June 14, 2017 • 47 mins
These purpose-built vessels are tasked with breaking through thick ice in order to keep shipping lanes and ports open during the winter months. But they don’t break the ice the way you probably think they do – there’s a surprising twist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Scott and Ben and we
are joined by our super producer Alex Williams. Today and
today I kind of just want to dive right into
(00:24):
this diving well, okay, Um, I spent way too much
time last night working on opening puns about how to
break the ice of stuff. Yeah, I was gonna I
was gonna try to work something, and I couldn't really
think of how to do this either, because I was
kind of thinking about it as well, like icebreakers don't
need to think of an icebreaker is like what they
(00:47):
do at It was like corny meetings maybe at your office,
where they try to have everybody like get into small
groups and then talk about their hobbies or something like that,
say your name and something interesting about yourself. That an
ice breaker. But that's not the icebreaker that we're gonna
talk about today. No. No, we're not talking about picking
people up at clubs. We're not talking about weird getting
(01:09):
to know you work meetings. Isn't there a gum named
icebreakers because we're not talking about that either. No, it's
pretty good though not candy something like that. Okay, it's
it's about the game. There's a game, Oh, don't break
the ice. Don't break the ice with a little hammers
and you have to knock out the cubes. That was
a fun game. I played hours of that with my kid.
A deep cut. Scott was well. Although we have gone
(01:33):
through several things that are different forms of icebreakers, today
we are going to focus on the literal vessels known
as ice breakers. And what's really interesting to both of
us about this is many people are maybe aware these
(01:53):
things exist, but are not aware of what a vital
role they play in so many fields of trade. Yeah,
these are purpose built chips or vessels that are designed
to just smash through the ice, you know, when the
ice gets too thick, uh, and the normal shipping channels
are closed off because the thick ice, if there's any
(02:14):
ice there at all, really you need an ice breaker
to come in and uh, you know, clear the path
for you, right. And these uh, these chips again play
a crucial role in making waterways safe for the multitudes
of other boats and watercraft in general that go through
(02:34):
these waters. And they are beast for something to be
considered an icebreaker, it's gonna have three things. Strengthened whole,
an ice clearing shape which we can explore to and
most importantly, the power to push through the ice, which
is no small fee. Yeah, and okay, that's I know
(02:55):
you just mentioned three things. I've got a couple of
lists that we're gonna get to as well that have
it seems like thirty things that you know, thirty items,
thirty key features that um, well, a couple of different
types of ships actually require because there's a difference there's
ice strengthened ships and then there's ice breakers, and there's
a distinct difference between the two. And well, we'll get
(03:16):
to it. But you might think, well, how really, how
often is this necessary. There's a lot of countries that need,
um these ships in order to keep their shipping channels open.
It's it's vital for trade, vital for you know, their economy.
So you know, typically areas that are countries I guess
that have interests in the Northeast and the northwest passages
in the Arctic, in the shipping lanes they have to
keep open during the winter months are the ones that
(03:36):
are going to require the services of these this this
type of vessel. Um, you're not gonna find them in
the you know, the Equator region. You could find them
in the you know and in most situation, well, you
gonna find them on the Great Lakes because that they're
necessary there. You're gonna find them. Well, you know what,
there's one that reached the North Pole. The icebreaker reached
the North Pole. That was because a Russian ship. Um
(03:57):
got a note on that somewhere in here that I'll
get to. But um, they're really they're they're far more
fascinating than you might give them credit for us not
just a boat that drives into the ice and breaks
it up. There's way more to it than that. Um,
So where do you want to start back? Because we
really haven't even broken the ice on this episode. Okay,
I think we each get one pass for that. Jokay,
(04:18):
I'm done. I think I used my way too early.
All right, let's see if we can make it through.
So let's start with some of the history, because ice
breakers were always around, but ice strengthened ships were This
is crazy. So you gotta imagine back in the days
of wooden ships, in the in the age of sail. Yeah, gosh,
it's hard to believe when you look at a modern
(04:40):
ice breaking ship, as we'll get to we'll talk about,
you know, all the features and and uh, you know
the functions of this thing, and then you look back
at what they were doing, you know, hundreds of years ago,
you know, the earliest days of polar exploration. You know,
these ice strengthened ships were used. They were wooden ships,
and so they had you know, they would have of course,
um kind of beefed up design and I guess they
would have steel that was wrapped around the waterline, and
(05:02):
they had double planking on the hull. They would have
strengthening cross members inside the ship, and then bands of
irons around the outside and along the keel. It was
like they were just these um, just reinforced wooden ships
that they were, but still wooden ships that they're smashing
through ice with. It's it's crazy to think about that.
And one of the reasons that this reinforcement was so key,
(05:22):
you know, in the age of sail and wooden boats,
is because of the possibility of something referred to as nipping.
Nipping is a phenomenon where flows of ice around a
ship end up pushing against it, so squeezing it, putting
it in almost like a vice. And this is caused
by wind, and of course tides will still affect ice formations.
(05:46):
The weird thing about this is although those forces, the
wind and the tides, could be you know, the actual
energy producing this effect could be occurring many miles away,
it turns out ices and excellent transmitter of that force. Yeah,
you said it's like a vice. And they say that
if you know, a ship is caught in this situation,
it can be lost within as as you know, quickly
(06:08):
as fifteen minutes. Ship can be completely crushed by that
pressure that's being exerted on the outside. So you know,
in the days of wooden ships, the older vessels could, uh,
they can survive that type of thing, but they weren't
nearly as good as the modern vessels are. I mean,
the modern ones are significantly stronger. So there are a
lot of tales of you know, ships that were lost
in the in the Arctic. You know, you've probably seen
(06:30):
or heard of some of those kind of crazy stories
of you know, like you'll find a vessel from hundreds
of years ago that's kind of it looks like it's
not land locked, but it's ice locked frozen in time,
and they find you know, all the stuff that's you know,
that was on board, you know, the whatever, it's rum
and barrels or something. I don't know. Maybe you would
hope it's treasure, but it's not treasure because they're just
there to break the ice. Really, that was why they
(06:50):
were there. But but it still makes for interesting photographs
and interesting Um I guess, can you call it an
archaeological dig if it's in the ice? I guess sites
maybe maybe Yeah, I don't know, but I've heard I've
heard stories of these things that they find these incredible
ships that are stuck in the ice, and you wonder
how long has it been there and how did that
get there? Really that's the bigger questions sometimes bodies. But
(07:12):
now we know, Yeah, now we know. And so with
this ancient technology, there were other approaches to The first
widespread Arctic craft were actually very light covered kayaks and
they you know, of course they couldn't break the ice,
but they were easy to pick up and carry across
the ice long distance, long distances. And as the technology
(07:36):
behind water vessels of the world improved, ice breaking technology
improved as well. So after the Age of sail. When
steamboats became a thing, they also had to be designed
to operate in icy conditions depending on where they were located. Yea,
So they had new propulsion, of course, and uh and
with that became became advancements. I suppose in the way
(07:58):
that they were thinking about the hull of ships too.
They weren't taking wooden ships into the Arctic regions anymore.
They were taking sometimes, you know, entire steel hall ships. Uh.
And and even then they found new ways to develop
and make that steel stronger. So we'll talk about, you know,
the different techniques they use in the hull and just
in just a moment. But um, you know, propulsion was
(08:19):
kind of an exciting thing for a while because uh,
you know, the advancement to steam was huge, right then
they went on beyond that as well. Yeah. Yeah. So
one example of a steam powered ship that was I
don't know if you call an icebreaker, but it was
designed to to be ice strengthened. It's probably the best
way to say. It was a wooden paddle steamer called
(08:40):
City ice Boat Number one. And this was operating in Philadelphia,
so it's still had wooden paddles, but you know, I
had a two fifty horse power steam engines. Uh that
that were the paddles were reinforced with iron covering. It's
crazy to think about it, isn't it Like it's a
paddle boat icebreaker. That's really strange, Just a strange thought.
(09:02):
If you've ever seen a paddle boat on maybe the
Mississippi River or something like that. I grew up around
those types of things, like, you know, taking weekend tours
on those and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, on steam on the
paddle boats. Yeah, then they on the rivers. Uh, it's fun,
still fun. But you know, one thing that we haven't
really mentioned is that, um, we talked about ice breakers
a little bit. We talked a little bit about ice strengthening.
(09:22):
You know that the strengthening was the wooden ones. UM.
Ships that don't have this type of technology built into them,
if you want to call it technology, you know, the
early days. I don't know if it's just trying to
you know, outsmart the ice really. Um, but if you
if a ship is not equipped to to be a well,
shouldn't say that Maybe if it's not a a and
(09:42):
ice strengthened ship, they wouldn't dare touch ice, They wouldn't
bump into. If they see ice in the in the way,
they'll go around that ice or they'll stop and retreat. Um,
they're not meant at all to to come and contact
at all with ice, because we've all seen the diagram
of the iceberg. What's beneath right right, so you only
see the tip of the iceberg. That iceberg could outweigh
(10:05):
the ship by you know, you know, tens of times
and uh, and to try to push that, you know,
it might rip a hole in the in the hull
very easily. So anything that's not ice strengthened won't even
get near ice. They just they back off or they
call somebody in. So anything that any ship that is
in a shipping lane has a possibility of coming across,
even like you know, stuff that broke off of an
(10:27):
ice flow, they will be ice strengthened in some way. Yes,
And of course this presents, as you can understand, a
dilemma for a lot of Scandinavian countries, a lot of
countries in the Upper Edge like Canada as well. Uh,
it presents a dilemma because you have to be able
(10:48):
to trade, you have to be able to travel. But
if you're in a part of the world where let's
say things are frozen for six months out of the year,
how can you continue to do business? You know that's true.
