SS United States

[kham]

SS United States: Crystal Cruises Planning Return of Historic Transatlantic Line from gCaptain

I don't know about this going anywhere; it wouldn't be the first time a proposal like this popped up. Sounds a great idea, and right now its "feasibility study". Sure. Here's a couple questions from a dumbass actual sailor (retired): How are you planning the refit to deal with the asbestos? Since the boat is LOADED with it. It's the primary reason many of the older ships get scrapped overseas, so there are no pesky health and safety regs to deal with. And what about the powerplant? Right now, I imagine it needs some work, but being a steam plant , well they never really wear out. But. It was designed to move 60,000 tons at over 40 knots at Flank Speed, in an era where fuel economy was not a concern. With oil today, sure, it be possible but running around at Flank all the time the bean counters will be having double-handed Polish Heart Attacks over the bill per bunkerage. And swapping the plant for something like say, diesels? Ha Ha nice one. You would pay less building a whole new ship from scratch. It's not like swapping out the engine in a Chevy.

We'll see how it goes but my vote is nice idea but no chance of success.

[Mynock]

They'll do the same thing they do when they scrap them--refit it in India or China. Toss that pesky asbestos right over the side......
It's basically a big yacht by modern standards, would probably will end up being an ultra-luxury type liner like Titanic II so there's a chance you could make it work if you could fill $100,000/trip staterooms.

[Duncan Edwards]

This keeps coming up and goes nowhere. This ship wasn't profitable back in its day and it sure wouldn't be now. It was designed to be crazy fast and completely fire proof. As a result it's a floating berg of asbestos with prehistoric operational costs. I used to stop and look at it every time I was in Philadelphia and it's a beautiful piece of work. Next time she is in open water will be a tow to a scrapper in Bangladesh.

[nachtjaeger]

With Crude down around $30 a barrel, the price of Bunker fuel has got to be down in the cellar also. Would be great if there was money enough to add one of those bulbous underwater bows (if she doesn't have one) and have some of the "Modern Steam" guys go over her engineering plant.
As to the asbestos, if it's not both friable (the kind that makes hazardous dust) and not contained, that's not so bad. Turns out that a lot of the time the best thing to do with all that "hazardous" asbestos was to leave it right where it was and wrap/coat/seal it off.

[kham]

Nacht, trust me, between OSHA and the office micro-dick weenies overcome with GREEN!!!@# ELEVENTY@!!@!1 Bullshit, she'll never leave the dock. Asbestos is a class 1A complete spaz attack for those assclowns. The ships we had that had asbestos , were planned to do work on, until the bullshit got so extreme they just deferred the service until they could scrap the boat

[kham]

A few other professionals I stay in touch with weighed in, and they aint buying it

The most technical one, thinks it might be possible, but the challenges to overcome would be 'severe'. To get the old engine plant out and a new one in (say Wartsila-Sulzer Turbo Diesels) , the engine spaces are sufficiently large enough to fit those. The problem is, the access paths are too small to get them in. Outside of cutting the hull in half. Plus, the hull is optimized for high-speed cruising, not the slower speeds of cruise ships.

Did generate some good lines though. One suggested cutting holes in the side for oars would be a cheaper process