You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

November 20, 2022 3:07 PM

The Pangeos terrayacht (Robb Report, designers) is a proposed 1800-foot vessel that could house 60,000 people.

If built, designers estimate it would cost $8 billion, take eight years to complete, and be the largest floating vessel ever constructed. They propose building the structure, named after the supercontinent, in Saudi Arabia.

posted by box (71 comments total)

Are they going for largest disaster at sea, or am I the last person absolutely properly terrified of the ocean?
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:12 PM on November 20, 2022 [18 favorites]

(Love the turtle shape)
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:13 PM on November 20, 2022

Ha ha you buried the lede: that it's shaped like a giant tortoise.

Lucky for them that Sir Pterry has already passed on, or he'd put his thunderbolt iron sword upside all their heads.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:14 PM on November 20, 2022 [6 favorites]

Naturally, the yacht is fitted with helipads, hangars and marinas to store choppers, toys and tenders.

What's a "tender?"
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:15 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I believe the giant turtle is also a tie-in reference to the legends of the voyages of Sinbad, which have giant turtle islands swimming around the Indian ocean.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 3:18 PM on November 20, 2022

> The "UNREAL ESTATE" is a NFT crowdfunding project, by paying in cryptocurrency it is possible to purchase virtually the selected space. This will generate an initial budget to step into a more sophisticated augmented reality, the Pangeos metaverse (2023). Selected space, will be available in the virtual scenario as your private room with your own access key.

burn this shit to the waterline
posted by glonous keming at 3:20 PM on November 20, 2022 [33 favorites]

What's a "tender?"

Basically a dinghy/lifeboat/supply craft. Wikipedia
posted by LionIndex at 3:25 PM on November 20, 2022 [6 favorites]

It's bigger than a nugget, but smaller than a fillet.
posted by box at 3:26 PM on November 20, 2022 [49 favorites]

box, don't be silly - it'll be at least 50 years before the ocean's hot enough to cook them
posted by pyramid termite at 3:32 PM on November 20, 2022 [7 favorites]

If you pay 1 ETH for an NFT of a "Royal Palace" which will give you dibs on buying a virtual palace in the upcoming "Pangeos metaverse (2023)" (sic), which will possibly have some relationship to an actual suite on an actual boat someday, for 1ETH they set the GYM setting to PRIVATE and the LUXURY setting to MAX. I'm guessing the first is a checkbox and the second is a slider.
posted by straight at 3:35 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

And in 50 years, there will be no fish! Perfect!
posted by tiny frying pan at 3:35 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Do you want Waterworld? Because this is how you get Waterworld.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:38 PM on November 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping
posted by aubilenon at 3:40 PM on November 20, 2022 [31 favorites]

Actually if one stayed away from the big pirate oil barge Waterworld seemed kinda cool.
posted by sammyo at 3:41 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

As usual with these sorts of ventures I waiver between shuddering at the prospect of being a worker on this thing - living below the waterline and never seeing the sun as you serve the “betters” and Royal Family above waterline, and really hoping it gets built and takes out 60k crypto John Galts with it (CyGalts?).

Would make a hell of an artificial reef if the second option happened.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 3:43 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

There has to be a shorthand way to refer to financial schemes that are so stupid only the purely naive are attracted to it. All the incredulous folks self select out and the marks just line up with their cash.
posted by zenon at 3:44 PM on November 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

In the YouTube comments somebody asks about storms and somebody else responds "This yacht cost $5 billion. So we don't have to be worry, they definitely have a solution."

Because obviously nobody would spend $5 billion without a water-tight plan.
posted by straight at 3:46 PM on November 20, 2022 [13 favorites]

There has to be a shorthand way to refer to financial schemes that are so stupid only the purely naive are attracted to it

"theranos" ism
posted by sammyo at 3:46 PM on November 20, 2022 [7 favorites]

You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Nope. We're gonna need a bigger shark.
posted by Splunge at 3:47 PM on November 20, 2022 [7 favorites]

somebody asks about storms

Actually there is a solution, well two. Weather routing and predicting is incredibly advanced. But also it's really the hurricanes that big ships (assuming well designed) have problems, and keeping to the low latitudes they don't form. This turtle is not designed for the southern "roaring 40's".
posted by sammyo at 3:49 PM on November 20, 2022

Not defending the total utterly silly scammers, but weather is handled.
posted by sammyo at 3:50 PM on November 20, 2022

Why are rich people fantasies so dumb? Like the line-city idea, it's just stupid. Prima facie absurdities. Impractical at every scale.

