Freedom City at Sea ship

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It's a serious project but does anyone think that this 'city at sea' will ever get off the ground?
http://www.freedomship.com/freedomship/news/news.shtml
 
Perhaps the confirmation of 50-foot rogue waves had something to do with it ??

If QE2/QM2's Captain could get a fright, a Freedom Ship's Captain would be sending SOS...

My suspicion is that Lloyds' inspectors declined to certify the design/type as sea-worthy.
 
Ah well. Back to the proposed floating (on air) city I saw on Discovery NextWorld!!
 
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/03/cruise.ship.wave/index.html?hpt=T2
:
Madrid, Spain (CNN) -- Two passengers aboard a cruise ship were killed when 26-foot waves crashed into the vessel Wednesday off northeast Spain, officials said. Fourteen others were injured.

The Greece-based Louis Cruise Lines ship was in the Mediterranean north of Barcelona when it was hit by three "abnormal" waves, each about 26 feet (9 meters) high, cruise line spokesman Michael Maratheftis said.

As a result, five windows in public areas -- on the forward part, or bow, of the 14-deck ship -- were smashed, and two male passengers -- a German and an Italian -- were killed, he said.

Fourteen others were treated aboard the ship for light injuries but were hospitalized as a precaution when the ship returned to Barcelona on Wednesday night, Maratheftis said.
/
:
Buoy data off the French coast indicated that weather was the likely cause of the high waves. Winds were at 45 mph at that buoy.
/
 
The design of very large floating structures like the Freedom Ship and the proposed USN Seabase concept factors in the possibility of rogue waves. The Freedom ship (and Sea base) were/are meant to be built from modular subsections with articulation points in between them that would allow for flexibilty in high sea states.
..However with Freedom Ship the fatal crashing wave was the world economy...
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2514936/The-incredible-mile-long-floating-CITY--complete-schools-hospital-parks-airport-50-000-residents.html
 
Well I'll be damned, the concept still lives! I wouldn't give two cents for its prospects of actually getting built, though.

I've seen it touted as a floating Galt's Gulch. A nice idea, but there're a few problems with that:
1) The sort of people who *want* to bail from the over regulated bureaucratocracies are probably underwhelmed at the idea of being shacked up with 50,000 other people that they share walls, floors and ceilings with
2) This thing would be a floating bullseye for every nut with a religious or economic ideology... and every government wanting to extort taxes.

It's like an arcology, but even more restrictive.

I'd rather see a space colony. Something like "Elysium," but with a, y'know, roof.
 
Here's an example of what I see as the biggest problem with the "Freedom Ship" concept:

Plans to build the "Freedom Ship", a luxury cruise liner 25 stories high and over a mile long, are back on. Hmmm, the world's richest people, neatly gathered together and floating in the middle of the ocean... This could work out

A discussion thread on the concept where the basic premise is understood to be that it would be a good thing to gather a bunch of rich folk together and murder them en masse. Sure, they're joking. Probably. Maybe.

But there *are* a lot of people around the world, from Somali pirates to "Occupiers" to national governments who would see this thing as a wonderful target for theft and murder. One small "backpack nuke" would wipe out a whole lot of money. And unlike a city, where even more damage could be caused, this thing would be an All New concentrated focus for greed and rage for those for whom other peoples success is their failure (i.e. socialists and the like).
 
The thing is unbuildable. It was designed as a bunch of barges bolted together with apartment building like structures on top, designed by a civil engineer in a very loose manner, and would breakup from the ocean waves if it ever set sail. The whole thing is an investment scam that's been trying to collect money for over a decade without ever publishing new details.
 
Orionblamblam said:
But there *are* a lot of people around the world, from Somali pirates to "Occupiers" to national governments who would see this thing as a wonderful target for theft and murder. One small "backpack nuke" would wipe out a whole lot of money. And unlike a city, where even more damage could be caused, this thing would be an All New concentrated focus for greed and rage for those for whom other peoples success is their failure (i.e. socialists and the like).
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And yet these people don't use their backpack nuke or 'eat the rich' banner to target Davos at every high season. Security threats would be way down the list of things that make a permanent at sea city unfeasible.
 
Abraham Gubler said:

And yet these people don't use their backpack nuke or 'eat the rich' banner to target Davos at every high season.
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A backpack nuke wouldn't *sink* Davos.

The issue I see is that people are used to the idea of cities full of rich folk. But a *ship* full of rich folk? That would be a different beast. If you happen to be in Switzerland, you can mosey over to Davos and wander around town. You can wander around Hollywood. You can even wander around Manhattan. But a City Ship? Not so much. Many people would see such a thing as a taunt if it ever came within sight of the shore (which it may not).
 
If they do manage to get this off the ground, part of the security/defense plan may be to procure a large number of low cost escort vessels, such as the Sirio Class patrol ship. Or, if they have enough spare change, perhaps even something along the lines of the D'Estienne d'Orves Class?

EDIT: For as to how to organise an effective onboard guard force on the ship itself, they could take the old Kansai International Airport Marine Guard as a starting point.
 