I mean, if you're in these extreme north or southern latitudes,
you're gonna encounter ice in some in some fashions, so
you have to be ready. They have to make these
(11:09):
ships stronger, and that makes it means that they're probably
more expensive to make them as well. So there's there's
another delanne. I guess if you're going to operate, it's
the cost of business or cost of operating is going
to be that much more for you. And so I
I want to uh walk us up real quick, or
should I say, oh gosh, these ship puns are coming
at me left and right. I'm doing my best votes
(11:29):
not to make them. But let's let's go through, uh
the the other predecessors of modern icebreakers. Spoiler alert. Russia
is at the forefront of this technology and has been
for a long time, and right now, even even in
ten when we're recording this, not only is Russia's still
(11:53):
the leader, but they're probably going to be the leader
for a long time unless something changes. The rush and
pilot it's the name of the ship in eighteen sixty
four that was a predecessor of modern ice breakers. It
had a propeller and they used it in one of
those areas that we were talking about, where the where
(12:14):
otherwise the icy waters are not navigable for part of
the year. It was an area called the White Sea.
Um It was used between eighteen sixty four to eighteen
ninety on the Gulf of Finland's and just using this
one ship they were able to extend the summer navigation
season by several weeks. There, you go, pays for itself
(12:35):
in that right. I mean, if if they were having
to you know, shut off that channel completely, imagine what
they would have to do in order to get those
goods or you know, those those items to where they
have to go. Uh. It's it's just makes it makes
really good economic sense to keep something like this around.
I mean, you know, it's expensive. These are expensive to build,
they're expensive to run or to operate. They take a
lot of fuel. It takes a time to so much
(12:57):
fuel a day, unbelievable. They're not they're built for fuel economy,
No they're not. But they are extremely strong and uh
and it again, it pays off to have something like
this in your fleet, if you have a shipping channel
that is going to be blocked by ice at some
point during the year. Yeah, and Russia of course realized this,
so in eight they built the what is considered the
(13:22):
first modern polar ice breaker, and it was called the
rmac hardon my pronunciation there. Uh. It was built by
the Russian Navy and when it was commissioned in October
of it took another year to build it and in
eight it broke through ice. They had the formal reception,
(13:43):
you know, I imagined, they christened it. And because this
was now built by a navy, it also functioned in
a military capacity, so it helped evacuate the Baltic fleet
in World War One. It was mobilized in World War Two.
I mean this was a round for a long time
scott and armed with guns too, yeah, to provide force projections.
(14:08):
Oh no, kidding, So it was a well it was
actually an armed ship at some point in history. And
then it remains I think one of the longest serving
ice breakers in the world. It wasn't decomissioned until nineteen
like what it's like sixty or seventy years right, yeah, yeah,
don't break it, don't fix it. If it's not broken,
(14:28):
don't break it either. One. I'm the one slipping on
the idiens today. But this brings us to the age
of the modern ice breaker, and it is fascinating. How
fascinating you ask? We can't wait to tell you after
a word from our sponsor and we're back in. Ben,
(14:56):
you were saying that we're going to kind of uh
jump the gap here into the modern era of ice breakers,
right the crevasse, jump the curvas That's what I should
have said. How many ice terms do I even know?
I don't know that many, but is a good one? Yeah? Cool, Okay,
back it down a little bit. I'm excited, Ben. Yeah,
(15:19):
we're talking about diesel engines. Now, we're talking about extreme
horse power. Some of these some of these ships have
you know, three giant diesel engines that put out you know,
twenty horsepower each, so there's you know, a combined total
of seventy five thousand. Then those are supplemented by you know,
three more engines that put out eighteen thousand horsepower each.
(15:39):
So the incredible amounts of pushing power in these things
they have to in order to you know, shove themselves
through ice that several feet thick. Yeah, like three Yeah,
it's unbelievable, three ms of ice. Can you imagine trying
to break that and and that just you know, one
little section, I mean, like break it for miles. Yeah,
and there's well, oh, before we go further, I forgot
(16:02):
we should talk about the process by which these ice
breakers break ice. This is one of the most fascinating
parts of this whole thing, because I had no idea,
and I think you thought I was joking when I
originally tried to explain it in a in a fairly
inarticulate way. Can I can I tell you one thing
or just mentioned one little thing before we get to this,
because I think it's crucial to know this before we
talk about how they do it. They don't have like
(16:24):
a knife edge front on them like you think they would.
It's more of a rounded front end. The hall is
rounded to the front, so they're able to slip up
on top of the ice a little bit easier. And
the thing is this makes it really uncomfortable to ride
and in the open sea. I mean they've got this
weird shape hull, a spoon shaped bow. Yeah, exactly, so
when you're traveling in this in these ships, and it's not,
(16:45):
you know, smashing through ice. The situation is that, you know,
even in you know, like what you call it a
gentle sea, this boat is really tossing and turning all
over the place. It doesn't have any kind of stabilization
fins or anything like that on it. It's designed to
be smooth on the bottom and you know, relatively uh,
I guess it has a I don't know what you
call it, like low friction. Maybe. Yeah, that's probably a
(17:07):
better way to say it than what I was gonna say.
I won't to tell you what I was gonna do,
something that would have sounded ridiculous. But um so even
in a light sea, um, the thing just tosses and turns.
It can it can really be a difficult ride for somebody,
um because there's no you know what has these these
rounded keels, I guess, and really nothing that sticks off
from the side to stabilize it in anyway. Here is
here's the great part. And this, I know this is
(17:30):
gonna sound weird if you've never seen Icebreaker before. I
think Scott thought I was joking when I first when
I first tried to explain it as I said before. Uh,
the way that they break the ice as as Scott mentioned,
they will slip up over it or attempt to. And
then I guess the best way to describe it, and
(17:50):
you've seen some videos to Scott, I guess the best
way to describe it is it kind of like it
like belly flops, like goes up and then crashes down. Yeah,
and uses the motion. And I looked this up because
we're not sailors, right, so I looked at I looked
up what this is affecting, and it's it's affecting the
trim of the boat. Now, the trim of the boat
is what it looks like from the side. So if
(18:12):
the if the bow is up, you can imagine it
like you know, everybody can picture this when a boat
takes off when it first launches, um, you know, a speedboat,
power boat, when you give it the gas, the front
end of the boat rises up and the back end
kind of dips down as the engine you know, spools up.
And then as you gain speed on the on the
you know, the water on the surface, the bow kind
(18:33):
of drops back down again and it and it levels out.
That's that's the trim of the boat. It's either up
the bows up or it's down. I don't know if
I'm using that term exactly the right way, but the
trim of the boat is what's affected here. That the
bow goes way way up in the air and it
kind of does like a belly flop on the top
of the ice. And so really the you know, the
engines at the back in the water, you know, churning
(18:54):
and doing all its work, and it's pushing the boat
on top of the ice and then it settles down
and then the weight of the boat itself is what
actually smashes through the ice. If they're not really like
they're not busting up by just like uh like imagine
like punching a wall or a door or something like that.
They're not breaking it that way. They're going on top
of it, cracking it, and then and then maybe in
(19:15):
some cases backing up and doing that again to get
enough ramming speed to to go on top of it again.
And they continue this kind of like um, I don't know,
it's a it's a seesaw motion really and up and
then smashed through and up and then smashed through. And
they just continually do that for miles and miles and
miles and they sometimes have to back up and get
another run at it, you know, to get the full
weight of the boat on top of the ice. But
(19:36):
they carry this incredible weight with them the in fact,
they're intentionally built heavy so that they can do this. Yeah,
because again remember that ice is often a ship killer.
So one other point that we really need to emphasize
here is this is not, uh, by any means, a
bunch of amateurs just running into ice. Daval architects who
(19:58):
design icebreakers make painstaking, excruciatingly thorough calculations because you know,
lives really are at steak. So they used this calculation
called the h V curve to determine the ice breaking
ability of a vessel, and that's an equation of what
kind of speed is the ship able to achieve the
(20:18):
thickness of the ice, And then they calculate the velocity
of the thrust from the propellers. Just just like Scott said,
people have even performed model test and an ice tank.
Really that's kind of a cool idea, right, like a
small scale actual icebreaker model. And I don't know, that
seems like a cool job, that would be cool. I
(20:40):
like watching some of those miniatures that they do, you know,
where they simulate storms and things like that. They have
a you know, like a great big shallow tank that
they have that imitate like wave actions on the shoreline
and things like that. All that stuff is really fascinating.
I can't imagine how cool a one of those frozen
would be. And watching them kind of we'll do whatever
they do with these ice breakers are ice strength and
(21:01):
ships their strength. Yeah, and there's and of course not
all icebreakers are created equally, and not all use the
exact same technique. Some icebreakers have a hole that is
wider in the bow than it is in the stern,
and these are often called reamers, and that the idea
here is that they will make the biggest clear channel
(21:25):
possible right with one pass, hopefully. And icebreakers sometimes have
auxiliary systems that are all about reducing that friction, such
as water delusions and air bubbling systems, And they try
to form a kind of layer of lubricrint between the
hole and the ice so you can slide more on
(21:45):
there and put that brutal weight down so they don't
like like disembark and then go out there with like
a can of you know what that that cooking spray
pam like spray that on the side. Then like, okay,
go for it again. They don't do that. It's the
little bit more like low tech. I guess, yeah, yeah,
because carried around all that. Yeah, I guess that would
(22:06):
be tough. Maybe. Uh, you know, what's that super lubricant
that the Clark Griswold used on his sled in Christmas vacation.
They should use that? Yeah, you know what, you should
be in charge more icebreakers. I'm an idea guy, Ben.
I told you this several times, and I don't know
how to implement any of this, but they should use that,
I mean, because that clearly must be a real product. Um, okay,
(22:27):
one quick thing. What we're talking about the size of
the ships and everything, and this is for real. I
watched a YouTube video not long ago, a couple of
days ago, and it was a Russian ship. It was
opening a channel. I don't remember exactly where this was,
but there's a bridge that went across, and I believe
that there was. Um, this is a strange one, Ben.
There was a student housing on one side of the river,
(22:48):
and there was the university, the campus on the other
side of the river, and there's a bridge and there's
this guy that operates an icebreaker. It was like a
tug boat. There's a tug boat that has been strengthened
to the point that it has become an icebreaker. It
is heavy duty, but not enough for meters thick ice.
