[wow] Imagine the future of ocean liners. [wow]
What in the name of all that is holy is that thing???
That should do well in high seas!
Dave
Notice the airliner taking off?
It’s also an aircraft carrier.
It’s actually a concept called Freedom Ship. Basically a big barge city. I think it’s what you call a boondoggle.
Dave
A ship if the future and from its flight deck accends an airliner from the past. Other than cargo carriers and South American and African civil transports, and Donald Trump, does anyone even fly the 727 any more?
Peewee
Fantastic! Getting away from it all without the inconvenience - just take it all with you!
Michael
Saw a TV show about this beast a while back. The concept is to sell apartments on the thing, floating city indeed. Idea is slowly ( 10 knots ) circumnavigate the world indefinetely, so inhabitants can interact with different cultures. Whatever. I was more impressed with the Habbakuk idea in WWII.
Sounds fine in theory but how do you interact with anyone when you can’t even park this monstrosity in any existing harbour? Come to think, it’d be bigger than a lot of islands you might encounter!
Michael
I don’t know about circumnavigation. I would hate to be responsible for getting this beast around either Cape Horn or Cape of Good Hope.
I seem to recall a science fiction story from years ago about huge ships with a population that stayed permenently at sea.
Fred
How would you like to be the first lad to be circumsized on that circumnavigation? If it were my circumstance I might try to circumvent it, if if I could.
Peewee
A Captain Bligh would have to command for rounding Cape Horn.
That actually seems to be a LearJet of some sort. Notice the straight wings and the tip tanks.
Clive Cussler’s book Trojan Odyssey has a large floating resort like this one in the plot.
Stuff like that’s been on the cover of Popular Science and/or Popular Mechanics since 1890. Along with commuter airplanes that fold up to briefcase size (I exaggerate a bit).
Never gonna happen.
Although there are rich-enough, crazy-enough people to try it…
Thanks; I’ll look for it.
UPDATE: Found it at B&N, only that it’s a floating underwater hotel – not a ship.
There is an underwater observatory in the book, but a subplot involves the floating city that is in the path of a cat 5 hurricane.
Which brings an interesting problem to a project like this one and why it won’t be done. The sea has too many hazards, hurricanes, tsunamis, waterspouts, squalls, that would endanger this large of a ship and produce too much liablity. Then again, we do have people building million dollar resorts on sandbars so maybe it will happen.
The sci-fi story I am thinking of involved a fleet of ships. As a solution to overpopulation the ships were built to permanently house a population who agreed they would never try to come ashore. The huge ships were sail powered and made of bronze, and took all their required resources from the sea.
About the floating city…I was watching a program about these houses in Vancouver that were all on the water. I think they called it Ocean Drive.
Why don’t they just buy an old A/C carrier from the navy and transform all the rooms and such into cabins, the briefing room a movie theatre, The mess hall a mess hall, split the flight deck into two levels, one for rooms and cabins and the other for helicopters that would transport the people to shore. And they would be big helicopters, like a civilian version of the V-22 with all the bugs fixed and a couple of smaller helicopters for tours or something. And an A/C carrier can sustain like 3000 people in terms of food, so they could sustain like 2500 people easily and the flight deck would allow takeoffs and landings.
David
And then add a full interior to it!!!
David