Model Boat Mayhem

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Author Topic: S.S United States  (Read 2826 times)

Brian60

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S.S United States
« on: April 24, 2016, 08:20:40 am »

How do they let this happen to once great ship? The video is one of a series, the others are available on the youtube page.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxIgkgBbpQg

I guess its just another representation of the USA throw away society when something is no longer of any value to you.

imsinking

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2016, 09:12:42 am »

A new vid' went up early on in the year . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGa7BnObeXw
A tour group want to 'redo' it , a mind boggling 'estimate' of 800 MILLION BUCKS  %%  to do it , when the ship was gutted inside to strip out the asbestos nearly every panel had to be removed , wonder what the steam plant will be like after all this time ?
"Just leave it to rot" seems to be the American way .
Bill
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Perkasaman2

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2016, 09:20:55 am »

The ship is a hulk stripped of its once luxurious interiors. When the price of steel rises it has scrap value minus the huge cost of removing asbestos and other hazards. The Americans are no worse than ourselves here in Europe.
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Colin Bishop

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2016, 10:26:52 am »

You put your finger on it when you say it's no longer of any value Brian - it isn't. It became obsolete when air travel became the main method of crossing the Atlantic and its three class configuration made it impractical to convert to a cruise ship quite apart from the fact that its aircraft carrier main machinery would have been quite unsuitable for a cruising role. Of course there have been various proposals to find a use for the ship down the years but none that would have been financially viable and I doubt very much if the latest proposals will come to anything either.

The United States was a beautiful ship but she had her day and that is now long gone.

It does however underline the unfortunate practice museums now have of putting their ship models into storage or disposing of them as models offer the only 3D representation of these wonderful ships in a way that 2D images rarely can.

Colin
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Brian60

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #4 on: April 24, 2016, 03:32:37 pm »

I understand Colin, but you would think that a country that took the Queen Mary from us for a hotel/business complex, could manage the same for their own!

Colin Bishop

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #5 on: April 24, 2016, 04:43:21 pm »

The Queen Mary has always been on a financial tightrope and the Queen Elizabeth was a complete failure. Both were bought by commercial groups that relied on making a profit from the ships, there was no public money involved.

QE2 was bought by a Dubai business consortium but that project has also failed before it even started and the ship is no longer being maintained properly.

The Rotterdam has recently reopened as a hotel and business centre in Rotterdam (surprise!) but it remains to be seen how successful she will be in the longer term.

As always, preserving a ship is a huge money pit and it is always a struggle to generate sufficient income to maintain the operation. Taxpayer's money is rarely an option. It looks as if HMS Illustrious will be next for the breakers as efforts to preserve her have fallen through.

There are of course exceptions but almost all preserved ships lead a precarious hand to mouth existence and place a tremendous reliance on volunteers to keep them financially and often literally afloat. That is why a number of the preserved battleships in the USA are now experiencing difficulties as the support given by their former crew members falls away.

Colin
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Plastic - RIP

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #6 on: April 24, 2016, 05:47:09 pm »

I always liked the United States - it's been decaying badly for years now and even the mooring fees are crazy because it's taking up so much space.

I think the groups of people trying to preserve these massive ships are deluding themselves with a romantic dream of what could be but the commercial reality means they are just wasting bucket fulls of cash every year trying to get the project going.

(Unless that is the idea - a gravy-train of endless project plan revisions and surveys and budget applications can make a comfortable career for themselves).

If they are serious, they might be better off looking at a smaller project that has a chance of actually happening.
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Nemo

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2016, 07:41:59 pm »

I agree with Plastic - but - I have always wondered why the Americans have never spent enough of their money into saving the beautiful and ground-breaking N.S. Savannah, the worlds first nuclear-powered merchant ship, surely a far better candidate for historical preservation than the SS United States. They had better get cracking as the nuclear clock on its salvation is running out!

 http://gcaptain.com/the-worlds-first-nuclear-merchant-ship-ns-savannah/
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Plastic - RIP

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #8 on: April 24, 2016, 10:21:28 pm »

The Savannah was a great idea - until someone thought that having a few tons of fissile material in an unguarded civilian boat was maybe not such a good idea.

All other nuclear powered ships belong to a Navy and are covered in guns and missiles and have escort ships to deter anyone stealing them.

You've also got the risk of running a reactor in the civilian environment and the possibility of sabotage by anyone with an axe to grind - from terrorists to anti-nuke eco-warriors looking to create an incident. Too many risks.

Other than its power plant, the Savannah was a very pretty ship with lots of sci-fi 'atomic age' cosmetic detailing around the interior fittings so it should be preserved - maybe stick a standard diesel in instead of the reactor or put a normal boiler in to generate steam.
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imsinking

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2016, 10:47:35 pm »

I think the core was extracted from the Savannah long ago , it's the irradiated machine parts that are a problem . .
We have a scratch built model of the Savannah at our lake built by Barrie Freeman . . .

Cost an arm & a leg to decontaminate it properly (the real ship  :P  )
Bill
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Plastic - RIP

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #10 on: April 24, 2016, 10:56:10 pm »

Lovely model.

I spent 20 years in the nuclear industry dealing with some nasty stuff - it's actually quite difficult and increasingly expensive to get rid of irradiated machinery because the waste sites are filling up and the Greens are blocking the construction of new sites as their way to prevent new power stations being built - nowhere to get rid of waste means they can't get approval to build.
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Brian60

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #11 on: April 25, 2016, 07:55:33 am »

The Savannah was a great idea - until someone thought that having a few tons of fissile material in an unguarded civilian boat was maybe not such a good idea.

You've also got the risk of running a reactor in the civilian environment and the possibility of sabotage by anyone with an axe to grind - from terrorists to anti-nuke eco-warriors looking to create an incident. Too many risks.


But don't forget that the ship was conceived in a world where everything in the foreseeable future was rosy for everyone. There was no such thing as terrorists and eco warriors, the only threat in the world was the cold war between the soviets and the west.

Plastic - RIP

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Re: S.S United States
« Reply #12 on: April 25, 2016, 08:04:21 am »

But don't forget that the ship was conceived in a world where everything in the foreseeable future was rosy for everyone. There was no such thing as terrorists and eco warriors, the only threat in the world was the cold war between the soviets and the west.

Yes - everything was going to be atomic-powered. Cars, houses, spacecraft, aircraft - they had functioning nuclear jet engines back then.
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