It's it's good enough for you know, maybe a couple
of feet thick, maybe two or three feet um. So
(23:09):
this guy, his job is to keep the channel open,
and it's for shipping, of course, but one reason is
that it's dangerous for the students who try to cross
the river at various times a day because it cuts
like fifteen minutes off their walk time. If they don't
have to go across the bridge, they they sometimes will
just walk across the river. And you'll see if you
(23:29):
catch this video online. I don't even remember what it
was called, but you'll see groups of students that are
crossing the river in front of him as he's approaching
them with this icebreaker ship to break the channel. So
you know that the area that he breaks regularly is
thinner to begin with, and they're crossing that and they're
kind of defiant about it. They kind of like, you know,
give the guy a couple of hand gestures, that kind
of thing, you know, as he says, approaching, because they
(23:50):
know what he's doing. He's trying to make them take
the safer route that's also longer, but it's it's really
kind of fascinating to watch how angry the students are
at the guy breaking the ice because he's trying to
and he's trying to keep them safe. But they don't
see it that way, of course not. They've made their
own little ice road that goes across from you know,
living quarters to campus. It's a strange thing. Oh that's right.
(24:10):
We have been kind of arctic minded recently. I guess
right here, head of summer. I don't know what's going on.
Maybe it's wishful thinking. It's you man, it's too hot
Atlanta summers. So anyways, it's these videos. I tell you
that you wouldn't think that ice breaking videos are fun
to watch, but if you fast forward through them, you
can catch some really interesting stuff. Yeah, and you can
(24:31):
also see some accounts of I want I almost want
to say this for the end, but I'll just jump
into it now. You can ride on an icebreaker. You
can buy buy a ticket to ride on one of
these things, you know, like meals included, I'll take some
time because remember what I was going through that cargo
(24:52):
ship phase, and it was I was really trying to
sell Scott hard on this stuff. I was like, hey, man,
I can try the Pacific Ocean via cargo ship, and
all I need is like some flexibility in my arrival
and departure time. And Scott was saying, well, what do
you mean by flexibilities? Like, I don't like a month
or two give or take depending on the weather. It's
(25:13):
a lot of flexibility. Well that's the thing. And then
my immediate question, or my immediate thought is what do
you do if one of these gets stuck in the
ice because that happens sometimes these things get ice bound
and they have to be rescued by other other ice
breaker ships. They have to send them out. And this
is insane to think about, but you could be stuck
for months at a time, completely ice bound in some
(25:36):
Arctic region that they only know how to get to
you via the coordinates that you give them on the radio.
But you're stuck, I mean you're really stuck. So what
would happen if you were just you know, a tourist
on something like this, and he ended up stuck for
two months. And there have been cases. I boy, I
wish I had a note here, I meant to highlight this,
I didn't. There was a case where I believe it
was another Russian ship was stuck in the ice, and
(25:58):
then I think a ship from Japan maybe had gone
to to rescue that one also becomes stuck in the ice.
So they're now both stuck together up there, and they
sent out a ship from the United States to come
rescue those two. And then just as that third ship arrives,
the other two somehow managed to you know, wrestle themselves
free from the ice, and all three were able to
(26:18):
get up and you know, go on. But this took,
you know, over the course of I don't know, and
I guess two months or something like that. I can't
remember the exact time frame, but it was a long
long time between when one would get stuck, one would arrive,
and then you know, on this chain of three until
finally they all got out. It's crazy, Yeah, it's kind of.
It always makes me think of have you ever seen
(26:42):
a tow truck towing a tow truck? Yes, that's exactly it.
Reminds me of Yeah, it doesn't happen too often, but
it's kind of funny when you see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's it's funny because everybody is hopefully fine. Uh. There
there are other there are other mechanisms that engineers and
architects have built into these ships to try to prevent
(27:03):
those from occurring. One would be double action ships. These
have uh rotating propellers, so they can provide backward thrust
as well. Uh. And the idea would be that if
you have more if you have more options for which
direction to go into, you know, you can ram easier.
But also maybe maybe if you can't get out by
(27:27):
going forward, you can get unstuck in reverse, yeah, or sideways.
I think I think those pods, you know, I'm trying
to think of like modern cruise ships. They have these
pods that can spend three degrees and they're able to
maneuver in ways that you would never think. You know,
a cruise ship can spin almost on its axis. It
can spend just right in place. So if you're in
a narrow channel. UM experience this in Alaska went out
(27:48):
on a cruise. They were in this really narrow fiord
type area and I thought, how they ever gonna turn
There must be a big area where they're gonna turn
around and go out, because they're not gonna try to
back out of this area. Well, we ended up just
going right into the middle of this uh, this this
deep area and this essentially the boat just did a
complete circle right there in place. Um, almost like a
(28:09):
tank could do a circle, you know that way, like
if you can picture it that way, that's the easiest
way to think of it, Like a tank can spin
on place on its trends. Yeah, just like that. And
then we just headed out the normal way, and it
was incredible to see it happen. Um. And you don't
think it's that maneuverable, but they really are, so these pods,
and you know, the new technology really helps in um,
you know, unsticking yourself in the ice. I mean, if
(28:30):
you don't have enough PAM on hand. Yeah, it all
goes back to the pa or teflon spray or whatever. Yeah,
it's get out there and rub a little bit of
like wax paper on the hull like this really coated
and I'm sure that that's good for several you know,
several baking grease. That's right, you know. Okay, Well, um,
(28:52):
I got a couple more things I want to cover here,
but I think maybe we need to take a word
from our sponsor. First, m we have returns to uh
what will probably be one of my my favorite parts
(29:12):
of this episode. So we talked about the evolution of
you know, uh from from the ancient days of kayaks
that would just be carried across the ocean to steam
power diesel. But that's not the end of the story.
We are in a new era, my friends. Let's we
(29:35):
talked a little bit about the fuel. But I want
to enter this by putting in this comparison. Okay, So,
on average, an ice breaking vessel working in let's say Russia, right,
and if it's busting through three meter thick ice, it
would use up to a hundred tons of fuel a
day a day a day, one tons of fuel a day,
(29:58):
Oh my gosh, and l when these things are out
for months at a time. Yeah, okay, thirsty beasts, all right,
But so that's a problem, right, just even thinking about
carrying all that fuel, thinking about supply chains, thinking about
what happens if you get stranded, sure, and you become
lighter as you travel, and you become lighter as you travel.
That's a very good point. This is where the next
(30:21):
step in technology came in nuclear power. Ah, no need
to refuel. Yeah, well for long periods of time. Right,
So in that same scenario where we're talking a hundred
tons of conventional fuel, less than a pound of uranium
can provide the same bang for the buck less than
a pound per day. Yeah, but it's uranium. I guess
(30:42):
there's that. Well. Yeah, it's a little tough to get.
I guess. I mean the last time I tried to
get your ranium, it wasn't so easy. I just feel
like you shouldn't have done it on Twitter. Man. I
feel like a handwritten letter to uh m, I T
or something will work much better. Oh man, this society,
like what do they call it? The arc web stuff? Yeah? Okay,
but so that's a that's a tremendous um advancement to
(31:05):
be able to carry one pound of uranium versus a
hundred tons of fuel per day, right, And this a
lot of the a lot of the icebreakers that you
can take a tourist trip on our nuclear powered icebreakers,
and I bet they keep you out of that room
just to just a guess just yeah, I don't think
(31:26):
you get I don't think that's your best path to uranium.
I do want to be realistic, though, although this does
seem like a very exciting idea to me, it's got
a pretty hefty price for three week icebreaker cruise. Really okay,
well yeah, I'm ready? Large? Okay, what does large mean
to you? Because to me, grand dollars, twenty five thousand dollars? Really,
(31:52):
so what does large mean to you? And this is
a hundred bucks? Is large to me? Yeah? I mean
small fry, umaish, But I don't know. Twenty five large
could be twenty five bucks sometimes, so twenty five dollars
to ride on on a an icebreaker, an authentic, real icebreaker.
(32:12):
I wonder if they expect you to actually be part
of the crew. If you have to do work man
for twenty five thousand dollars, I think you should be
able to do almost whatever you want. Pilot the ship, right,
maybe a captain for that price. You are you're a
very persuasive, affable dude, so you might be able to
talk him into letting you, you know, up on the wheel.
(32:32):
You know, I would think that for dollars at some
point during that cruise if you can call it a cruise,
I don't know what you call it early in a journey,
excursion or whatever, that you would at some point be
able to grab the wheel and and uh do a
little ice break in yourself, I would hope. So, I
you know, I I would imagine you could get on deck,
you could like visit the deck. I don't think. I
(32:54):
don't think somebody who has like spent their life becoming
an expert in icebreakers is gonna is gonna let me
hop on. You know, you're reminded me something. And I
only have a vague memory of this, so and I
should know more about this, But my dad's been on
an icebreaker before he did he you know, I wrote
down a couple of quick notes because I was thinking
about it just before this, and I'm I'm glad this
(33:15):
came up because there's a U. S. Coast Guard icebreaker
and the name of it I think I think it
was the Macinaw um the icebreaker Macinaw and it operated
in the Great Lakes and they decommissioned this boat back
in two thousands six. And my dad was part of
the part of a video crew that went along to
document that final journey, the final cruise on this icebreaker.
(33:36):
And this thing had been around for like sixty two
years in the Great Lakes, smashing ice every year, and
you know, up in the northern climate in order of
the regions there. And now it's part is right in
Mackinaw City, Michigan, and they actually turned the vessel itself
into a maritime museum. Go on, go on board the
icebreaker and they I think they'll show the I think
(33:57):
it's kind of like a documentary that they created. They'll
show that on board and you can buy a copy
of it if you want. But um, anyways, it was
a kind of an interesting thing. He had a lot
of stories from that are remember back in that era
at that time. But again that was eleven years ago,
so I have to refresh my memory as to what
really happened and all the information about it. But it
was again the Icebreaker Mackinaw and uh and check it out.
(34:17):
It's a cool looking ship. It's it's exactly everything that
we're talking about today. I don't think it had nuclear power,
but but but that is a really cool twist on
the whole thing that they've now gone to this different
power source and able to take longer excursions with less
less fuel consumed. So let's go ahead and talk about
(34:39):
the last word or the latest word in operating icebreakers.
