Just dig a new canal around the ship?

A quarter mile diversion can't take that long to dig. The whole canal is 120 miles, so an extra quarter mile they should be able to dig in a few days I would think?

This sounds eerily similar to "Just add the new feature, it can't take that long". Things are complicated.

I mean it is just typing... how hard can it be?

Volume is ^3 of the linear size. To get a clear picture of how much it is do this:

- launch minecraft in creative mode and make 40x40 pad of steel blocks, 1 block high. You should do it in a few minutes.

- now do a 40x40x40 cube. Good luck for the rest of your day.

"Quarter mile" is a linear dimension. What is the width?

If you had to estimate the volume of earth in that 'quarter mile', and then estimate the size of an excavator bucket, and the capacity of a dump truck, and the availability of all those things at any given time (even if you ship them in), you'd soon realize that just digging out that earth will take more time.

On top of that, there's going to be FLOW in the canal - what will your diversion to for erosion, pressure on the locks, etc.

You risk damaging the canal itself to deal with a temporary problem if you think you can just 'dig around it' in 5 days. My bet is you've never seen how long it takes to plan something with this much risk involved.

This isn't software, you aren't going to Agile it away if you screw it up.

This man doesn't infrastructure.

(If you think it's that easy, pop over and ask if you can have a go on the JCB)

I actually spent a few weeks of my life driving a JCB commercially...

> The whole canal is 120 miles, so an extra quarter mile they should be able to dig in a few days I would think?

Uh, what? Why would the length of the canal as a whole tell you anything about how long digging a quarter-mile section would take? If the canal as a whole was longer or shorter, would that somehow change your estimate?

Yes it would... I know the suez canal was a once-per-century type infrastructure investment for Egypt. Doing that same investment again probbaly isn't feasible. But doing 0.2% of the work again is starting to sound pretty affordable...

> suez canal was a once-per-century type infrastructure investment for Egypt.

Once-per-century investment for France. It was, like the Eurotunnel, nominally privately funded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal_Company but with significant political cover.

Just get people who know what they are doing to sort it out.

Lol no

Sounds easier to just dig through the ship.

You're swapping moving a mostly hollow ship with containers for moving a far larger volume of solid earth.

"Just" widen the canal so it can continue pivoting around the most stuck end until its straight again.