How Do You Stop a Massive Ship?

Rhett Allain
6 min readMar 29, 2024
Image: NTSB. From the NTSB Drone Video of the Dali collision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

It was a tragedy. There was a loss of life, huge economic impact as well as damage to infrastructure. Yes, I’m referring to the to collision between the DALI cargo ship and the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the port of Baltimore. The ship appears to have lost power which resulted in a loss of control. This lead to a collision and a collapse of the bridge.

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Rhett Allain

Physics faculty, science blogger of all things geek. Technical Consultant for CBS MacGyver and MythBusters. WIRED blogger.