The world's largest nuclear powered icebreaker is it's it's also Russian. Uh.
Of course this is gonna sound like a weird name,
but it's just because it's Russian. It's the fifty let pobity. Okay,
(35:00):
does sound weird, the fifty let popoty uh huh, And
I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, but it translates to fifty
years of victory or fiftieth anniversary of nay. So it's
it's really cool, prestigious name. Uh. It is enormous. It
was made in nineteen eighty nine, they started working on it.
It was launched in ninety three. Uh. It has a
(35:23):
crew of a hundred forty people as a capacity of
a hundred and twenty eight passengers, So this thing has
hundreds of people on it. It has a just under
twenty six thousand displacement tons eight hundred I think to
be exact, and I want to hop up board it's
(35:43):
so bad. But twenty five thousand dollars is a lot
of money. You say, one hundred and twenty eight passengers
at twenty five thousand dollars a piece. That's crazy. That's
a that's a huge amount of money if they're if
they're charging that amount for that that particular cruise or
that ship. And besides that, mean why do they get
two hundred and sixty people on board? Yeah? How big?
(36:04):
How big is this thing? Was? Was the length of
this It is five hundred three ft and seven inches? Wow? Okay,
so it's about half the size of a typical cruise ship. Yeah.
Because these these ships, although they can be very very large,
they're still going to be relatively small um comparison to
(36:24):
like other ships with that much power. Well, they're smaller,
but probably much heavier than even the ones that are
double the size. I mean, they can carry that extra
weight intentionally right to just smash through when they do
that belly flop maneuver. But can you imagine you know, Okay,
these people that are on board, I'm just trying to
think of the passengers that would be on this and
when they're in open smooth water, man, that thing is
(36:45):
going to be rocking all over the place. I wonder
if people don't anticipate that, you know if they're not
ready for something like that, because you know the cruise ships,
they're all stabilized and they've got you know, the deeper keels,
the sharp keels. Um they ride through the water a
lot smoother than would an icebreaker when it's not on ice.
When they're on ice, there's nothing better. But when they're
in open water, that's gonna be rough, especially if it
(37:06):
had a storm. Yeah. Absolutely. And the thing is, I've
always I've always wanted to travel in one of those.
But maybe I'll just go up to macin On and
take a tour of the one that you mentioned, just
just while it's on the dock there. Yeah, Well, the
the admission is surely less for that. I would think
it's less than I'm gonna go out on a limb
(37:28):
and just say that it's less than. So these we've
mentioned that these play a vital role in trade. We
should also mention that they play an incredibly important role
in research at the polls, in supplying research stations in Antarctica,
(37:48):
uh and in conducting scientific work in the depths of
the ocean. Are just getting researchers out to that very
very remote part of the world. Yeah, and I don't
have I can't find that note, darnth. But it was
sometimes in the nineties seventies. I believe that a Russian
icebreaker was the one to make it to the North
Pole first. So so again, that's right there, groundbreaking ice breaking.
(38:13):
Hey yeah, I think that's the first one we did
that worked because it was dropping the bricks today, Ben,
before we run, I know you've got one more thing
you want to share, but I've got one more thing
I want to share as well. If you go to
a site called cool at Arctica dot com, there's a
an article. There's a lot of articles there about ice
(38:35):
breaking and the ships and the technology and everything, but
there's an article there that talks about the difference between
ice breakers and ice strengthened ships in the Arctic and
Antarctic regions. And they have to just incredible lists of
the differences their characteristics of each ship. And you'll find
some real eye openers on that list. I mean things
that we just didn't get to cover today, but um,
(38:56):
you know, like things about the friction and the contact
regions of you know, the hull, how they treat the
different areas that the strengthening of those areas, the way
that the hall is constructed. Uh, the extra weight that
they carry. Um, there's just some really good lists there,
and I don't want our listeners to to go away without,
you know, knowing that there's that resource available if they
want to learn more about them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I
(39:16):
really enjoyed that article too, which you would you would
originally hit me to off air. We would like to
end today's episode on a note towards the future, as
well as some questions for you ladies and gentlemen. Uh,
the continual trend over the course of this episode. In
our brief overview of the history of icebreakers, the trend
(39:39):
has always been toward um, toward new approaches in technology,
but also toward new approaches for application or use of icebreakers,
which I know it's kind of a gobbledegook way to
to say that. Um, the future of ice breakers seems
(40:01):
pretty clearly nuclear right now, but the future uses of
ice breakers may become increasingly military oriented. Well, that's cool,
some military uses are going to be the new thing.
I thought you were gonna say flying icebreakers, because everybody
wants flying cars, so they're flying icebreakers. But you know what,
that would kind of discount it went, then wouldn't it
(40:23):
would be just like fly the stuff in a plane? Yeah,
what would they do? Just drop? You don't even need
ships then, right, yeah, that's a terrible idea. Well there,
you know what. I like that we're brainstorming and we're there.
Maybe not all of them are gonna be uh home run? Well,
maybe none of them are going to be home run.
That's kind of a strikeout there, I think. Okay, okay, okay, um,
this is okay, this is so unrelated, but I think
(40:45):
this is a cool idea. Uh. Me and some of
the guys were hanging out after work on and Alex
and I and some of our friends actually came up
with what I think is a million dollar idea that's
completely unrelated to icebreakers. Do you want to hear it
real quick? Well, if you're giving away a million dollar
a da, I'll take it. Okay. So you know steak fries, right,
Oh yeah, yeah, you're a fan, of course. Oh man,
(41:08):
I'm just I'm not into steak fries. They're like mashed
potatoes that are in disguise. But but what if, Scott,
what if you stuffed at them like a hot pocket,
you know what I mean? And then Alice had the
idea of what if we reverse the old steak and
(41:29):
fries or pump free kind of dish and somehow put
this steak inside the fries. I don't know. You know,
we're at the wild west of this. This is early days.
Anything's possible. What an incredible idea? Thank you, thank you.
Now see here's there's this thing that's that's a good idea.
That's a great idea. But how do you go about
(41:51):
applying this? How do you go about making this happen?
Because that's that's where it always falls apart. Doesn't wait
we can have two idea guys, because then nothing will
get done. Man, Okay, we need to pick up a
details person. So yeah, car ti non sequitary. That's right,
we're talking about military applications, Yes we are. Actually, let
me get back to the topic was supposed to be
talking about. Recently, especially in the US military, UM officials
(42:15):
have been considering the possibility of arming ice breakers with
cruise missiles. So, for instance, UH the Coastguard specifically could
arm a could militarize or weaponize and icebreaker because they
were working to procure a new one UM and on
(42:38):
May three of this year, this recently, UH, the commander
of the Coast Guard said that they anticipate Russia is
going to launch two ice breakers with cruise missiles over
the next few years, and the US Navy doesn't have
anything to counteract that or to negate it. So they
(43:00):
started really seriously looking at what a military icebreaker fleet
would look like. And that's kind of weird when you
think about it, because we just spent so much time
exploring how awkward these things are on the open sea,
you know. So I'm wondering how it would work. And
I'm also wondering for anybody out out here who has
(43:24):
experienced with icebreakers, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts
on what a militarized icebreaker would look like, you know,
and and how useful would it be. Yeah, I wonder
what the application or how they would do that. How
they would um, you know, create a vehicle that could
be stable or vessel that could be stable in open
(43:44):
water and then also still be you know, that purpose
built ice breaking machine. Um. I don't know. It would
be interesting to see their ideas, and military has always
got a great ideas, right. A lot of a lot
of technological advancements come from UH military research. I love
seeing the prototypes that they come up with, you like,
like darpest stuff, you know, that always fascinates me. And
(44:05):
this the role of icebreakers is set to become increasingly
important over the next few years as UM more and
more countries with territorial claims to areas of the of
the North Pole region UH start to actively explore or
use those as trade routes. Right, So these are not
(44:28):
historical oddities, right, This technology is going to continue to evolve.
And if you ever get a chance to hop on one,
please send me some pictures. I am so curious. Yeah,
and if you can do it for less than Also, yeah,
if you have like a coupon or something, we'd like
to hear about that. Or a friend you know, like
or you you maybe you're a photojournalist and you get
(44:50):
your way on board, you know, using that as a
as a way on on the ship. Um, that'd be
really cool if you know, you could you can come
out somehow, um, you know, sway the cat been like,
I Hey, I think I'd like to do a documentary
on this, like kind of like what my my dad
did with that video crew. Um. But there was something
that they had planned ahead of time. You know, it
wasn't something like you're trying to weasel their way onto
this last ship or any last ride. Um. But it
(45:13):
still would be a cool thing to do. UM. I
don't know about like just being a tourist on one though.
I don't think that's really for me. I don't think
I would do too well on an ice breaking ship.
You wouldn't like work on your novel or something, you
know what. That would be nice to have the time,
I guess. But man, that's gonna be a rough ride.
I mean, the boat's gonna be continually like belly flopping
on top of the ice and then breaking through. I
(45:35):
mean there's no rest to be had when that's happening,
of course. I mean, and I think you'd want to
be out watching it. But how much of that can
you really stand? How much can you deal with? I mean,
is it? Is it? You know, a week? Is it
a month? Um? Because I don't think these are short cruises.
We're not talking about like a three day pleasure cruise.
It's a long It's a long thing to break up
an ice shipping channel. There's one way to find out,
(45:59):
just do it right, So right to us let us know.
We hope you enjoyed this exploration of one of the
most important and perhaps least well known types of vessels
out there on the ocean. Again, we are not sailors.
To my knowledge, we have not served in the Navy, clearly,
(46:20):
so right to us and let us know about your
time up board ice Breakers and if there are any
little known fun facts or trivia that you think would
also interest your fellow listeners. You can check out every
podcast Scott and I have ever done in Nobody. There
a lot on our website, car Stuff Show dot com.