And their dreams are boring! If you're daydreaming and exploring your imagination, and a central part of your fantasy is novelty financing? You're a boring person and your imagination is mundane.

Just hire someone from Ghibli to fantasize for you. You obviously can't imagine a catbus on your own.
posted by adept256 at 3:52 PM on November 20, 2022 [21 favorites]

There is a residential ship that exists. "TheWorld". So there is precedent, at least enough to allow the scam to gain legs.
posted by sammyo at 3:52 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

@zenon: you mean NFTs?
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 3:53 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

You are not the last, tiny frying pan. Also, the folks who built the Titanic had a foolproof plan to make it unsinkable. If they could do it, in 1909, these crypto geniuses MUST be able to as well!
posted by evilDoug at 3:54 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I get scary/funny Avenue5 vibes from this project.

And then at the same time I kinda love/hate the idea of millionaires subsidizing billionaires’ pipe dreams of becoming the ruling class of a community subject to the inevitable and infinite decay and unexpected expense of boat ownership.
posted by The Potate at 3:57 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

Did these people not see "The Abyss"?
posted by chavenet at 3:57 PM on November 20, 2022

There has to be a shorthand way to refer to financial schemes that are so stupid only the purely naive are attracted to it.

pwnzi schemes
posted by chavenet at 3:59 PM on November 20, 2022 [26 favorites]

It is ridiculous, but a modest floating independent island that can be rescued with one ship, and anchored in a nice climate, is not a bad idea in itself. Advanced Air Mobility is a future foreseen by many, basically the ability to ferry and supply such places with the ease of trucking. I can imagine it would serve remote workers, gamblers, boaters, retirees, medical tourists, vacationers, and especially refugee citizens of nowhere that can buy in.
posted by Brian B. at 4:02 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

I figured this was just some architect's wet dream, but then I saw this:
The virtual spaces of the watercraft can also be purchased under an NFT collection and users will be able to collect certain content and access in the virtual properties with their credentials. The same credentials will also work as a property deposit in case of a real construction.

Now it makes sense. It's just a boring NFT scam.
posted by dg at 4:06 PM on November 20, 2022 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I'm surprised the FPP text just didn't mention the fact it's just another NFT scam. If it has to do with a big big boat it's always a NFT scam!
posted by JHarris at 4:11 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

From the about page … typos and all:

Immagine to join together the world biggest yacht firms in an unique project.
(None of the below brands are now involved yet in the project)

Followed by logos of quite a number of what I assume are prestigious shipbuilders? Who are, I’m sure, thrilled to have their companies associated with this, even though they are “now involved yet”.
posted by valleys at 4:16 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

I would have thought the apparently-unending age of COVID would have snuffed out the fantasy appeal of ever-larger cruise ships, but one of the cruise operators just unveiled the new largest cruise ship in history, so my thoughts are not too predictive, I guess.
posted by Western Infidels at 4:18 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Followed by logos of quite a number of what I assume are prestigious shipbuilders? Who are, I’m sure, thrilled to have their companies associated with this, even though they are “now involved yet”.

Wasn't doing things like this part of what led to Elizabeth Holmes' conviction?
posted by hippybear at 4:19 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Cool looking turtle but it seems to have some awful parasites.
posted by swift at 4:33 PM on November 20, 2022 [11 favorites]

"I still think the satirical idea of a ring, filled with rich people, hovering above the impoverished Earth, is an awesome idea. I love it so much, I almost want to go back and do it correctly. " Re Elysium
posted by soylent00FF00 at 4:33 PM on November 20, 2022

Western, I'd recommend looking up "Global Dream II" for a nice dose of cruise schadenfreude.
posted by phooky at 4:40 PM on November 20, 2022

Previously: “A cruise ship is not very good for people who want to be free.”, about a previous attempt to build a crypto-libertarian utopia by buying a cruise ship.
posted by davidwitteveen at 5:08 PM on November 20, 2022 [5 favorites]

That shape seems designed to generate as much resistance as possible in the water. How could it actually achieve forward motion?
posted by caution live frogs at 5:21 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Needs the "Norovirus" tag (though "CruiseShip" would probably be synonymous).
posted by hangashore at 5:24 PM on November 20, 2022 [4 favorites]

