Historic Ocean Liner Departs Philadelphia On Voyage To Become the World's Largest Artificial Reef 82
The SS United States, a historic ocean liner that once held the transatlantic speed record of 36 knots (41 mph / 66 kph), has departed Philadelphia to be transformed into the world's largest artificial reef off Florida's Gulf Coast. The move is part of a $10 million project to boost tourism by creating a unique diving attraction while preserving the ship's legacy as a symbol of American innovation and engineering. The Associated Press reports: The SS United States, a 1,000-foot vessel that shattered the transatlantic speed record on its maiden voyage in 1952, is being towed to Mobile, Alabama, for planned prep work before officials eventually sink it off Florida's Gulf Coast. The move comes about four months after the conservancy that oversees the ship and its landlord resolved a years-old rent dispute. Officials initially planned to move the vessel last November, but that was delayed due to concerns from the U.S. Coast Guard that the ship wasn't stable enough to make the trip.
Officials in Okaloosa County on Florida's coastal Panhandle hope it will become a barnacle-encrusted standout among the county's more than 500 artificial reefs and a signature diving attraction that could generate millions of dollars annually in local tourism spending for scuba shops, charter fishing boats and hotels. Officials have said the deal to buy the ship could eventually cost more than $10 million. The lengthy process of cleaning, transporting and sinking the vessel is expected to take at least one-and-a-half years.
Officials in Okaloosa County on Florida's coastal Panhandle hope it will become a barnacle-encrusted standout among the county's more than 500 artificial reefs and a signature diving attraction that could generate millions of dollars annually in local tourism spending for scuba shops, charter fishing boats and hotels. Officials have said the deal to buy the ship could eventually cost more than $10 million. The lengthy process of cleaning, transporting and sinking the vessel is expected to take at least one-and-a-half years.
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The fact it is intended to be an artificial reef gives you a clue as to the depth.
Artificial reefs are very good things. Good for the ecosystem and good for us. Especially given how much damage we've been doing to natural reefs.
Re:How deep? (Score:5, Informative)
Reefs can go pretty deep. If it's intended for tourism, presumably that means it's intended for recreational diving, which if so means that at least the majority of the ship will be above 40 meters. Anything lower than that and you start (but not necessarily) looking at exotic gas mixtures that most divers aren't trained for, and those inevitably include helium, which isn't cheap. Deepest I've been is 111 ft, and even at that depth you tend to go through air pretty quick, so they don't make for long dives unless you use a rebreather, which is a pretty expensive piece of hardware that you also have to train for.
I somewhat doubt these tours would include penetrating dives (or maybe? who knows) and given the distance from keel to funnel is about 171 feet, which is awful close to the MOD at 21% oxygen, I'd say it's possible that they're either going to remove bits of it, or just allow some of it to reside above water, akin to the USS Arizona.
I know some rec divers like to use some more of that advanced stuff when they're on a DM guided dive, but they're not done at depth as far as I know, and I think they'd have a hell of a time trying to get insurance for that. I know DAN doesn't like to cover beyond 50 meters, and even then, only if the diver is already certified for it. Curious if any tec divers can offer more here.
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Unlike the Arizona, this fine piece of technology that set an amazing world record is needlessly being scuttled.
She's a 70 year old ship. About 20 years older than the Moskva, a flagship so decrepit (and yet so representative of the state of the overall fleet) that was sunk during a war against a country that doesn't even have a navy. And yes, I realize that Russia is so incompetent that it literally lost its entire fleet to Japan over the course of just a single battle once, but this doesn't change the fact that she's a fucking old ass ship.
The energy needed to produce this amount of steel could power a city the size of New York City for several decades
I think you're way overstating that, and you're forgetting that the steel is
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I would tend to agree with you on every point here. Tourism definitely implies recreational diving limits, with depths as you suggest or even shallower (even Nitrox requires additional certifications)
Nitrox is easy, it's like two hours of reading and 20 minutes worth of hands-on instruction. Fairly common for rec dives. I do nitrox often myself.
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This one could be tricky. The area around Destin / Fort Walton Beach is relatively shallow and the ship itself is 175 ft (53 m) (keel to funnel) tall. Typically there needs to be at least 50-ish feet (15 m) of clearance between the top of the structure and the water's surface. They might decide to remove the funnels (smokestacks) to allow the ship to be sunk in a shallower location. This would leave the interesting parts of the ship more accessible to recreational divers while still giving enough clearan
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Uh....only scuba diving depth pal.
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Do reefs go deeper than 50 meters? It was always my understanding that water has to be very clear, to allow lots of sunlight to penetrate to that depth, if a reef has a even a chance of building itself up. In most places the water isn't clear enough, so reef depths of 50 meter is a stretch.
