I used to know a guy who worked for a transportation company that specialized on large transports. Such a transport takes years of planning, coordinating with police, field trips to check the current state because a lot of maps are wrong and so on. Bridges may not be as strong as offically declared. You have to balance the cost of dismantling obstacles against the cost of taking another route or not doing the transport at all.
It's a crazy detailed process with almost no tolerance for mistakes. You really don't want to get stuck with some industrial vessel weighing hundreds of tons.
I did. And I'm just saying everyone in the vicinity knew about the movement and were advised that there might be delays, as happens when moving large loads. Of course, there might be non-locals who get caught out.
Uh huh. And my comment is talking about IF IT GOT STUCK
So like, not the movement and delays that were advised ahead of time. But rather, a space shuttle just living in the middle of Maple Street indefinitely.
See how that's a different type of inconvenience from the one the locals were prepared for?
Watched a doc about the SR71 the other day and it mentioned how they cleared space along the roadways before transporting from Skunk Works in Burbank to Area 51 for testing
Funny enough, they got into an accident along the way and paid a bunch of hush money to keep the person that hit them from reporting it
I always wonder about that. Do thet sign a contract? I am curious in terms of politics. What's to stop a politician from taking bribes from a lobbyist, donating the money to charity, and then outing the lobbyist to the public?
What's to stop a politician from going back on their word? How do these companies and governments ensure compliance with a pay off?
What's to stop that person from reporting it to the news as soon as they got paid?
Yes. They sign a non-disclosure agreement with the government. That agreement also involves waiving their first amendment rights when it comes to the secret subject.
What's to stop a politician from taking bribes from a lobbyist, donating the money to charity, and then outing the lobbyist to the public?
Bribery laws. They don't require the politician to actually do what the lobbyist is paying for. Just the solicitation and receipt of the money is enough.
What's to stop a politician from going back on their word?
In this case, the person who was paid signed an NDA that presumably had pretty hefty financial penalties for breaking it. Sure they could speak out, but they would be out of luck in court trying to avoid the penalty. You can write an NDA about most topics and it would be enforceable by the law if signed.
I do exactly that for a living and you are correct. Years of planning, permits beyond permits beyond permits. Tons of people to coordinate. Street intersections to rebuild. Bridges to analyze. Wires to lift/bury underground.
Starts with a phonecall about moving something ludicrously unpractical to move and a bunch of madlads already finding solutions to move it.
"So, uhh, first I need to verify you are, A: sitting, and B: not drinking anything. Good? Good. So anyway I got a fantastic deal on govdeals but there's one small catch..."
Yeah I had to move drilling equipment over a bridge to a barrier island. The bridge wasn’t strong enough for the drill rig, not even close. So we flew them over with helicopters lol.
I work with that and you explained it very well. Once I was driving a bridge that we had to transport and someone was panicking because they noticed they had missed a piece of metal poking up from the road we had to go down, as a part of an old gate. Was fairly easy to avoid it with the wheel lines as I could look underneath it. But it was clear he was embarrassed and feared he had delayed the whole project, if just for a little bit. With the amount of planning going into these things it’s very rare big mistakes are made.
I wonder how big you'd need to make a dirigible to lift one of those 300m turbine blades. Transporting them is a nightmare because they're so long, but they're probably pretty light. You'd probably need to clad it in something to make it catch less wind though.
I do this for a living. Sometimes the planning process is months, but usually it's all complete in a couple of weeks and the rest is waiting on permits. With super-heavy loads, every bridge and structure on the route has to be analyzed by an engineer and that can take a very long time. It's a back and forth with every state on the way until everyone is satisfied the haul will be safe.
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u/Below-Average-528 4h ago
I used to know a guy who worked for a transportation company that specialized on large transports. Such a transport takes years of planning, coordinating with police, field trips to check the current state because a lot of maps are wrong and so on. Bridges may not be as strong as offically declared. You have to balance the cost of dismantling obstacles against the cost of taking another route or not doing the transport at all.
It's a crazy detailed process with almost no tolerance for mistakes. You really don't want to get stuck with some industrial vessel weighing hundreds of tons.