Can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
and most importantly, if you have a suggestion for topic
(46:45):
you would like us to cover in the future, we'd
love to hear from you. Right to us directly at
car Stuff at how stuff Works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. This is the
house to of works dot com. Let us know what
you think, Send an email to podcast that how Stuff
Works dot com. M hmmmmmm hm
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hi, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Scott and Ben and we
are joined by our super producer Alex Williams. Today and
today I kind of just want to dive right into
(00:24):
this diving well, okay, Um, I spent way too much
time last night working on opening puns about how to
break the ice of stuff. Yeah, I was gonna I
was gonna try to work something, and I couldn't really
think of how to do this either, because I was
kind of thinking about it as well, like icebreakers don't
need to think of an icebreaker is like what they
(00:47):
do at It was like corny meetings maybe at your office,
where they try to have everybody like get into small
groups and then talk about their hobbies or something like that,
say your name and something interesting about yourself. That an
ice breaker. But that's not the icebreaker that we're gonna
talk about today. No. No, we're not talking about picking
people up at clubs. We're not talking about weird getting
(01:09):
to know you work meetings. Isn't there a gum named
icebreakers because we're not talking about that either. No, it's
pretty good though not candy something like that. Okay, it's
it's about the game. There's a game, Oh, don't break
the ice. Don't break the ice with a little hammers
and you have to knock out the cubes. That was
a fun game. I played hours of that with my kid.
A deep cut. Scott was well. Although we have gone
(01:33):
through several things that are different forms of icebreakers, today
we are going to focus on the literal vessels known
as ice breakers. And what's really interesting to both of
us about this is many people are maybe aware these
(01:53):
things exist, but are not aware of what a vital
role they play in so many fields of trade. Yeah,
these are purpose built chips or vessels that are designed
to just smash through the ice, you know, when the
ice gets too thick, uh, and the normal shipping channels
are closed off because the thick ice, if there's any
(02:14):
ice there at all, really you need an ice breaker
to come in and uh, you know, clear the path
for you, right. And these uh, these chips again play
a crucial role in making waterways safe for the multitudes
of other boats and watercraft in general that go through
(02:34):
these waters. And they are beast for something to be
considered an icebreaker, it's gonna have three things. Strengthened whole,
an ice clearing shape which we can explore to and
most importantly, the power to push through the ice, which
is no small fee. Yeah, and okay, that's I know
(02:55):
you just mentioned three things. I've got a couple of
lists that we're gonna get to as well that have
it seems like thirty things that you know, thirty items,
thirty key features that um, well, a couple of different
types of ships actually require because there's a difference there's
ice strengthened ships and then there's ice breakers, and there's
a distinct difference between the two. And well, we'll get
(03:16):
to it. But you might think, well, how really, how
often is this necessary. There's a lot of countries that need,
um these ships in order to keep their shipping channels open.
It's it's vital for trade, vital for you know, their economy.
So you know, typically areas that are countries I guess
that have interests in the Northeast and the northwest passages
in the Arctic, in the shipping lanes they have to
keep open during the winter months are the ones that
(03:36):
are going to require the services of these this this
type of vessel. Um, you're not gonna find them in
the you know, the Equator region. You could find them
in the you know and in most situation, well, you
gonna find them on the Great Lakes because that they're
necessary there. You're gonna find them. Well, you know what,
there's one that reached the North Pole. The icebreaker reached
the North Pole. That was because a Russian ship. Um
(03:57):
got a note on that somewhere in here that I'll
get to. But um, they're really they're they're far more
fascinating than you might give them credit for us not
just a boat that drives into the ice and breaks
it up. There's way more to it than that. Um,
So where do you want to start back? Because we
really haven't even broken the ice on this episode. Okay,
I think we each get one pass for that. Jokay,
(04:18):
I'm done. I think I used my way too early.
All right, let's see if we can make it through.
So let's start with some of the history, because ice
breakers were always around, but ice strengthened ships were This
is crazy. So you gotta imagine back in the days
of wooden ships, in the in the age of sail. Yeah, gosh,
it's hard to believe when you look at a modern
(04:40):
ice breaking ship, as we'll get to we'll talk about,
you know, all the features and and uh, you know
the functions of this thing, and then you look back
at what they were doing, you know, hundreds of years ago,
you know, the earliest days of polar exploration. You know,
these ice strengthened ships were used. They were wooden ships,
and so they had you know, they would have of course,
um kind of beefed up design and I guess they
would have steel that was wrapped around the waterline, and
(05:02):
they had double planking on the hull. They would have
strengthening cross members inside the ship, and then bands of
irons around the outside and along the keel. It was
like they were just these um, just reinforced wooden ships
that they were, but still wooden ships that they're smashing
through ice with. It's it's crazy to think about that.
And one of the reasons that this reinforcement was so key,
(05:22):
you know, in the age of sail and wooden boats,
is because of the possibility of something referred to as nipping.
Nipping is a phenomenon where flows of ice around a
ship end up pushing against it, so squeezing it, putting
it in almost like a vice. And this is caused
by wind, and of course tides will still affect ice formations.
(05:46):
The weird thing about this is although those forces, the
wind and the tides, could be you know, the actual
energy producing this effect could be occurring many miles away,
it turns out ices and excellent transmitter of that force. Yeah,
you said it's like a vice. And they say that
if you know, a ship is caught in this situation,
it can be lost within as as you know, quickly
(06:08):
as fifteen minutes. Ship can be completely crushed by that
pressure that's being exerted on the outside. So you know,
in the days of wooden ships, the older vessels could, uh,
they can survive that type of thing, but they weren't
nearly as good as the modern vessels are. I mean,
the modern ones are significantly stronger. So there are a
lot of tales of you know, ships that were lost
in the in the Arctic. You know, you've probably seen
(06:30):
or heard of some of those kind of crazy stories
of you know, like you'll find a vessel from hundreds
of years ago that's kind of it looks like it's
not land locked, but it's ice locked frozen in time,
and they find you know, all the stuff that's you know,
that was on board, you know, the whatever, it's rum
and barrels or something. I don't know. Maybe you would
hope it's treasure, but it's not treasure because they're just
there to break the ice. Really, that was why they
(06:50):
were there. But but it still makes for interesting photographs
and interesting Um I guess, can you call it an
archaeological dig if it's in the ice? I guess sites
maybe maybe Yeah, I don't know, but I've heard I've
heard stories of these things that they find these incredible
ships that are stuck in the ice, and you wonder
how long has it been there and how did that
get there? Really that's the bigger questions sometimes bodies. But
(07:12):
now we know, Yeah, now we know. And so with
this ancient technology, there were other approaches to The first
widespread Arctic craft were actually very light covered kayaks and
they you know, of course they couldn't break the ice,
but they were easy to pick up and carry across
the ice long distance, long distances. And as the technology
(07:36):
behind water vessels of the world improved, ice breaking technology
improved as well. So after the Age of sail. When
steamboats became a thing, they also had to be designed
to operate in icy conditions depending on where they were located. Yea,
So they had new propulsion, of course, and uh and
with that became became advancements. I suppose in the way
(07:58):
that they were thinking about the hull of ships too.
They weren't taking wooden ships into the Arctic regions anymore.
They were taking sometimes, you know, entire steel hall ships. Uh.
And and even then they found new ways to develop
and make that steel stronger. So we'll talk about, you know,
the different techniques they use in the hull and just
in just a moment. But um, you know, propulsion was
(08:19):
kind of an exciting thing for a while because uh,
you know, the advancement to steam was huge, right then
they went on beyond that as well. Yeah. Yeah. So
one example of a steam powered ship that was I
don't know if you call an icebreaker, but it was
designed to to be ice strengthened. It's probably the best
way to say. It was a wooden paddle steamer called
(08:40):
City ice Boat Number one. And this was operating in Philadelphia,
so it's still had wooden paddles, but you know, I
had a two fifty horse power steam engines. Uh that
that were the paddles were reinforced with iron covering. It's
crazy to think about it, isn't it Like it's a
paddle boat icebreaker. That's really strange, Just a strange thought.
(09:02):
If you've ever seen a paddle boat on maybe the
Mississippi River or something like that. I grew up around
those types of things, like, you know, taking weekend tours
on those and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, on steam on the
paddle boats. Yeah, then they on the rivers. Uh, it's fun,
still fun. But you know, one thing that we haven't
really mentioned is that, um, we talked about ice breakers
a little bit. We talked a little bit about ice strengthening.
(09:22):
You know that the strengthening was the wooden ones. UM.
Ships that don't have this type of technology built into them,
if you want to call it technology, you know, the
early days. I don't know if it's just trying to
you know, outsmart the ice really. Um, but if you
if a ship is not equipped to to be a well,
shouldn't say that Maybe if it's not a a and
(09:42):
ice strengthened ship, they wouldn't dare touch ice, They wouldn't
bump into. If they see ice in the in the way,
they'll go around that ice or they'll stop and retreat. Um,
they're not meant at all to to come and contact
at all with ice, because we've all seen the diagram
of the iceberg. What's beneath right right, so you only
see the tip of the iceberg. That iceberg could outweigh
(10:05):
the ship by you know, you know, tens of times
and uh, and to try to push that, you know,
it might rip a hole in the in the hull
very easily. So anything that's not ice strengthened won't even
get near ice. They just they back off or they
call somebody in. So anything that any ship that is
in a shipping lane has a possibility of coming across,
even like you know, stuff that broke off of an
(10:27):
ice flow, they will be ice strengthened in some way. Yes,
And of course this presents, as you can understand, a
dilemma for a lot of Scandinavian countries, a lot of
countries in the Upper Edge like Canada as well. Uh,
it presents a dilemma because you have to be able
(10:48):
to trade, you have to be able to travel. But
if you're in a part of the world where let's
say things are frozen for six months out of the year,
how can you continue to do business? You know that's true.