This happens to coincide with people capable of using scuba gear for their diving pleasure.
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there's a certain satisfaction when rich people meet their demise indulging in frivolous (and expensive) pursuits.
You sound a little bit like a sociopath
Re: How deep? (Score:2)
Because they have money? Not only is that wrong (in fact, antisocial behavior skews heavily towards lower incomes) but a bit hypocritical in your case given you've demonstrated your own sociopathic tendencies.
Re: How deep? (Score:2, Insightful)
"Because they have money? Not only is that wrong (in fact, antisocial behavior skews heavily towards lower incomes) "
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA
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What about it didn't you understand?
Re: How deep? (Score:1)
I don't understand how you became a pathetic cuck for the wealthy that think you're scum and wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire unless it was their kink.
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Well this hits on a few levels:
Being a diver myself, I know many other divers. Most of the ones I know aren't particularly wealthy -- most likely being what you Marxists pigeonhole as "working class". It can be a pricey sport, but I can think of more expensive ones, and how expensive it is depends more on to what level you go to. I own a complete set of dive gear and I believe I spent around $5,000 total on all of the gear and training. Few divers even do that, most just rent their gear, and if they do open
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Most divers are just people like me: I don't get the point of going to a body of water if you're not going to get into the water, whereas you're more likely the kind of guy who goes to the beach to sit in a plastic chair for several hours and play loud obnoxious music to annoy people around you, and to prove that you're a rebel, you turn it up when somebody asks you to turn it down. I'm just not into that lame ass crap.
What you're into is making up crap. Further, it's not founded on anything, you invented it completely out of your head. You don't have me pinned even in the very slightest, but I'm not going to play your little making shit up game. I'm going to judge you by what I've seen of you, which is all I've got to go on. That is to say, you look down on anyone caring for anyone else.
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Nah, I just like making caricatures out of you guys when you say stupid shit. When I first read the post where you said you were a rebel it made me lol irl, so now I'm just rolling with it.
That is to say, you look down on anyone caring for anyone else.
I dunno about that. I mean usually when I give you shit, it's because you've made a comment similar to the one you made earlier, which isn't really caring for anybody. "Oh that guy's rich? Well fuck him, fucking sociopath! I hope he dies!" Or like that time you professed to me that you were an expert at plumbing and then
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About 30-40 meters, apparently. Here's a video of another ship sinking to its final rusting depth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Artificial reefs are typically created between 10-40m. No one is putting this in deep ocean.
If you're interested in the SS United States -- (Score:5, Informative)
From Oceanliner Designs Channel [youtube.com] --
It was an odd ship (Score:1)
From the photos on the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org], the interior design looked incredibly spartan. The idea of a building a utilitarian ocean liner during a time when transatlantic jet service was becoming the preferred way to travel, just didn't make much sense. I can definitely see why efforts to raise money to restore the ship failed - it truly did look like a military vessel on the inside.
Re: It was an odd faggot named rsilvergun (Score:2)
wow (Score:5, Funny)
"the United States is being deliberately sunk" is a little too on point these days
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
"the United States is being deliberately sunk" is a little too on point these days
and by Florida, no less.
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Florida Man.
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Cheese...do we really have to be douchebags and drag shitty politics into a very non-political topic?
Reminds me of bluesky. Just saw a thread on it for the first time and...wow...what a bunch of douchebags. It's like democraticunderground, only this time it's appified.
https://bsky.app/profile/cream... [bsky.app]
It's like they threw a bunch of cash into the ocean to see if it would turn green but all it did was float away, and they still haven't realized that the joke is on them. The main page looks almost exactly like
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Cheese...do we really have to be douchebags and drag shitty politics into a very non-political topic?
Well, there's this from TFA:
Officials have said the deal to buy the ship could eventually cost more than $10 million. The lengthy process of cleaning, transporting and sinking the vessel is expected to take at least one-and-a-half years.
Surely this municipality in Florida could've found a better use for $10 million. Maybe it could've went towards EV charging infrastructure (fun fact: Florida is actually the #2 state in EV ownership), school supplies, patching potholes, or really anything would be better th
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I'll trade you for California. The water near the beaches is so toxic that you're warned not to eat the fish, air quality is shit, health care is unobtainium, and you may have heard about these wildfires recently, but I'm pretty sure that the only thing capable of burning that large and that long is the big hoard of taxpayer money that they don't ever do anything with as far as we can tell.
Not only is everything clean there, but apparently you're also the top state for education overall, and the state actua
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Ten million is pretty cheap for a major tourist attraction.
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and drag shitty politics
Well, we could encourage people not to engage voting into power shitty politicians and their unelected rich sycophants.
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Yes we do. This is a critical moment for the United States, and for some reason the 2A guys seem to have missed their cue.
