Großtechnologie & Weltwirtschaft

The EMMA MAERSK, part of a Danish ship­ping line, is shown on the lin­ked page.
What a ship!
No won­der 'Made in Chi­na' is dis­pla­cing North Ame­ri­can made goods big time. This mon­ster trans­ports goods across the Paci­fic in just 5 days!

This is one of three ships pre­sent­ly in ser­vice, with ano­ther two ships com­mis­sio­ned to be com­ple­ted in 2012. The­se ships were com­mis­sio­ned by Wal-Mart to get all their goods and stuff from Chi­na. They hold an incre­di­ble 15,000 car­tons and have a 207 foot deck beam! The full crew is just 13 peo­p­le on a ship lon­ger than a US Air­craft Car­ri­er (which has a crew of 5,000). With its 207' beam it is too big to fit through the Pana­ma or Suez Canals .. It is strict­ly transpacific.

The goods arri­ve 4 days befo­re the typi­cal con­tai­ner ship (18−20 knots) on a Chi­na-to-Cali­for­nia run. 91% of Walm­art pro­ducts are made in Chi­na . So this behe­mo­th is huge­ly com­pe­ti­ti­ve even when car­ry­ing peri­s­ha­ble goods. The ship was built in five sec­tions. The sec­tions floa­ted together
and then wel­ded. The com­mand bridge is hig­her than a 10-sto­ry buil­ding and has 11 car­go cra­ne rigs that can ope­ra­te simul­ta­neous­ly unloa­ding the enti­re ship in less than two hours.
Addi­tio­nal info:

• Coun­try of ori­gin - Denmark
• Length - 1,302 ft
• Width - 207 ft
• Net car­go - 123,200 tons
• Engi­ne - 14 cylin­ders in-line die­sel engi­ne (110,000 BHP)
• Crui­se Speed - 31 knots [Sili­co­ne pain­ting applied to the ship bot­tom redu­ces water resi­stance and saves 317,000 gal­lons of die­sel per year.]
• Car­go capa­ci­ty - 15,000 TEU (1 TEU = 20 cubic feet)
• Crew - 13 people!
• First Trip - Sept. 08, 2006
• Cons­truc­tion cost - US $145,000,000