I mean, if you're in these extreme north or southern latitudes,
you're gonna encounter ice in some in some fashions, so
you have to be ready. They have to make these
(11:09):
ships stronger, and that makes it means that they're probably
more expensive to make them as well. So there's there's
another delanne. I guess if you're going to operate, it's
the cost of business or cost of operating is going
to be that much more for you. And so I
I want to uh walk us up real quick, or
should I say, oh gosh, these ship puns are coming
at me left and right. I'm doing my best votes
(11:29):
not to make them. But let's let's go through, uh
the the other predecessors of modern icebreakers. Spoiler alert. Russia
is at the forefront of this technology and has been
for a long time, and right now, even even in
ten when we're recording this, not only is Russia's still
(11:53):
the leader, but they're probably going to be the leader
for a long time unless something changes. The rush and
pilot it's the name of the ship in eighteen sixty
four that was a predecessor of modern ice breakers. It
had a propeller and they used it in one of
those areas that we were talking about, where the where
(12:14):
otherwise the icy waters are not navigable for part of
the year. It was an area called the White Sea.
Um It was used between eighteen sixty four to eighteen
ninety on the Gulf of Finland's and just using this
one ship they were able to extend the summer navigation
season by several weeks. There, you go, pays for itself
(12:35):
in that right. I mean, if if they were having
to you know, shut off that channel completely, imagine what
they would have to do in order to get those
goods or you know, those those items to where they
have to go. Uh. It's it's just makes it makes
really good economic sense to keep something like this around.
I mean, you know, it's expensive. These are expensive to build,
they're expensive to run or to operate. They take a
lot of fuel. It takes a time to so much
(12:57):
fuel a day, unbelievable. They're not they're built for fuel economy,
No they're not. But they are extremely strong and uh
and it again, it pays off to have something like
this in your fleet, if you have a shipping channel
that is going to be blocked by ice at some
point during the year. Yeah, and Russia of course realized this,
so in eight they built the what is considered the
(13:22):
first modern polar ice breaker, and it was called the
rmac hardon my pronunciation there. Uh. It was built by
the Russian Navy and when it was commissioned in October
of it took another year to build it and in
eight it broke through ice. They had the formal reception,
(13:43):
you know, I imagined, they christened it. And because this
was now built by a navy, it also functioned in
a military capacity, so it helped evacuate the Baltic fleet
in World War One. It was mobilized in World War Two.
I mean this was a round for a long time
scott and armed with guns too, yeah, to provide force projections.
(14:08):
Oh no, kidding, So it was a well it was
actually an armed ship at some point in history. And
then it remains I think one of the longest serving
ice breakers in the world. It wasn't decomissioned until nineteen
like what it's like sixty or seventy years right, yeah, yeah,
don't break it, don't fix it. If it's not broken,
(14:28):
don't break it either. One. I'm the one slipping on
the idiens today. But this brings us to the age
of the modern ice breaker, and it is fascinating. How
fascinating you ask? We can't wait to tell you after
a word from our sponsor and we're back in. Ben,
(14:56):
you were saying that we're going to kind of uh
jump the gap here into the modern era of ice breakers,
right the crevasse, jump the curvas That's what I should
have said. How many ice terms do I even know?
I don't know that many, but is a good one? Yeah? Cool, Okay,
back it down a little bit. I'm excited, Ben. Yeah,
(15:19):
we're talking about diesel engines. Now, we're talking about extreme
horse power. Some of these some of these ships have
you know, three giant diesel engines that put out you know,
twenty horsepower each, so there's you know, a combined total
of seventy five thousand. Then those are supplemented by you know,
three more engines that put out eighteen thousand horsepower each.
(15:39):
So the incredible amounts of pushing power in these things
they have to in order to you know, shove themselves
through ice that several feet thick. Yeah, like three Yeah,
it's unbelievable, three ms of ice. Can you imagine trying
to break that and and that just you know, one
little section, I mean, like break it for miles. Yeah,
and there's well, oh, before we go further, I forgot
(16:02):
we should talk about the process by which these ice
breakers break ice. This is one of the most fascinating
parts of this whole thing, because I had no idea,
and I think you thought I was joking when I
originally tried to explain it in a in a fairly
inarticulate way. Can I can I tell you one thing
or just mentioned one little thing before we get to this,
because I think it's crucial to know this before we
talk about how they do it. They don't have like
(16:24):
a knife edge front on them like you think they would.
It's more of a rounded front end. The hall is
rounded to the front, so they're able to slip up
on top of the ice a little bit easier. And
the thing is this makes it really uncomfortable to ride
and in the open sea. I mean they've got this
weird shape hull, a spoon shaped bow. Yeah, exactly, so
when you're traveling in this in these ships, and it's not,
(16:45):
you know, smashing through ice. The situation is that, you know,
even in you know, like what you call it a
gentle sea, this boat is really tossing and turning all
over the place. It doesn't have any kind of stabilization
fins or anything like that on it. It's designed to
be smooth on the bottom and you know, relatively uh,
I guess it has a I don't know what you
call it, like low friction. Maybe. Yeah, that's probably a
(17:07):
better way to say it than what I was gonna say.
I won't to tell you what I was gonna do,
something that would have sounded ridiculous. But um so even
in a light sea, um, the thing just tosses and turns.
It can it can really be a difficult ride for somebody,
um because there's no you know what has these these
rounded keels, I guess, and really nothing that sticks off
from the side to stabilize it in anyway. Here is
here's the great part. And this, I know this is
(17:30):
gonna sound weird if you've never seen Icebreaker before. I
think Scott thought I was joking when I first when
I first tried to explain it as I said before. Uh,
the way that they break the ice as as Scott mentioned,
they will slip up over it or attempt to. And
then I guess the best way to describe it, and
(17:50):
you've seen some videos to Scott, I guess the best
way to describe it is it kind of like it
like belly flops, like goes up and then crashes down. Yeah,
and uses the motion. And I looked this up because
we're not sailors, right, so I looked at I looked
up what this is affecting, and it's it's affecting the
trim of the boat. Now, the trim of the boat
is what it looks like from the side. So if
(18:12):
the if the bow is up, you can imagine it
like you know, everybody can picture this when a boat
takes off when it first launches, um, you know, a speedboat,
power boat, when you give it the gas, the front
end of the boat rises up and the back end
kind of dips down as the engine you know, spools up.
And then as you gain speed on the on the
you know, the water on the surface, the bow kind
(18:33):
of drops back down again and it and it levels out.
That's that's the trim of the boat. It's either up
the bows up or it's down. I don't know if
I'm using that term exactly the right way, but the
trim of the boat is what's affected here. That the
bow goes way way up in the air and it
kind of does like a belly flop on the top
of the ice. And so really the you know, the
engines at the back in the water, you know, churning
(18:54):
and doing all its work, and it's pushing the boat
on top of the ice and then it settles down
and then the weight of the boat itself is what
actually smashes through the ice. If they're not really like
they're not busting up by just like uh like imagine
like punching a wall or a door or something like that.
They're not breaking it that way. They're going on top
of it, cracking it, and then and then maybe in
(19:15):
some cases backing up and doing that again to get
enough ramming speed to to go on top of it again.
And they continue this kind of like um, I don't know,
it's a it's a seesaw motion really and up and
then smashed through and up and then smashed through. And
they just continually do that for miles and miles and
miles and they sometimes have to back up and get
another run at it, you know, to get the full
weight of the boat on top of the ice. But
(19:36):
they carry this incredible weight with them the in fact,
they're intentionally built heavy so that they can do this. Yeah,
because again remember that ice is often a ship killer.
So one other point that we really need to emphasize
here is this is not, uh, by any means, a
bunch of amateurs just running into ice. Daval architects who
(19:58):
design icebreakers make painstaking, excruciatingly thorough calculations because you know,
lives really are at steak. So they used this calculation
called the h V curve to determine the ice breaking
ability of a vessel, and that's an equation of what
kind of speed is the ship able to achieve the
(20:18):
thickness of the ice, And then they calculate the velocity
of the thrust from the propellers. Just just like Scott said,
people have even performed model test and an ice tank.
Really that's kind of a cool idea, right, like a
small scale actual icebreaker model. And I don't know, that
seems like a cool job, that would be cool. I
(20:40):
like watching some of those miniatures that they do, you know,
where they simulate storms and things like that. They have
a you know, like a great big shallow tank that
they have that imitate like wave actions on the shoreline
and things like that. All that stuff is really fascinating.
I can't imagine how cool a one of those frozen
would be. And watching them kind of we'll do whatever
they do with these ice breakers are ice strength and
(21:01):
ships their strength. Yeah, and there's and of course not
all icebreakers are created equally, and not all use the
exact same technique. Some icebreakers have a hole that is
wider in the bow than it is in the stern,
and these are often called reamers, and that the idea
here is that they will make the biggest clear channel
(21:25):
possible right with one pass, hopefully. And icebreakers sometimes have
auxiliary systems that are all about reducing that friction, such
as water delusions and air bubbling systems, And they try
to form a kind of layer of lubricrint between the
hole and the ice so you can slide more on
(21:45):
there and put that brutal weight down so they don't
like like disembark and then go out there with like
a can of you know what that that cooking spray
pam like spray that on the side. Then like, okay,
go for it again. They don't do that. It's the
little bit more like low tech. I guess, yeah, yeah,
because carried around all that. Yeah, I guess that would
(22:06):
be tough. Maybe. Uh, you know, what's that super lubricant
that the Clark Griswold used on his sled in Christmas vacation.
They should use that? Yeah, you know what, you should
be in charge more icebreakers. I'm an idea guy, Ben.
I told you this several times, and I don't know
how to implement any of this, but they should use that,
I mean, because that clearly must be a real product. Um, okay,
(22:27):
one quick thing. What we're talking about the size of
the ships and everything, and this is for real. I
watched a YouTube video not long ago, a couple of
days ago, and it was a Russian ship. It was
opening a channel. I don't remember exactly where this was,
but there's a bridge that went across, and I believe
that there was. Um, this is a strange one, Ben.
There was a student housing on one side of the river,
(22:48):
and there was the university, the campus on the other
side of the river, and there's a bridge and there's
this guy that operates an icebreaker. It was like a
tug boat. There's a tug boat that has been strengthened
to the point that it has become an icebreaker. It
is heavy duty, but not enough for meters thick ice.