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This is a critical moment for the United States, and for some reason the 2A guys seem to have missed their cue.
The enshittification of the NRA was accomplished alongside the educational standards for the nation as a [w]hole. Before the mobilization of the religious reich, they were really just a gun club.
I will say that the constant gun grab attempts by Democrats have not helped, because many of them have been flagrantly unconstitutional. The authors of the 2A made it clear in other writings at the time that it was intended to be an individual right, so the intent is absolutely clear to anyone who bothers to even ju
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It seems like the traditional argument that the 2FA it to deter tyrannical governments is now dead. Nobody can argue that it will happen before it's way too late, because we are at that point and nothing is being done. As you say, at least half of them are cheering it on.
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It seems like the traditional argument that the 2FA it to deter tyrannical governments is now dead.
It was basically killed by George Washington, so it's effectively been dead for centuries. A standing military was considered harmful to freedom as it will be used, which was probably best proven at Kent State.
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It was basically killed by George Washington, so it's effectively been dead for centuries.
What are you talking about? George Washington lead the continental army. The former militias ended up becoming the national guard.
A standing military was considered harmful to freedom as it will be used, which was probably best proven at Kent State.
Kent State was a bunch of douchebag hippies, of the same variety who would spit on soldiers who returned home even if it wasn't their choice to go there. People like you, basically, because you want to be a rebel by spitting on people you don't even know. It went down a bit like this: Some students (and apparently others as well) had already threatened local businesses that they'
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It seems like the traditional argument that the 2FA it to deter tyrannical governments is now dead
This is totally wrong. 2FA should do a pretty good job of protecting users against being phished by agents of tyrannical governments, but only if it's actually two factors, which a phone number or an email address definitely is not unless they're also strictly protected by a second factor, which is rarely the case. I can say quite matter-of-fact that when a threat actor is on a phishing campaign, they really hate it when their intended target uses hardware tokens, and generally prefer to move towards a lowe
Re: wow (Score:2)
If you're talking about the federal government, we're two years away from an election. You're pissing in the wind.
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For once the font page is not filled with articles about Trump, so these people are clearly getting desperate for an outlet.
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But it will be best sinking ever seen in the history of all the universes, even the ones beyond Jesus, believe me!
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Damn, the election is over; now what am I supposed to put here?
I'd say "The election is over. Bat Shit Crazy won."
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It should be The USA is now just like the MPAA, RIAA, and DCMA, controlled by corporations.
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Extending the analogy, the photos of the ship remind me a bit about US infrastructure overall. And/or the political leaders in all three branches.
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and for the very same reasons, greed, it's just cheaper to sink the US than it is to save it.
classism is killing us
effective metaphor? Perhaps... (Score:2)
1. Explorers from Europe came to America looking for resource wealth.
2. The SS United States purpose for being built was to charge fees for passenger transport across the Atlantic Ocean.
3. Colonists grew weary of sending vast wealth back to England, so they staged a revolution and declared independence.
4. Within less than a decade of its maiden voyage, the SS United States became unprofitable to operate as a passenger ship and has e
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Which infrastructure in FL is needing repairs?
Oh, we're gonna play a game of "things Florida has in common with a 3rd world nation"? Here's one: My brother lives in a suburban neighborhood in central Florida, pretty much right off I-4. You'd assume there'd be city water in this neighborhood, right? Nope, he's on a well and septic system, like living out in in BFE. Also, due to the fact that having a properly drilled deep well is insanely expensive these days, his house is on a shallow well and he didn't have enough sense to realize that should've
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Every state has properties on wells and septic systems.
On average, about 87% of the US population has city water. [usgs.gov] Wells certainly are still common when you're talking about rural areas, or neighborhoods where the housing density is too low for installing a city water supply to be practical, but as I'd already mentioned, neither of those situations are the case.
Basically, the city just put off doing the necessary infrastructure improvements because the money has to come from somewhere and the homeowners generally aren't pleased that they'll be stuck footing mos
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Basically, the city just put off doing the necessary infrastructure improvements because the money has to come from somewhere and the homeowners generally aren't pleased that they'll be stuck footing most of the bill, so they've mostly opposed it. Welcome to Florida.
When the city moved in, the rationale for doing so (and charging taxes where they used to not be) was to address those shortcomings.
Which never got addressed. Not unique to Florida, many cities in Texas have done the same. When it comes to Texas and Florida, the two are fairly well nailed at the hip. Whatever insanity one does, the other feels honor bound to try to out do.
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So your ignorance on what is allowed or even constitutes an issue should not be the basis for saying your family members live in a 3rd world nation.
