Freedom Ship

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Logo of Freedom Ship International

Freedom Ship was a floating city project initially proposed by Norman Nixon in 1999. It was so named because of the "free" international lifestyle facilitated by a mobile ocean colony, though the project would not have been a conventional ship, but rather a series of linked barges.

The Freedom Ship project envisioned a 1400m-long integrated city with condominium housing for 30,000 people, duty-free shopping and other facilities, large enough to require rapid transit. The complex would circumnavigate the globe continuously, stopping regularly at ports of call.^[1]

1 Technology
2 Similar Projects
3 Criticism
4 Citations
5 External links

[edit] Technology

Due to the stresses of hogging and sagging, conventional shipbuilding would be inadequate for a floating complex 1400m in length. The developers have stated that they will use a segmented barge-building technique, giving the hull flexibility and allowing incremental expansion.^[2]

[edit] Similar Projects

Other projects, such as the ResidenSea, have similarly attempted to create mobile communities, though they have conservatively limited themselves to the constraints of conventional shipbuilding. In regards to the economic flexibility and "freedom" created by such mobile settlements, these projects could be considered a realization the avante-garde Walking City concept from 1964, by British architect Ron Herron of the group Archigram.

[edit] Criticism

Despite early press coverage on NPR's Weekend Edition and Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering, the project has seen few recent developments -- Although the initially stated in-service date was to be 2001, as of 2008 construction had not yet begun. This protracted development schedule and dearth of substantive information has led some on the internet to accuse the Freedom Ship of being a scam, as Norman Nixon initially accepted down payments from interested parties. However, this funding is held in escrow, and Nixon has since stopped accepting reservations.^[3]

Norman Nixon and his associates are engineers, rather than urban planners or architects, and the abstraction of the structure and simplistic planning of facilities suggests that the project has not been thoroughly designed beyond the basic mechanics of a barge. Further, the social and political structure of the Freedom Ship seems not to have been considered beyond corporate management.^[4]

Freedom Ship International initially estimated the net cost for construction to be USD 6 billion in 1999. However, by 2002, estimates had risen to USD 11 billion.^[5] The last update to the corporation's website, in 2005, was a press release explaining the difficulty of obtaining financial backing, and as of 2008 Freedom Ship International has not released the names of any major sponsors.^[6]