Excellent, thank you! Yes that is interesting to me. The only other place I saw the s-risk/aliens connection being made was in this paper: Risks of space colonization (Kovic, 2020), section 4.4.
I'll incorporate that along with your posts into my review.
I've got a friend who works in refrigeration. He fixes containers when they have issues. Occasionally, he isn't able to meet the deadline. When this happens he is told to "Chuck it onto the next ship", and then he just places the container on the queue for the next available ship. He's worked for years now, and this still blows his mind that he's able to do this. Like, containers are not assigned to ships, but to something else? I've spoken to a few others and there appear to be some sort of shipping container cycles or circuits that allow this to happen, ... (read more)
I'm a bit confused about the situation you're describing. The shipping company promised to deliver the container at B, so they arrange for the proper routing. Any transfer port along the way has a contract with the shipping company and transfers the containers as directed by them.
Delivery is not guaranteed to happen on the exact predicted schedule though, which is what you might be talking about. For various reasons, containers often end up missing their connection and waiting for the next available ship (of the same service going to the same destination).... (read more)