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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 sc

• 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.