Amazingly big cruise ships "stretched" to become absurdly massive

[boingboing]

Originally published at: Amazingly big cruise ships "stretched" to become absurdly massive

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[Mel_J]

From Gail Sherman

[Brainspore]

@boingboing

…“Icon of the Seas,” which includes the largest swimming pool at sea…

In a sense isn’t the sea the largest swimming pool at sea?

[smulder]

MV Balmoral Cruise Ship Stretching at Blohm+Voss Time lapse

[GrumpySteen]

I look forward to fiction becoming reality

Clarke and Dawe - The Front Fell Off

[NukeML]

I am a sucker for a good timelapse video with ethereal music

[Happy_Gobo]

this image comes to mind

[Otherbrother]

As “absurdly massive” as the lengthened ship in that video is, it’s still only a little over half the length and less that 1/5 of the tonnage of the world’s largest.

If they want to compete with ships like Icon of the Seas they’re going to need to step up their game and weld several smaller cruise ships together, Voltron-style.

[PurpleVortex]

Ahh. Redneck stretch limo. Very nice

[SoylentPlaid]

Awesome, they’re longer so they can knock out multiple 500-year-old piers in Venice now!

[jerwin]

Drydocking Battleship New Jersey: A Project Overview

[jaded]

AmazinglyAbsurdly big cruise ships “stretched” to become absurdly massiveeven more absurd

FTFY.

[timd]

Cut-&-shut gangs are becoming ambitious.

[FGD135]

Stretch it just a little bit more and you’ll have yourself a fancy pontoon bridge.

[dug]

I understand monofilament is good for this sort of thing.

[euansmith]

@smulder That’s an amazing video; though it does lack the usual 5 Stars you normally see when heading in to a chop shop.

@dug

I understand monofilament is good for this sort of thing.

[Doctor_Faustus]

@euansmith

@dug

I understand monofilament is good for this sort of thing.

I thing they were referencing this

[euansmith]

My bad. I’ve not seen 3 Body Problem.

[angusm]

I’m not a naval architect, but I really wonder about the wisdom of this. The hull of a ship is designed to respond to a particular set of stresses that are related to (among other things) the proportions of the hull. Lengthening the hull changes that equation and presumably introduces weaker points at the joins.

I don’t doubt they take this into account, and that the results remain within tolerances. Still, to my non-technical brain, that sounds like a recipe for a weaker ship.

Mind you, I still can’t believe the liberties aviation engineers are able to take with the original designs of passenger jets to create ‘stretched’ and ‘big top’ versions, so maybe my instincts are all wrong. And given that a cruise ship is essentially a large hotel stacked on a steel hull, maybe cutting it in half and gluing the bits back together doesn’t make it materially less seaworthy than before.

[anothernewbbaccount]

@Otherbrother

If they want to compete with ships like Icon of the Seas they’re going to need to step up their game and weld several smaller cruise ships together, Voltron-style.

I’m waiting for them to put two massive norovirus incubators side by side about a ship’s width apart and stick a whole new deck in the gap joining them together. The Catamaran Cruiser can’t be far away, surely?

(Yeah - too large for many ports. But some techbro edgelord biliionaires might want a go, it would probably be a quicker and cheaper way of getting their offshore floating habitat/tax haven that keeps resurfacing as a proposition every now and again.)