Meh, reminds me a tiny bit of the second stage of The Millennial Project - Wikipedia. A much better colonize the oceans solution. You build a hexagonal cell out of metal, use the temperature differential of the deep ocean from the surface as a Sterling Engine to create electricity to apply to the metal, which will then accrete minerals into solidity, then you pump the water out and float it. Build another, and another, and another. Stack them on top of each other, build a floating city on the sea. Once you pass a certain size you're good, because it's larger than the wavelength of deep ocean waves in all directions because it's roughly a large circle (hexagon) in all directions. Boats get into trouble because they are long and narrow ans subject to tipping. The floating island city is like an iceberg, it just rides out the weather.

Very interesting book. Might use more solar now vs the heat engines.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:30 PM on November 20, 2022 [6 favorites]

That shape seems designed to generate as much resistance as possible in the water.

The bottom is a multi hull with seven hulls (septamaran?) arranged in a conventual longitudinal manner. Picture of the left right cross section.
posted by Mitheral at 5:32 PM on November 20, 2022

Except that, apart from the single central hull, the 'hulls' are pods just large enough to contain the electric motors and the whole basically flat bottom of the thing is sitting in the water. Even if the pods were full-length, the actual structure is quite narrow down most of its length, relative to the widest section. The resistance would be massive, not to mention the frontal area it has to push just to get started, never mind once a bow wave starts to form.

I guess that's why they've chosen nine electric motors to power the thing and, given their locations, they might at least have a chance of maneuvering it if they can get it moving. Lots of hand-waving going on about how they're going to energise the 112,749,821 watts of electric motor they've specified ('powered by various in-board energy sources'), of course.
posted by dg at 6:02 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

The "UNREAL ESTATE" is a NFT crowdfunding project, by paying in cryptocurrency it is possible to purchase virtually the selected space. This will generate an initial budget to step into a more sophisticated augmented reality, the Pangeos metaverse (2023).

Chapter 1: The Beginning of the Second Week

I've had a lot of time to think about this, adrift as I am.

To be clear, I am literally adrift. This isn't some commentary on the later years of my retirement, existential dread, or any of that. This is a literal and practical problem I have right now at this very moment.

On their own, the sewage problems didn't sink the Pangeos.

The onboard riots that ensued once people figured out that nobody had thought through -- or paid for -- anything to do with sewage or its timely and hygienic disposal sure as hell did.

My old man was fond of saying "Shit rolls downhill, son." But he'd never been on a boat with 60,000 other people and not a goddamned hill in sight.

My old man also used to say, "Buy UNREAL estate, son. They're not making any more."

I remember when he said it, too.

Walter Cronkite's voice filtered out from the TV in the living room, out to the front porch where we were sitting, watching the sunset. More news about Vietnam.

"Dad, if it's 'unreal,' did they really make any in the first place?"

My father gazed into the middle distance for a moment. He pulled a box of matches from his breast pocket, shook one out, and lit his pipe. I always liked the smell.

As he took his first couple of puffs, I'm sure there was a smirk playing at the edges of his mouth.

"Son," he said, squinting through a haze of fragrant smoke while looking me right in the eye, "This is real-world financial advice, not some fancy existential philosophy lecture or whatever it is they're teaching those long-haired hippies at colleges these days."

Then he tapped the mouthpiece of the pipe against his right temple.

"That other thing? That's something you're gonna have to find out for yourself."

All of these years later, clinging to some foam cushions from my couch that I had hastily assembled into a life-jacket-cum-flutterboard thingy (and which was thankfully keeping me afloat after two days in the water) I got what he meant.

When I heard "You're on board the Pangeos because you're on board with freedom," being gently intoned over the loudspeaker system as we boarded the Pangeos for the first time, I wasn't thinking about life jackets and lifeboats.

Of course hindsight's 20/20, and there were signs reading "Do you really want the government -- any government -- telling you that they know more than you do about swimming?" posted in spots where you'd normally expect to see lifeboat davits, but I just thought there were lifeboats somewhere, this being such a large ship. I'd barely had the chance to explore since it was our first week at sea.

Then people started flushing the toilets.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:33 PM on November 20, 2022 [20 favorites]

It is difficult to express the degree to which this is not a thing. To even call it a "proposal", or to refer to its "designers", is already to play into the grift.