Abraham Gubler said:

But it would kill an awful lot of rich people.
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Sure. But read the comments on the various linked stories. Such as this ARTICLE:
  • Once it's been built and populated with the 1%, torpedo it.
  • You know, if anyone had a spare nuke and a remote-controlled sub, there is a variation of Regan’s “trickle down economics” that just might work… after all, if you take out the dam that is the 1%, there is nothing left to hold the waters back from the 99% anymore.
  • Where are the Somali pirates when you need them?
  • The only solution is "Tokyo Bay" to sink CRS (Corporate Raider Ship) "Freedom."
  • I hope they fill it past max capacity and it sinks to the bottom of the ocean with no survivors.
And so on. Sure, it's just the usual internet nastiness. But consider this: if the goal wasn't for rich people to build something for themselves to segregate themselves on, but instead an ethnic or religious minority, and people were commenting to the effect that "great, build it, gather them all together and then wipe them all out," you can bet that those comments would cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Here... shrug. Not so much.

If history has shown us anything, it's that fire burns, rain falls, wind blows and when you make it acceptable and common to call for the deaths of Certain Groups, chances are you just might see some action on that front.
 
A luxury cruise ship retirement community for retirees to spend their children's inherentence. You might have a pretty nice life as the ship's doctor or part of the medical staff.
 
Triton said:
A luxury cruise ship retirement community for retirees to spend their children's inherentence.
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A nitpick: your children don't have an inheritance unless you are actually dead. If you are still alive, your money is *your* money (subject to the whims of your local government kleptocrats, of course).

You might have a pretty nice life as the ship's doctor or part of the medical staff.
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Well, to certain limits of the definition of "nice." A high density of old folks on a ship at sea? Having been there, I can assure you that you will have to work hard to hear more bitchin' & complainin'.
 
Well
Orionblamblam said:
... A high density of old folks on a ship at sea? ...
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Reminds me on the definition given by a German cabaret artist for "MS Deutschland" (MS = MV or M/V),
which he translated as "Mumienschlepper" (mummy tug), after a cruise, he had accompanied as one of the
artists there ... B)
"If he won't convince the sceptics, Freedom City will remain a dream". And there are still a lot of just technical
points, that need convincing solutions, I think. Such a ship probably could be built using the shown methods, ok.
But then all those welded together elements sooner or later will need maintenance and then there still would be
no dock available. 100 submerged engines ? How often would one of them would need a replacement ? Could be
a major project for professional divers. Or is the ship constructed in a way, that allows single cells to be lifted out
of the compound structure to be replaced via a kind of maintenance deck ? Wasn't shown in the video, so I suppose,
it's just a gigantic barge with a gigantic hotel on it. Maybe a way to make rich man much poorer quite fast, when the
prices for a square foot will fell dramatically after the first reports of dramatic increases in maintenance costs !
 
This ship will hardly get the status of a "state", how should it be a tax haven then ? ???
The only plus may be for those who are working on it, at least with regards to German
tax laws, because income earned over a period of more than six months outside of
Germany is taxable in the state, where it was earned, wherever this may be.
 
At a "Mile long" it'd be roughly three times longer than any ship ever built. That alone could be an issue. But as this video shows, its size would preclude it from even going many places in what you'd normally consider open ocean or relatively navigable seas.


I could see it completely blocked out of the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, as two examples. It might be prohibited from transiting many straits like Molucca. The English Channel, Gibraltar, or going into the Red and Arabian seas.

With nowhere to dock, and certainly nowhere to be drydocked, maintenance in the long-term would become an issue. What happens when it hits say 20 to 30 years of service life?
 
T. A. Gardner said:
At a "Mile long" it'd be roughly three times longer than any ship ever built. That alone could be an issue. But as this video shows, its size would preclude it from even going many places in what you'd normally consider open ocean or relatively navigable seas.


I could see it completely blocked out of the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, as two examples. It might be prohibited from transiting many straits like Molucca. The English Channel, Gibraltar, or going into the Red and Arabian seas.

With nowhere to dock, and certainly nowhere to be drydocked, maintenance in the long-term would become an issue. What happens when it hits say 20 to 30 years of service life?
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Oh, imagine the life you could have inside an oil tanker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy comes readily to mind...
 
TsrJoe said:
With all the really bad stuff happening too no doubt, power corrupts completely
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When you look into these proposals for more than fifteen seconds it's obvious that the people behind them (a) envisage themselves as the ones having the power and (b) view life at sea as providing them with freedom from restrictions on that power.
 
Yellow Palace said:
When you look into these proposals for more than fifteen seconds it's obvious that the people behind them (a) envisage themselves as the ones having the power and (b) view life at sea as providing them with freedom from restrictions on that power.
Click to expand...
In this case it's even sillier because the people boosting this have no idea how to design, finance, build, crew, operate, or maintain a large cruise ship, let alone a "city at sea." They have an idea, now they're hoping people with the means and knowledge will just flock to them because of it.
 
In a divergent path. Whatever happened to the Ocker building a Titanic replica in the PRC?
 
Moose said:
In this case it's even sillier because the people boosting this have no idea how to design, finance, build, crew, operate, or maintain a large cruise ship, let alone a "city at sea." They have an idea, now they're hoping people with the means and knowledge will just flock to them because of it.
Click to expand...
Nah, that's about par for the course.
 

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