It's it's good enough for you know, maybe a couple
of feet thick, maybe two or three feet um. So
(23:09):
this guy, his job is to keep the channel open,
and it's for shipping, of course, but one reason is
that it's dangerous for the students who try to cross
the river at various times a day because it cuts
like fifteen minutes off their walk time. If they don't
have to go across the bridge, they they sometimes will
just walk across the river. And you'll see if you
(23:29):
catch this video online. I don't even remember what it
was called, but you'll see groups of students that are
crossing the river in front of him as he's approaching
them with this icebreaker ship to break the channel. So
you know that the area that he breaks regularly is
thinner to begin with, and they're crossing that and they're
kind of defiant about it. They kind of like, you know,
give the guy a couple of hand gestures, that kind
of thing, you know, as he says, approaching, because they
(23:50):
know what he's doing. He's trying to make them take
the safer route that's also longer, but it's it's really
kind of fascinating to watch how angry the students are
at the guy breaking the ice because he's trying to
and he's trying to keep them safe. But they don't
see it that way, of course not. They've made their
own little ice road that goes across from you know,
living quarters to campus. It's a strange thing. Oh that's right.
(24:10):
We have been kind of arctic minded recently. I guess
right here, head of summer. I don't know what's going on.
Maybe it's wishful thinking. It's you man, it's too hot
Atlanta summers. So anyways, it's these videos. I tell you
that you wouldn't think that ice breaking videos are fun
to watch, but if you fast forward through them, you
can catch some really interesting stuff. Yeah, and you can
(24:31):
also see some accounts of I want I almost want
to say this for the end, but I'll just jump
into it now. You can ride on an icebreaker. You
can buy buy a ticket to ride on one of
these things, you know, like meals included, I'll take some
time because remember what I was going through that cargo
(24:52):
ship phase, and it was I was really trying to
sell Scott hard on this stuff. I was like, hey, man,
I can try the Pacific Ocean via cargo ship, and
all I need is like some flexibility in my arrival
and departure time. And Scott was saying, well, what do
you mean by flexibilities? Like, I don't like a month
or two give or take depending on the weather. It's
(25:13):
a lot of flexibility. Well that's the thing. And then
my immediate question, or my immediate thought is what do
you do if one of these gets stuck in the
ice because that happens sometimes these things get ice bound
and they have to be rescued by other other ice
breaker ships. They have to send them out. And this
is insane to think about, but you could be stuck
for months at a time, completely ice bound in some
(25:36):
Arctic region that they only know how to get to
you via the coordinates that you give them on the radio.
But you're stuck, I mean you're really stuck. So what
would happen if you were just you know, a tourist
on something like this, and he ended up stuck for
two months. And there have been cases. I boy, I
wish I had a note here, I meant to highlight this,
I didn't. There was a case where I believe it
was another Russian ship was stuck in the ice, and
(25:58):
then I think a ship from Japan maybe had gone
to to rescue that one also becomes stuck in the ice.
So they're now both stuck together up there, and they
sent out a ship from the United States to come
rescue those two. And then just as that third ship arrives,
the other two somehow managed to you know, wrestle themselves
free from the ice, and all three were able to
(26:18):
get up and you know, go on. But this took,
you know, over the course of I don't know, and
I guess two months or something like that. I can't
remember the exact time frame, but it was a long
long time between when one would get stuck, one would arrive,
and then you know, on this chain of three until
finally they all got out. It's crazy, Yeah, it's kind of.
It always makes me think of have you ever seen
(26:42):
a tow truck towing a tow truck? Yes, that's exactly it.
Reminds me of Yeah, it doesn't happen too often, but
it's kind of funny when you see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's it's funny because everybody is hopefully fine. Uh. There
there are other there are other mechanisms that engineers and
architects have built into these ships to try to prevent
(27:03):
those from occurring. One would be double action ships. These
have uh rotating propellers, so they can provide backward thrust
as well. Uh. And the idea would be that if
you have more if you have more options for which
direction to go into, you know, you can ram easier.
But also maybe maybe if you can't get out by
(27:27):
going forward, you can get unstuck in reverse, yeah, or sideways.
I think I think those pods, you know, I'm trying
to think of like modern cruise ships. They have these
pods that can spend three degrees and they're able to
maneuver in ways that you would never think. You know,
a cruise ship can spin almost on its axis. It
can spend just right in place. So if you're in
a narrow channel. UM experience this in Alaska went out
(27:48):
on a cruise. They were in this really narrow fiord
type area and I thought, how they ever gonna turn
There must be a big area where they're gonna turn
around and go out, because they're not gonna try to
back out of this area. Well, we ended up just
going right into the middle of this uh, this this
deep area and this essentially the boat just did a
complete circle right there in place. Um, almost like a
(28:09):
tank could do a circle, you know that way, like
if you can picture it that way, that's the easiest
way to think of it, Like a tank can spin
on place on its trends. Yeah, just like that. And
then we just headed out the normal way, and it
was incredible to see it happen. Um. And you don't
think it's that maneuverable, but they really are, so these pods,
and you know, the new technology really helps in um,
you know, unsticking yourself in the ice. I mean, if
(28:30):
you don't have enough PAM on hand. Yeah, it all
goes back to the pa or teflon spray or whatever. Yeah,
it's get out there and rub a little bit of
like wax paper on the hull like this really coated
and I'm sure that that's good for several you know,
several baking grease. That's right, you know. Okay, Well, um,
(28:52):
I got a couple more things I want to cover here,
but I think maybe we need to take a word
from our sponsor. First, m we have returns to uh
what will probably be one of my my favorite parts
(29:12):
of this episode. So we talked about the evolution of
you know, uh from from the ancient days of kayaks
that would just be carried across the ocean to steam
power diesel. But that's not the end of the story.
We are in a new era, my friends. Let's we
(29:35):
talked a little bit about the fuel. But I want
to enter this by putting in this comparison. Okay, So,
on average, an ice breaking vessel working in let's say Russia, right,
and if it's busting through three meter thick ice, it
would use up to a hundred tons of fuel a
day a day a day, one tons of fuel a day,
(29:58):
Oh my gosh, and l when these things are out
for months at a time. Yeah, okay, thirsty beasts, all right,
But so that's a problem, right, just even thinking about
carrying all that fuel, thinking about supply chains, thinking about
what happens if you get stranded, sure, and you become
lighter as you travel, and you become lighter as you travel.
That's a very good point. This is where the next
(30:21):
step in technology came in nuclear power. Ah, no need
to refuel. Yeah, well for long periods of time. Right,
So in that same scenario where we're talking a hundred
tons of conventional fuel, less than a pound of uranium
can provide the same bang for the buck less than
a pound per day. Yeah, but it's uranium. I guess
(30:42):
there's that. Well. Yeah, it's a little tough to get.
I guess. I mean the last time I tried to
get your ranium, it wasn't so easy. I just feel
like you shouldn't have done it on Twitter. Man. I
feel like a handwritten letter to uh m, I T
or something will work much better. Oh man, this society,
like what do they call it? The arc web stuff? Yeah? Okay,
but so that's a that's a tremendous um advancement to
(31:05):
be able to carry one pound of uranium versus a
hundred tons of fuel per day, right, And this a
lot of the a lot of the icebreakers that you
can take a tourist trip on our nuclear powered icebreakers,
and I bet they keep you out of that room
just to just a guess just yeah, I don't think
(31:26):
you get I don't think that's your best path to uranium.
I do want to be realistic, though, although this does
seem like a very exciting idea to me, it's got
a pretty hefty price for three week icebreaker cruise. Really okay,
well yeah, I'm ready? Large? Okay, what does large mean
to you? Because to me, grand dollars, twenty five thousand dollars? Really,
(31:52):
so what does large mean to you? And this is
a hundred bucks? Is large to me? Yeah? I mean
small fry, umaish, But I don't know. Twenty five large
could be twenty five bucks sometimes, so twenty five dollars
to ride on on a an icebreaker, an authentic, real icebreaker.
(32:12):
I wonder if they expect you to actually be part
of the crew. If you have to do work man
for twenty five thousand dollars, I think you should be
able to do almost whatever you want. Pilot the ship, right,
maybe a captain for that price. You are you're a
very persuasive, affable dude, so you might be able to
talk him into letting you, you know, up on the wheel.
(32:32):
You know, I would think that for dollars at some
point during that cruise if you can call it a cruise,
I don't know what you call it early in a journey,
excursion or whatever, that you would at some point be
able to grab the wheel and and uh do a
little ice break in yourself, I would hope. So, I
you know, I I would imagine you could get on deck,
you could like visit the deck. I don't think. I
(32:54):
don't think somebody who has like spent their life becoming
an expert in icebreakers is gonna is gonna let me
hop on. You know, you're reminded me something. And I
only have a vague memory of this, so and I
should know more about this, But my dad's been on
an icebreaker before he did he you know, I wrote
down a couple of quick notes because I was thinking
about it just before this, and I'm I'm glad this
(33:15):
came up because there's a U. S. Coast Guard icebreaker
and the name of it I think I think it
was the Macinaw um the icebreaker Macinaw and it operated
in the Great Lakes and they decommissioned this boat back
in two thousands six. And my dad was part of
the part of a video crew that went along to
document that final journey, the final cruise on this icebreaker.
(33:36):
And this thing had been around for like sixty two
years in the Great Lakes, smashing ice every year, and
you know, up in the northern climate in order of
the regions there. And now it's part is right in
Mackinaw City, Michigan, and they actually turned the vessel itself
into a maritime museum. Go on, go on board the
icebreaker and they I think they'll show the I think
(33:57):
it's kind of like a documentary that they created. They'll
show that on board and you can buy a copy
of it if you want. But um, anyways, it was
a kind of an interesting thing. He had a lot
of stories from that are remember back in that era
at that time. But again that was eleven years ago,
so I have to refresh my memory as to what
really happened and all the information about it. But it
was again the Icebreaker Mackinaw and uh and check it out.
(34:17):
It's a cool looking ship. It's it's exactly everything that
we're talking about today. I don't think it had nuclear power,
but but but that is a really cool twist on
the whole thing that they've now gone to this different
power source and able to take longer excursions with less
less fuel consumed. So let's go ahead and talk about
(34:39):
the last word or the latest word in operating icebreakers.
The world's largest nuclear powered icebreaker is it's it's also Russian. Uh.
