Be aware that the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) will need to classify the vessel, and if they have not done so for a dredge of the size described for some time then it can be expected that this will add to a time estimate for completion.
The physics is not hard and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) manuals are good enough that they are used in various countries to educate young engineer’s on coastal soil dynamics (Hi!), so if discussions of green cards are on the table then the right people within the US are being overlooked.
ABS certified steel is manufactured in America (of course but worth noting).
Manufacturing huge ships is a labour intensive operation and the bottleneck I suspect will be cost of Labor. Keppel Fels or Jurong can build comparable vessels for the likes of Valaris (the DPS-1 ne Atwood Condor is a Singapore build which is in my neighbourhood now) for peanuts because they employ thousands on thousands of serfs. Constructing a similar sized vessel with mechanical systems integrated in America would require a bypassing labour by investing hugely in automated fabrication plant and methods, on a large plot of land near a large port.
I expect Elon Musk could do it. Make the dredging company a subsidiary of the boring company and buy a plot of industrial portside land and build a marine giga-factory. Maybe Bezos will feel competitive enough to do it first.
A dollar-value answer doesn’t quite address the question of whether the correct way to answer “we can do it” is by spending a fortune on American labour (seems like a good thing, pays mortgages) or a fortune on new and likely novel large scale autated fabrication processes (also seems like a good thing, pays different people’s mortgages and possibly adds to current state of human knowledge and industry).
Be aware that the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) will need to classify the vessel, and if they have not done so for a dredge of the size described for some time then it can be expected that this will add to a time estimate for completion.
The physics is not hard and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) manuals are good enough that they are used in various countries to educate young engineer’s on coastal soil dynamics (Hi!), so if discussions of green cards are on the table then the right people within the US are being overlooked.
ABS certified steel is manufactured in America (of course but worth noting).
Manufacturing huge ships is a labour intensive operation and the bottleneck I suspect will be cost of Labor. Keppel Fels or Jurong can build comparable vessels for the likes of Valaris (the DPS-1 ne Atwood Condor is a Singapore build which is in my neighbourhood now) for peanuts because they employ thousands on thousands of serfs. Constructing a similar sized vessel with mechanical systems integrated in America would require a bypassing labour by investing hugely in automated fabrication plant and methods, on a large plot of land near a large port.
I expect Elon Musk could do it. Make the dredging company a subsidiary of the boring company and buy a plot of industrial portside land and build a marine giga-factory. Maybe Bezos will feel competitive enough to do it first.
A dollar-value answer doesn’t quite address the question of whether the correct way to answer “we can do it” is by spending a fortune on American labour (seems like a good thing, pays mortgages) or a fortune on new and likely novel large scale autated fabrication processes (also seems like a good thing, pays different people’s mortgages and possibly adds to current state of human knowledge and industry).