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Belesari

New Member
Yea, I saw those a couple days ago. Though not as many. Sigh, still a damn shame about the big E. If any ship deserves to become a Museum its that one. Hate to see her just scrapped.


John Newman said:
A nice selection of photos of the soon to christened Gerald R Ford:

Come aboard USS Gerald R Ford (CVN 78), the newest aircraft carrier

Also in the article is also some photos of Abraham Lincoln in dry dock and also some photos of Enterprise being slowly but surely dismantled too.

It would be a fitting memorial to Enterprise if somewhere suitable could be found to put her unique island structure.
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StobieWan

Super Moderator
Staff member
Belesari said:
Yea unfortunately it was canceled. Though I'm sure the hull and technology could be adapted for use. HELL its the size of a cruiser now.
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There were a number of threads in a navy forum I frequent with some helpfully acerbic input from a couple of qualified nukes and the upshot was that in a surface combatant, there isn't enough separation from the outside world to make a reactor a safe bet in a shooting war. A carrier, it's a prime asset and will be defended to the utmost, plus they're frickin' *huge* so you can keep the reactors away from the hull.

Between that and the cost of running a nuclear powered surface combatant, the political things, we're not likely to see it happen.


If oil prices rose to vast amounts ($200 dollars a barrel is the cited cut off point) then the economics may make sense but the practicalities are still huge. DC on a ruptured pressure vessel would be less fun than you'd imagine.
 
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AegisFC

Super Moderator
Staff member
Verified Defense Pro
Belesari said:
Yea, I saw those a couple days ago. Though not as many. Sigh, still a damn shame about the big E. If any ship deserves to become a Museum its that one. Hate to see her just scrapped.
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Problem is the US is saturated with museum ships and some of the groups are struggling to keep enough funding to stay open and are deferring hull maintenance.
 
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StobieWan

Super Moderator
Staff member
Trouble is, by the time they've torn their way down to the eight reactors to remove them, there's not much recognisable in the ship. You'd have to rebuild it back up to deck level which would be an expensive undertaking.

Once done, you'd have a total money pit that'd need massive restoration and conservation efforts to make it safe and attractive to visitors.

Then you'd have to find someplace to berth the thing - near enough to a population centre to get the traffic to it, the difficulties go on. I'd love to see a similar arrangement to the FAA museum at Yeovilton however - it's a brilliant indoor facility where you get into a small space decked out as a helicopter interior for a "transfer flight" to the carrier, and step out onto the deck of an RN Carrier, complete with the island, several aircraft posed on the deck, and can walk through the island and various rooms with an audio visual tour.

Perhaps enough of the island and internals could be recovered for that but the entire carrier is a huge undertaking.
 
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Belesari

New Member
Yea. You and Aegis are both right but its still a shame. A damned amazing and historic ship.


StobieWan said:
Trouble is, by the time they've torn their way down to the eight reactors to remove them, there's not much recognisable in the ship. You'd have to rebuild it back up to deck level which would be an expensive undertaking.

Once done, you'd have a total money pit that'd need massive restoration and conservation efforts to make it safe and attractive to visitors.

Then you'd have to find someplace to berth the thing - near enough to a population centre to get the traffic to it, the difficulties go on. I'd love to see a similar arrangement to the FAA museum at Yeovilton however - it's a brilliant indoor facility where you get into a small space decked out as a helicopter interior for a "transfer flight" to the carrier, and step out onto the deck of an RN Carrier, complete with the island, several aircraft posed on the deck, and can walk through the island and various rooms with an audio visual tour.

Perhaps enough of the island and internals could be recovered for that but the entire carrier is a huge undertaking.
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Sea Toby

New Member
AegisFC said:
Problem is the US is saturated with museum ships and some of the groups are struggling to keep enough funding to stay open and are deferring hull maintenance.
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Frankly there are too many museum ships, we don't need any more. All of the ships just slowly turn into rust buckets as none of the ships are raising enough to keep them maintained. All of them. It saddens me to see how much of a rust bucket the USS Texas has become.
 
