea - แท่น

remove: to take something away - เอาออกจาก

rotate: to move in a circle around a fixed central point, or to move something in this way - หมุน

slide (past form: slid): to move easily over a smooth or wet surface; to make something move in this way - ลื่น

slope: a straight surface that has one end higher than the other - พื้นที่ลาดเอียง, ที่ลาด

task: something that you have to do - หน้าที่; ภารกิจ

time-lapse: (of photography) using a method in which a series of individual pictures of a process are shown together so that something that really happens very slowly is shown as happening very quickly -

tower: a tall narrow building or part of a building, especially of a church or castle - หอสูง,หอคอย,เจดีย์

upright: placed in a vertical position; - ที่ตั้งขึ้น, ที่ตั้งตรง

vessel: a boat or ship - เรือ

wreck: the remaining parts of something that has been badly damaged - ซาก

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