[Retric]

Ships sink all the time, unless it’s an oil tanker they really aren’t an environmental disaster. As to cost, if someone’s hijacking a ship you already lost the ship now it’s just an insurance question.

The question for an insurance company isn’t just about this ship, but the cost of paying out future hijackings. On top of this there is the rather more interesting option of refloating the ship.

[salawat]

...so you just hand out an instant logistical DDoS button to any sufficiently motivated group? What also makes you think insurance is going to pay out for you sinking your own ship. Moral hazard much?

[Retric]

Every rocket launch a range safety officer (RSO) keeps track of the trajectory and is ready to hit the self destruct button if needed. Insurance pays out if you hit it as that’s been agreed to ahead of time, the same would apply here or you wouldn’t sink the ship.

As to DDoS, sinking isn’t any more of a risk than someone taking over control of your self driving boat and aiming it at the coastline. From a pure safety standpoint you need some method of remotely disabling the ship.

[salawat]

A rocket launch is generally done much less frequently, premiums to insure would be through the roof due to the smaller risk pool, and don't involve cargo lots measured in the thousands of TEU.

[Retric]

The value of a single rockets cargo can easily be worth more than a container ships cargo. The average TEU at Port of Los Angeles is worth ~43k USD and the words largest container ship is only 24k TEU, that’s up to 1 Billion in 2021 USD and plenty of satellites have been worth more than that.

The ships can be worth quite a bit when new, but their also depreciating assets with only a few percent of that in scrap value. Only using the least valuable ships in areas that can be pirates seems like an obvious optimization.

[salawat]

You have the absolute oddest set of risk management practices I've tried to wrap my head around, but to each their own I guess. I don't see the sense in trusting a global supply chain that's built on JIT principles to a paradigm where your first reaction is "welp, scuttle it". Those TEU's may not be the most glorious things, but they are the inputs that keep modern civilization going. To do otherwise... Well... It just rings foolhardy to me. Might look good on the ledgers, but doesn't make good sense or shake out in the real world.

[Retric]

Piracy is an extremely rare event, and keeping it that way is important for ensuring the global supply chain works.

At the same time actively preventing piracy is expensive. Having a significant armed security force on a boat is effective, but paying for them when 99.999% of the time when their not needed isn’t cost effective. Making it clear that attacking a ship is pointless on the other hand is a great way to avoid getting attacked in the first place, but you need to be willing to carry through.