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Belesari

New Member
Sea Toby said:
Frankly there are too many museum ships, we don't need any more. All of the ships just slowly turn into rust buckets as none of the ships are raising enough to keep them maintained. All of them. It saddens me to see how much of a rust bucket the USS Texas has become.
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What happened to the renovation they were going to do? Concret and all?
 
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StobieWan

Super Moderator
Staff member
It appears to be on hold indefinitely after the estimates hit $75 mil.

Shame but it'd be a huge piece of engineering to accomplish.
 
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StobieWan

Super Moderator
Staff member
It's a crying shame when it's the only surviving battleship to have fought in both wars - we've got HMS Caroline, which fought at Jutland and served as a training ship in RN hands til recently and there are now plans to restore her (to some unspecified condition, I'm hoping they'll reinstate some mocked up turrets but hey..)

That's just a cruiser mind, tiny ickle thing. Texas is a whole other thing.
 
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Belesari

New Member
StobieWan said:
It's a crying shame when it's the only surviving battleship to have fought in both wars - we've got HMS Caroline, which fought at Jutland and served as a training ship in RN hands til recently and there are now plans to restore her (to some unspecified condition, I'm hoping they'll reinstate some mocked up turrets but hey..)

That's just a cruiser mind, tiny ickle thing. Texas is a whole other thing.
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Oh yea. Texas is Huge. Still doesn't explain why the Olympia is sinking and rusting away, Not that big. And its also a great example of turn of the century warship design.
 
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Sea Toby

New Member
Belesari said:
Oh yea. Texas is Huge. Still doesn't explain why the Olympia is sinking and rusting away, Not that big. And its also a great example of turn of the century warship design.
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The simple truth is there aren't enough folks paying to visit these museum ships. It is one thing to have a few ships as museums being supported by national support, it is entirely different animal to have scores of museum ships throughout the country. As I said before in the US we don't need another museum ship. In fact we could do with far less.

I see the same problems with steam railroad locomotives. Many were parked in parks nationwide from coast to coast. Almost all of them are rusting away outside in the weather. Very few are being maintained as operational locomotives. McDonalds have a lot of cabooses in front of many of their fast food restaurants, cabooses don't have engines to propel themselves. There are also a lot of cabooses by old depots as well nationwide, probably as many as there are in front of McDonalds.
 
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Belesari

New Member
From what I've found Olympia had the money there it just made like funding for Louisiana dikes and vanished. Not sure if the guy in charge even got in trouble.


Sea Toby said:
The simple truth is there aren't enough folks paying to visit these museum ships. It is one thing to have a few ships as museums being supported by national support, it is entirely different animal to have scores of museum ships throughout the country. As I said before in the US we don't need another museum ship. In fact we could do with far less.

I see the same problems with steam railroad locomotives. Many were parked in parks nationwide from coast to coast. Almost all of them are rusting away outside in the weather. Very few are being maintained as operational locomotives. McDonalds have a lot of cabooses in front of many of their fast food restaurants, cabooses don't have engines to propel themselves. There are also a lot of cabooses by old depots as well nationwide, probably as many as there are in front of McDonalds.
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Belesari

New Member
CB90

CB90

The Bunker Group
Verified Defense Pro
harryriedl said:
I do like the range on LRAP it sadly doesn't seem to indicate (how much if at all its explosive power lost for the extra range)
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25lbs of explosive. With performance requirements between 20-50m CEP. I've seen 2 sets of numbers for unit cost...one is in the 5 digit range, another is 6 digits. Per round. Either way, not a fan. There are much better ways to drop hot metal on target at those distances.
 
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Belesari

New Member
CB90 said:
25lbs of explosive. With performance requirements between 20-50m CEP. I've seen 2 sets of numbers for unit cost...one is in the 5 digit range, another is 6 digits. Per round. Either way, not a fan. There are much better ways to drop hot metal on target at those distances.
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For that amount of firepower yes there are. I'd say the lowest I can see it getting is north of $50,000 the highest.....well. Unfortunately we have kind of backed ourselves into a corner.
 
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