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Minimum runway length quoted for Boeing 777 take-offs is 2500m, plus a 240m runway end safety area (a sandpit it can plow into if the takeoff is aborted without

Minimum runway length quoted for Boeing 777 take-offs is 2500m, plus a 240m runway end safety area (a sandpit it can plow into if the takeoff is aborted without remaining space to halt). On an aircraft carrier this might be shortened a little since the ship can steam into whatever wind is present, but compare that to the 333m long flight deck on the new Gerald Ford class aircraft carriers and the impossibility is plain to see.

mrec 5y ago
I wonder what the limits are on how far something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk could be scaled up.
- thombat 5y ago
  Habakkuk sounds like many a run-away software project, where a promising notion keeps being pursued long before its impracticability is apparent. Gems from that wiki link: * The final design of Habakkuk II gave the bergship, as it was called, a displacement of 2.2 million tons * The small prototype built in 1944 on a Patricia Lake near Jasper, Alberta, confirmed the researchers' forecast that the full-size vessel would cost more money and machinery than a whole fleet of conventional aircraft carriers * [Assistant Controller of Research and Development for the Admiralty during the Second World War] pointed out the large amount of wood pulp that would be required was enough to affect paper production significantly. He also claimed that each ship would require 40,000 tons of cork insulation, thousands of miles of steel tubing for brine circulation and four power stations, but that for all those resources (some of which could be used to manufacture conventional ships of more effective fighting power) Habakkuk would be capable of travelling at only 6 knots (11 km/h) of speed. * the enormous amount of steel needed for the refrigeration plant that was to freeze the pykrete was greater than that needed to build the entire carrier of steel * the crucial argument was that the rapidly increasing range of land-based aircraft rendered floating islands unnecessary And that behemoth was required for a runway half as long as current civil airliners need.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
Also the aircraft landing on a carrier have tail hooks to stop themselves and an undercarriage that is designed for those stresses.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  And they don't weigh 200 tons...

mrec 5y ago

I wonder what the limits are on how far something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Habakkuk could be scaled up.

thombat 5y ago
Habakkuk sounds like many a run-away software project, where a promising notion keeps being pursued long before its impracticability is apparent. Gems from that wiki link: * The final design of Habakkuk II gave the bergship, as it was called, a displacement of 2.2 million tons * The small prototype built in 1944 on a Patricia Lake near Jasper, Alberta, confirmed the researchers' forecast that the full-size vessel would cost more money and machinery than a whole fleet of conventional aircraft carriers * [Assistant Controller of Research and Development for the Admiralty during the Second World War] pointed out the large amount of wood pulp that would be required was enough to affect paper production significantly. He also claimed that each ship would require 40,000 tons of cork insulation, thousands of miles of steel tubing for brine circulation and four power stations, but that for all those resources (some of which could be used to manufacture conventional ships of more effective fighting power) Habakkuk would be capable of travelling at only 6 knots (11 km/h) of speed. * the enormous amount of steel needed for the refrigeration plant that was to freeze the pykrete was greater than that needed to build the entire carrier of steel * the crucial argument was that the rapidly increasing range of land-based aircraft rendered floating islands unnecessary And that behemoth was required for a runway half as long as current civil airliners need.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

Also the aircraft landing on a carrier have tail hooks to stop themselves and an undercarriage that is designed for those stresses.

jacquesm 5y ago
And they don't weigh 200 tons...