USNS Comfort arriving in NY today (Mar. 30)

[Noxequifans]

Once the Comfort arrived, it could have accepted virus patients thus permitting some elective surgeries in hospitals to proceed. The backlog would be reduced from what we now face. The actions of government officials were off the mark on this one. 

[markeb]

The Comfort was never designed for isolating respiratory patients. She was really a surgical hospital, originally for wartime use. For the last few years, she's mostly done humanitarian relief missions, or took on patients in Central and South America as part of nation building/humanitarian assistance missions.

 

I will defer comments on the actions that were off the mark here...

[chengkp75]

On 4/29/2020 at 6:23 PM, navybankerteacher said:

Absolutely correct - I was just remarking on your questioning “steam” - which is the necessary intermediary in converting nuclear energy into mechanical energy via turbines.

But, outside of the US Navy, marine steam engineers are a rare breed.  About the only ships that use steam propulsion these days are the ones rafted up in Ready Reserve fleets around the US, and LNG tankers.  So, to the majority of the maritime industry, steam propulsion is an archaic form, as well as being horribly inefficient.

[navybankerteacher]

 

6 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

But, outside of the US Navy, marine steam engineers are a rare breed.  About the only ships that use steam propulsion these days are the ones rafted up in Ready Reserve fleets around the US, and LNG tankers.  So, to the majority of the maritime industry, steam propulsion is an archaic form, as well as being horribly inefficient.

True — now with no more BT’s coming out of the Navy , I suppose the (oil) home heating industry now has to train their technicians - who always seemed to be former Snipes

[chengkp75]

27 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

 

True — now with no more BT’s coming out of the Navy , I suppose the (oil) home heating industry now has to train their technicians - who always seemed to be former Snipes

Well, that is not to say that modern ships don't have boilers.  Virtually every diesel ship has an oil fired auxiliary boiler.  But most of the home heat techs we get around here are far more than simple burner techs, they have to know the full range of HVAC.

[navybankerteacher]

39 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Well, that is not to say that modern ships don't have boilers.  Virtually every diesel ship has an oil fired auxiliary boiler.  But most of the home heat techs we get around here are far more than simple burner techs, they have to know the full range of HVAC.

I guess the Northeast is pretty much the only area in the US where homes are heated with oil — and more and more areas are seeing natural gas lines coming in.

[pacruise804]

I think PA is classified Mid-Atlantic rather than Northeast, and oil heating is common here - especially for areas w/o natural gas but even some areas with gas still opt for oil.

[TruckerDave]

Off the top of my head the Navy still has about a dozen or so steam ships and none of them are going away anytime soon.  All 8 of the  Wasp class LHD's are steam powered as well as both of the tenders (granted with MSC running the engineering spaces) and the command ships Blue Ridge and Mt Whitney (with the Whitney being like the tenders with a split MSC/Navy crew).  The Comfort and Mercy are also split crews.  With no more BT's they just have the MM's doing "BT stuff" now. (but I am sure there are still many old MM's who used to be BT's that were just moved over)