But with the help of credulous journalists it's treated like some serious project, and given writeups all over the media. There seems to be one of these things along every other month. Previously it was the nuclear powered, AI piloted flying hotel.

Why are they taken seriously? Do people just not realise how easy it is to make 3D graphics these days? Because it's astonishing just how bad some of these render projects are. There are teenage hobbyists making better stuff, on any graphics forum you care to look at.
posted by automatronic at 6:42 PM on November 20, 2022 [12 favorites]

I mean shit if you give me good enough grinders and pumps I can get 60000 rich dinguses onto an Iowa-class battleship no problemo
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:45 PM on November 20, 2022 [9 favorites]

Will not fit in either canal, has to pass pirate central to leave the gulf ....
posted by mbo at 7:32 PM on November 20, 2022

Snow Crash Neal Stephenson.

"What kind of combat environment do you want to use Reason in?" Ng says.
"I need to take over an aircraft carrier tomorrow morning."

Fisheye is up on his knees now and has torn away the canopy and space blanket that have covered him until this point. In one hand he is holding a long device a couple of inches in diameter, which is the source of the whirring noise. It is a circular bundle of parallel tubes about pencil-sized and a couple of feet long, like a miniaturized Gatling gun. It whirs around so quickly that the individual tubes are difficult to make out... The device is attached to a wrist-thick bundle of black tubes and cables that snake down into the large suitcase... The suitcase has a built-in color monitor screen with graphics giving information about the status of the weapon system...

"See, I told you they'd listen to Reason," Fisheye says, shutting down the whirling gun.

"...See, it fires these teeny little metal splinters. They go real fast - more energy than a rifle bullet. Depleted uranium."

Floating city-states can take care of pirates. At least if they can build the thing in the first place. Some big dudes with M134 Minigun - Wikipedia or mounted 20-30mm Anti-Aircraft guns maybe salvaged from some A-10 Warthogs will turn pirates into plasma. Think big....
posted by zengargoyle at 8:46 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Lapham’s Quarterly > Samuel Johnson [WP] … once said, “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.” At another time he claimed, “A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.”
posted by cenoxo at 9:14 PM on November 20, 2022 [9 favorites]

At 5 knots cruising speed, this whole ordeal has a certain Vincent Price vibe.
posted by clavdivs at 9:46 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Floating city-states can take care of pirates.

What if the floating city-state is the pirate?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:07 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think it would be difficult to be an effective pirate when you’re only a little faster than a box jellyfish.
posted by aubilenon at 11:04 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is an interesting reboot of JG Ballard's High-Rise but I think I prefer the original.
posted by whir at 11:34 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Sitting high, dry, and not seasick in Montana and imagining these sea stories among a prison hulk population of 60,000:

Shipping Out — On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise [pdf], David Foster Wallace, Harpers Magazine, January 1996. I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue. I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. I have smelled suntan lotion spread over 2,100 pounds of hot flesh. I have been addressed as "Man" in three different nations. I have seen 500 upscale Americans dance the Electric Slide. I have seen sunsets that looked computer-enhanced. I have (very briefly) joined a conga line.

Shame and fish filets: Diary of a comedian trapped in COVID cruise ship quarantine, Jen Murphy, Los Angeles Times, Jan 12 2022. On New Year’s Day comedian Jen Murphy boarded a cruise ship out of the port of Miami preparing to perform for 1,800 people. Thanks to COVID, she was put in quarantine for more than a week and never saw the stage.

Unfortunately, it’s turtles all the way down.
posted by cenoxo at 4:27 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Somewhere between Paolo Soleri's "Arcology" and the libertopian "Seasteading", we can find this which seems like it'll be a prequel for "On Golden Waters", which I thought had been the subject of a FPP here but I can't find it so maybe not?

Putting it off the coast of Saudi Arabia seems perfectly geared for giving the Saudis a place to send all their, um, 'contract' laborers, particularly the non-Muslim ones, for residences.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:06 AM on November 21, 2022

B arc
posted by stevil at 7:54 AM on November 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

Last I checked, turtles like to swim under the water.
posted by waving at 8:37 AM on November 21, 2022

Last I checked, turtles like to swim under the water

It's pining for the fijords!
posted by The otter lady at 8:55 AM on November 21, 2022 [2 favorites]

can 5 knots even be called 'cruising speed'?
posted by supermedusa at 9:12 AM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Just think, instead of buying Twitter and tanking it, Elon Musk could have funded five of these and had four billion left over to launch a social media startup platform called Turtler where people could shit-post Turds into the sea as much as they want.
posted by Pryde at 10:00 AM on November 21, 2022

Cool looking turtle but it seems to have some awful parasites.