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Florida's water quality standard for privately owned wells is one of caveat emptor. [floridahealth.gov] Testing is not mandatory and if the water is unsound, as potential buyer of a home with a well, you're just supposed to factor that in as something that will need to be fixed if you don't like having disgusting or possibly unsafe water.
But if you don't fix it, the police aren't coming until after the water turns you into Florida Man.
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https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08... [npr.org]
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https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08... [npr.org]
Yeah, when I heard about that, I wasn't surprised at all. I'd pulled a few permits in Miami back around '08 or so, and the building department was mostly just concerned if your check was filled out correctly and cleared. Of course, some right-winger will probably just chime in with how it's yet another example of what happens when you let Democrats run a city filled with people who don't speak English. And to be honest, having been to Miami more times than I'd like to admit, I really don't have a good re
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The last Democratic mayor of Miami was in 1998....
The GOP still has it as official policy to blame anything they can on Bill Clinton (who was POTUS at that time), if it cannot be blamed on Biden or Obama. It's no surprise that conservatives in Miami would place blame for their problems on a mayor who left in 1998.
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Artificial reefs pay off (Score:2)
Much of the ocean is basically an aquatic desert hence the sinking of suitable objects to be colonized by marine life.
https://www.noemamag.com/the-b... [noemamag.com]
Ship scrapping is too expensive to do in the US with minimal return. Fishing and dive site tourism are major profit centers.
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Ironically, it *will* be great again, helping build an environmental ecosystem.
She was Fast (Score:5, Informative)
The two inboard propellers were five-bladed—a key secret of the design—and the outboard two had four. This aspect was one of the concepts that allowed the ship to achieve high speeds
That's the same propeller arrangement as an Iowa class battleship minus the weight, and reading about the boiler rooms pushing its 45000 tons to a flank speed of 80kph (49mph) that ship must have been more like a speed boat with state rooms. I've seen these ships being sunk to create a reef - highly recommended to see if there is a chance to do so.
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Almost makes me wish (Score:2)
I was a fish!
Asbestos and a Class System (Score:3)
Speaking of "prep work"...
To minimize the risk of flames, the designers of United States proscribed the use of wood in the ship, aside from the galley's wooden butcher's block. Fittings, including furniture and fabrics, were custom made in glass, metal, and fiberglass to ensure compliance with the US Navy's fireproofing guidelines. Asbestos-laden paneling [wikipedia.org] was extensively used in interior structures and many small items were made of aluminum.
This is fun, too:
Gibbs' design incorporated a conventional, three-tiered class system [wikipedia.org] for passengers, replicating those found on other classical ocean liners. Each class was segregated, having its own dining rooms, bars, public spaces, services, and recreation areas
But what this story really reminded me of was:
"They claim that this junk was going to become a habitat for marine life. You don't buy that?"
Bless her, she did know how to blow my lid. "Rebecca, goddammit, since the beginning of time, every corporation that has ever thrown any of its shit into the ocean has claimed that it was going to become a habitat for marine life. It's the goddamn ocean, Rebecca. That's where all the marine life is. Of course it's going to become a habitat for marine life."
--Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
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Vessel-to-Reef program (Score:5, Informative)
This is the second ship Okaloosa County, Florida, has sunk as an artificial reef, so the SS United States is not their first rodeo. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission requires adherence to the earlier referenced EPA best practices when deploying an artificial reef.
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The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission requires adherence to the earlier referenced EPA best practices when deploying an artificial reef.
Think we're still going to have an EPA by the time they're done?
Where? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, that will work... (Score:1)
"while preserving the ship's legacy as a symbol of American innovation and engineering"
Very fitting, "look at this symbol of US innovation, a ship that arrived the decade after it was needed, sat in the docks for decades, and then we dumped it in the ocean"
Steel (Score:2)
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It blows my mind that we still haven't figured out a safe and profitable way to dismantle large ships for the astounding amount of refined metal that could be recycled.
The problem with steel recycling is twofold, even putting aside decommissioning. One, it takes an immense amount of energy, almost as much as it takes to refine ore in the first place. Two, steel loses some of its properties when recycled because some of the additives burn off and they have to be replaced. In practice, recycling steel produces harder steel. That was part of the recipe for the 1970s success of the Japanese auto industry; they bought our crushed used cars (which were made out of virgin mild s
Other suggestions (Score:1)
Awfully odd way to "preserve its legacy" (Score:2)
[...] while preserving the ship's legacy as a symbol of American innovation and engineering
What a wonderful new P.R. spin tactic. We're not destroying a historic icon that could be repurposed as a museum ship [battleshipnc.com] - we're preserving its legacy.
Translation: We know we're doing something wasteful, but we can't possibly admit that, so we're gonna pretend really hard it's a good thing!
They should fill it full of pot first (Score:1)