Freedom Ship

Freedom Ship is a concept for a floating city proposed by Norman Nixon.
According to Freedom Ship International's website.

With a design length of 4,500 feet (1400 m), a width of 750 feet (230 m), and a height of 350 feet (110 m), Freedom Ship would be more than 4 times longer than the Queen Mary. The design concepts include a mobile modern city featuring luxurious living, an extensive duty-free international shopping mall, and a full 1.7 million square foot (160,000 m²) floor set aside for various companies to showcase their products. Freedom Ship would not be a cruise ship; it is proposed to be a unique place to live, work, retire, vacation, or visit. The ship would continuously circle the globe, covering most of the world's coastal regions. Its large fleet of commuter aircraft and hydrofoils would ferry residents and visitors to and from shore.

The website also envisions adding a subway into the ship, as well as a marina and an area for the residents to place their cars.

Current naval engineering techniques are inadequate for the construction of such a large vessel. At present supertankers cannot be made larger because of the enormous stresses imposed on hulls by hogging and sagging in heavy seas, leading to catastrophic failures. Freedom Ship International has said on the Discovery Channel's Engineering the Impossible that they plan to use a barge building technique, which would reduce the stress of the enormous weight. Also, this would reduce the cost of custom made parts for the ship, allowing living costs to be more reasonable. The program has also stated that the propellers would be a series of 400 fully-rotational azipods; yet, despite the high number of screws, the ship would still be the slowest in the world. Although the initially stated in-service date was to be 2001, as of 2008 construction had not yet begun.Net price estimates for the ship have risen from 6 billion US$ in 1999 to 11 billion US$ in 2002.

May 9, 2008