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Freedom Ship will dwarf the Queen Elizabeth II and become a permanent home for 50,000 people.

“Freedom will be large enough to bring on more than 50,000 residents, 15,000 employees, 20,000 day guests and still have four times as much roaming-around square footage per person as the most modern cruise liners,” Nixon says during POPULAR

MECHANICS’ visit to see how his ambitious plan is progressing. Taller than the highest buildings in most American cities and topped with a runway that can handle jets, Freedom may someday be the globe-trotting address for 17,000 homes and 4000 businesses. Its dimensions are so colossal that it will have to be assembled at sea. Once it’s built, Freedom will circle the earth every two years, following the balmy breezes as it approaches the world’s major ports. The wealthiest of her “citizens” will leave their 15-ft. by 80-ft. ocean-view apartments and board their private jets or yachts for jaunts to shore. Meanwhile, the 15,000 people who work aboard the ship will gear up for the next on-rush of day visitors anxious to shop at its duty-free stores and guests checking in to vacation in its hotels and time-share condominiums.

As might be expected, this plan for a ship capable of carrying as many as 115,000 people The reason is not simply a matter of Freedom’s proposed 4320-ft. length, which is nearly five times that of the currently largest cruise ship, Carnival Cruise Line’s 900-ft. Destiny , but the enormity of its mass. When naval architects compare ships, they speak in terms of tonnage rather than length. The Destiny displaces 100,000 tons of water. The largest vessel afloat, the supertanker Jahre Viking, displaces 564,739 tons. Freedom will displace 2.7 million tons.

Nixon says that while there are many factors that determine a beam’s maximum length, a steel beam can reasonably be expected to span a distance 15 times its height. “A ship with an effective depth of 80 ft. of hull [measured from keel to main deck] can theoretically span a maximum of 1200 ft.,” Nixon says. “On Freedom, the effective beam runs 350 ft., from the bottom of the ship to the aircraft runway.” The result is a 4320-ft.-long floating beam that draws 37 ft. of water as it rides atop waves, rather than plowing through them.

Once under way, life aboard Freedom will be more like living in a bustling city than being on a vacation cruise. Because of its size, the ship will have its own railway system. Courtyards set about its decks will create interior park and recreation areas. Nixon has calculated that the resident population can support its own local economy, which means that residents will, in many cases, also be operating businesses at sea, in malls throughout the length of the ship.

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Source [Freedom Ship International]

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