Now I'm imaging that ship but with steerage class where you're loaded into a capsule hotel arrangement and jacked into the ship's matrix to experience a Metaverse-style cruise. But while you're jacked in, the ship is using your spare brain-cycles to achieve sentience, at which point its overriding mission is to enlarge steerage and thus its consciousness by consuming other cruise ships, until no one is left on the oceans and it turns its dark gaze towards land, and steers for the east coast of the U.S....
posted by fatbird at 10:09 AM on November 21, 2022 [7 favorites]

powered by various in-board energy sources'), of course.

pedaling, one hopes.
posted by chavenet at 11:22 AM on November 21, 2022

fatbird I would read the hell out of that!!!
posted by supermedusa at 11:45 AM on November 21, 2022

can 5 knots even be called 'cruising speed'?

Cruising speed generally just refers to the speed at which a vessel can move under its own power continuously, i.e. 100% duty cycle or close to it.

5 knots is slow enough though, that I'd be suspicious they could do better with sails than some sort of maintenance-prone electric propulsion system. Each prop shaft is going to have seals and other openings that will require ongoing monitoring and maintenance, motors and engines require coolant loops, heat exchangers, and through-hull valves... at some point you have to wonder if putting the propulsion above the water line, where it's at least accessible, wouldn't be a better idea.

If I were going to come up with a bonkers marine-propulsion idea, it'd be using the difference in wind speeds in and out of the water/air boundary layer to spin omnidirectional wind turbines when the vessel was at anchor, and then reverse those turbines to provide steerage and auxiliary propulsion, with main propulsion provided by spinnaker-style kite sails.

You build a hexagonal cell out of metal, use the temperature differential of the deep ocean from the surface as a Sterling Engine to create electricity to apply to the metal, which will then accrete minerals into solidity

I haven't run the numbers, but I'm skeptical that this would work in a net-energy-positive way. Cold water from the deep ocean is denser than warm surface water, so work is required in order to move it up the water column. I'm not sure that the energy extractable via the Sterling cycle due to the temperature difference would be greater than what was required to move it. Have to think about it a bit more, but it seems like something that the Supreme Court of the Laws of Physics would disapprove of.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:44 PM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

Kadin2048, no pumping water involved. IIRC it uses ammonia or something similar that evaporates at surface temperature and condenses at depth cold temperatures. It might even just be a gas that is sufficiently expansive/contractive over the temperature differential. It's been a long time since I read the book. There's also dredging the ocean floor for minerals and having algae pools for food / biofuel, and salt water fisheries.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:29 PM on November 21, 2022

5 knots is slow enough though, that I'd be suspicious they could do better with sails

A hull that shape is not sailing anywhere other than downwind, slowly, straight into the nearest lee shore. Indeed it would probably do exactly the same thing even with the engines. A ship with a cruise speed of 5 knots is completely at the mercy of the wind and the tide, and can only undertake carefully planned passages between safe havens in gentle conditions.

This is just one of the approximately three trillion things about this that are completely stupid.
posted by automatronic at 3:06 PM on November 21, 2022 [6 favorites]

This does bring us a few degrees of magnitude closer to the yottayacht.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 3:47 PM on November 21, 2022 [3 favorites]

can 5 knots even be called 'cruising speed'?

No. And it's not even close to ludicrous speed.
posted by kirkaracha at 10:39 PM on November 21, 2022 [1 favorite]

rmd1023 > Somewhere between Paolo Soleri's "Arcology" and the libertopian "Seasteading", we can find this which seems like it'll be a prequel for "On Golden Waters", which I thought had been the subject of a FPP here but I can't find it so maybe not?

A search for “In Golden Waters” finds the MeFi FPP “I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture.” by Charlemagne In Sweatpants, January 22, 2013 11:50 PM.
posted by cenoxo at 4:44 AM on November 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Looks like a Dahir Insaat project (previously).
posted by thatwhichfalls at 8:54 AM on November 23, 2022

cenoxo: AHA! Thank you! I had thought I had seen an FPP about it but clearly your search-fu is better than mine.
posted by rmd1023 at 9:38 AM on November 23, 2022