Of course this is gonna sound like a weird name,
but it's just because it's Russian. It's the fifty let pobity. Okay,
(35:00):
does sound weird, the fifty let popoty uh huh, And
I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, but it translates to fifty
years of victory or fiftieth anniversary of nay. So it's
it's really cool, prestigious name. Uh. It is enormous. It
was made in nineteen eighty nine, they started working on it.
It was launched in ninety three. Uh. It has a
(35:23):
crew of a hundred forty people as a capacity of
a hundred and twenty eight passengers, So this thing has
hundreds of people on it. It has a just under
twenty six thousand displacement tons eight hundred I think to
be exact, and I want to hop up board it's
(35:43):
so bad. But twenty five thousand dollars is a lot
of money. You say, one hundred and twenty eight passengers
at twenty five thousand dollars a piece. That's crazy. That's
a that's a huge amount of money if they're if
they're charging that amount for that that particular cruise or
that ship. And besides that, mean why do they get
two hundred and sixty people on board? Yeah? How big?
(36:04):
How big is this thing? Was? Was the length of
this It is five hundred three ft and seven inches? Wow? Okay,
so it's about half the size of a typical cruise ship. Yeah.
Because these these ships, although they can be very very large,
they're still going to be relatively small um comparison to
(36:24):
like other ships with that much power. Well, they're smaller,
but probably much heavier than even the ones that are
double the size. I mean, they can carry that extra
weight intentionally right to just smash through when they do
that belly flop maneuver. But can you imagine you know, Okay,
these people that are on board, I'm just trying to
think of the passengers that would be on this and
when they're in open smooth water, man, that thing is
(36:45):
going to be rocking all over the place. I wonder
if people don't anticipate that, you know if they're not
ready for something like that, because you know the cruise ships,
they're all stabilized and they've got you know, the deeper keels,
the sharp keels. Um they ride through the water a
lot smoother than would an icebreaker when it's not on ice.
When they're on ice, there's nothing better. But when they're
in open water, that's gonna be rough, especially if it
(37:06):
had a storm. Yeah. Absolutely. And the thing is, I've
always I've always wanted to travel in one of those.
But maybe I'll just go up to macin On and
take a tour of the one that you mentioned, just
just while it's on the dock there. Yeah, Well, the
the admission is surely less for that. I would think
it's less than I'm gonna go out on a limb
(37:28):
and just say that it's less than. So these we've
mentioned that these play a vital role in trade. We
should also mention that they play an incredibly important role
in research at the polls, in supplying research stations in Antarctica,
(37:48):
uh and in conducting scientific work in the depths of
the ocean. Are just getting researchers out to that very
very remote part of the world. Yeah, and I don't
have I can't find that note, darnth. But it was
sometimes in the nineties seventies. I believe that a Russian
icebreaker was the one to make it to the North
Pole first. So so again, that's right there, groundbreaking ice breaking.
(38:13):
Hey yeah, I think that's the first one we did
that worked because it was dropping the bricks today, Ben,
before we run, I know you've got one more thing
you want to share, but I've got one more thing
I want to share as well. If you go to
a site called cool at Arctica dot com, there's a
an article. There's a lot of articles there about ice
(38:35):
breaking and the ships and the technology and everything, but
there's an article there that talks about the difference between
ice breakers and ice strengthened ships in the Arctic and
Antarctic regions. And they have to just incredible lists of
the differences their characteristics of each ship. And you'll find
some real eye openers on that list. I mean things
that we just didn't get to cover today, but um,
(38:56):
you know, like things about the friction and the contact
regions of you know, the hull, how they treat the
different areas that the strengthening of those areas, the way
that the hall is constructed. Uh, the extra weight that
they carry. Um, there's just some really good lists there,
and I don't want our listeners to to go away without,
you know, knowing that there's that resource available if they
want to learn more about them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I
(39:16):
really enjoyed that article too, which you would you would
originally hit me to off air. We would like to
end today's episode on a note towards the future, as
well as some questions for you ladies and gentlemen. Uh,
the continual trend over the course of this episode. In
our brief overview of the history of icebreakers, the trend
(39:39):
has always been toward um, toward new approaches in technology,
but also toward new approaches for application or use of icebreakers,
which I know it's kind of a gobbledegook way to
to say that. Um, the future of ice breakers seems
(40:01):
pretty clearly nuclear right now, but the future uses of
ice breakers may become increasingly military oriented. Well, that's cool,
some military uses are going to be the new thing.
I thought you were gonna say flying icebreakers, because everybody
wants flying cars, so they're flying icebreakers. But you know what,
that would kind of discount it went, then wouldn't it
(40:23):
would be just like fly the stuff in a plane? Yeah,
what would they do? Just drop? You don't even need
ships then, right, yeah, that's a terrible idea. Well there,
you know what. I like that we're brainstorming and we're there.
Maybe not all of them are gonna be uh home run? Well,
maybe none of them are going to be home run.
That's kind of a strikeout there, I think. Okay, okay, okay, um,
this is okay, this is so unrelated, but I think
(40:45):
this is a cool idea. Uh. Me and some of
the guys were hanging out after work on and Alex
and I and some of our friends actually came up
with what I think is a million dollar idea that's
completely unrelated to icebreakers. Do you want to hear it
real quick? Well, if you're giving away a million dollar
a da, I'll take it. Okay. So you know steak fries, right,
Oh yeah, yeah, you're a fan, of course. Oh man,
(41:08):
I'm just I'm not into steak fries. They're like mashed
potatoes that are in disguise. But but what if, Scott,
what if you stuffed at them like a hot pocket,
you know what I mean? And then Alice had the
idea of what if we reverse the old steak and
(41:29):
fries or pump free kind of dish and somehow put
this steak inside the fries. I don't know. You know,
we're at the wild west of this. This is early days.
Anything's possible. What an incredible idea? Thank you, thank you.
Now see here's there's this thing that's that's a good idea.
That's a great idea. But how do you go about
(41:51):
applying this? How do you go about making this happen?
Because that's that's where it always falls apart. Doesn't wait
we can have two idea guys, because then nothing will
get done. Man, Okay, we need to pick up a
details person. So yeah, car ti non sequitary. That's right,
we're talking about military applications, Yes we are. Actually, let
me get back to the topic was supposed to be
talking about. Recently, especially in the US military, UM officials
(42:15):
have been considering the possibility of arming ice breakers with
cruise missiles. So, for instance, UH the Coastguard specifically could
arm a could militarize or weaponize and icebreaker because they
were working to procure a new one UM and on
(42:38):
May three of this year, this recently, UH, the commander
of the Coast Guard said that they anticipate Russia is
going to launch two ice breakers with cruise missiles over
the next few years, and the US Navy doesn't have
anything to counteract that or to negate it. So they
(43:00):
started really seriously looking at what a military icebreaker fleet
would look like. And that's kind of weird when you
think about it, because we just spent so much time
exploring how awkward these things are on the open sea,
you know. So I'm wondering how it would work. And
I'm also wondering for anybody out out here who has
(43:24):
experienced with icebreakers, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts
on what a militarized icebreaker would look like, you know,
and and how useful would it be. Yeah, I wonder
what the application or how they would do that. How
they would um, you know, create a vehicle that could
be stable or vessel that could be stable in open
(43:44):
water and then also still be you know, that purpose
built ice breaking machine. Um. I don't know. It would
be interesting to see their ideas, and military has always
got a great ideas, right. A lot of a lot
of technological advancements come from UH military research. I love
seeing the prototypes that they come up with, you like,
like darpest stuff, you know, that always fascinates me. And
(44:05):
this the role of icebreakers is set to become increasingly
important over the next few years as UM more and
more countries with territorial claims to areas of the of
the North Pole region UH start to actively explore or
use those as trade routes. Right, So these are not
(44:28):
historical oddities, right, This technology is going to continue to evolve.
And if you ever get a chance to hop on one,
please send me some pictures. I am so curious. Yeah,
and if you can do it for less than Also, yeah,
if you have like a coupon or something, we'd like
to hear about that. Or a friend you know, like
or you you maybe you're a photojournalist and you get
(44:50):
your way on board, you know, using that as a
as a way on on the ship. Um, that'd be
really cool if you know, you could you can come
out somehow, um, you know, sway the cat been like,
I Hey, I think I'd like to do a documentary
on this, like kind of like what my my dad
did with that video crew. Um. But there was something
that they had planned ahead of time. You know, it
wasn't something like you're trying to weasel their way onto
this last ship or any last ride. Um. But it
(45:13):
still would be a cool thing to do. UM. I
don't know about like just being a tourist on one though.
I don't think that's really for me. I don't think
I would do too well on an ice breaking ship.
You wouldn't like work on your novel or something, you
know what. That would be nice to have the time,
I guess. But man, that's gonna be a rough ride.
I mean, the boat's gonna be continually like belly flopping
on top of the ice and then breaking through. I
(45:35):
mean there's no rest to be had when that's happening,
of course. I mean, and I think you'd want to
be out watching it. But how much of that can
you really stand? How much can you deal with? I mean,
is it? Is it? You know, a week? Is it
a month? Um? Because I don't think these are short cruises.
We're not talking about like a three day pleasure cruise.
It's a long It's a long thing to break up
an ice shipping channel. There's one way to find out,
(45:59):
just do it right, So right to us let us know.
We hope you enjoyed this exploration of one of the
most important and perhaps least well known types of vessels
out there on the ocean. Again, we are not sailors.
To my knowledge, we have not served in the Navy, clearly,
(46:20):
so right to us and let us know about your
time up board ice Breakers and if there are any
little known fun facts or trivia that you think would
also interest your fellow listeners. You can check out every
podcast Scott and I have ever done in Nobody. There
a lot on our website, car Stuff Show dot com.
Can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Facebook,
and most importantly, if you have a suggestion for topic
(46:45):
you would like us to cover in the future, we'd
love to hear from you. Right to us directly at
car Stuff at how stuff Works dot com for more
on this and thousands of other topics. This is the
house to of works dot com. Let us know what
you think, Send an email to podcast that how Stuff
Works dot com. M hmmmmmm hm
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