Well, why not? In an era when multi-squillionaires are rivalling each other in a “mine’s bigger than yours” competition to send the largest and most powerful privately-funded rockets into increasingly cluttered space, the entrepreneurial notion of a super-cruise-liner a mile long, a veritable floating city with 80,000 people on board at any one time, suggests something which may be enormous, but is relatively low tech by comparison with space travel.
The idea was promoted for decades by American engineer, designer, and innovator Norman Nixon. But after his death in 2012, the vision of the Freedom, as he called his floating behemoth-plus, went into abeyance.
But now it is being revived. However, this isn’t simply a super-large cruise liner. On the contrary, it will have a planned speed of only 7 knots. Yet, as it will be much too large to go into any docks currently in existence, or indeed those envisaged far into the future, the docks will go into it, with smaller ferry vessels brought into an entire docking complex set into the stern.
Freedom is planned to be so large that there’ll be no docks available for her to go into, but instead the docks will go into the ship
FLOATING CITY-STATE
Freedom will, in effect, be a floating and mobile city-state, working on the proven business model of cruise liners that don’t have to pay any charges to be on the high seas. At the very least, the thing will be one solution to the problem of rising sea levels, while the size is such that a complete modern life could be lived out in all its entirety without ever leaving the vessel, which will include on-board hospitals and medical research facilities.
The cruise liner's existence is not to everyone’s taste. But many of today’s cruise ships have passengers who live full-time on board, and in some cases seldom go ashore - if at all. At 4,300 feet long and 25 “stories” high, Freedom will offer endless variety within its vast dimensions, which will dwarf anything else afloat and any city port she happens to go near.
The shape of Freedom’s bow does not reflect current fast liner thinking, but the intention is that she’ll only cruise at 7 knots
