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Tech

The Inevitable Timelapse of the Salvaging of the Costa Concordia

It might not look like much, but rest assured it takes some serious foresight and engineering to pull off this sort of thing.

Well, in case you missed it yesterday, when the doomed cruise ship got flipped in real time, here it is in glorious timelapse.

After 18 months of planning, in what's gone down as the largest marine salvaging mission ever (grand total? $300 million), engineers finally began the slow push to raise the Costa Concordia, a 925-foot, 114,000-ton vessel that's floundered at a 70-degree tilt since running aground off the Italian coast in in early 2012, killing 32 passengers.

It might not look like much, but rest assured it takes some serious foresight and engineering to pull off this sort of thing. Scientific American has a nice overview of the parbuckling plan, and notes the high stakes surrounding a mission to not only provide some sort of symbolic closure for the families of the dead, but that must be done nimbly enough so as to not see the thing crumble apart mid-raise, potentially devastating the pristine marine habitat off the island of Giglio. Just don't call it disaster porn.

@thebanderson