Not to mention iceburgs.
Fredom Ship Bulletin Board Forum
If you check out the forum, you'll see people that support the project that have real doubts about the viability of this project.
LOL! Get out of my mind or stop paying rent! One successful run like on the Cole, and that thing'd sink in minutes.
A 4500ft airstrip isn't much, really. Lots of twin-engine bizjets have insurance policies that won't allow them to land on runways shorter than 5000ft. Yes, there's the fact that the ship could diminish runway requirements by steaming into the wind, but is the captain of a ship like that going to want to change course every time some rich playboy wants to land his airplane? Somehow I don't think so.
What are the playboys going to do: land their fancy G-IVs at some inland airport and then go try to find the Freedom Ship in a Bonanza or something? Hmmm.
AB
Which is the world's second largest? The smallest? The first? etc...
Or, is this one all of those?
Unlike a real city, a few well-trained boarders could take her over.
The only one that could be considered a success was Sealand, and that had only about three citizens who took over an abandoned anti-aircraft platform near the UK and dubbed it a nation. Since it had about 1,100 square feet of living accomodations, roughly the same as a small house, it wasn't much of a country, so it could be safely ignored by the powers that be.
The most similar situation to this was L Ron Hubbard's Apollo, which roamed the seas in search of converts to his notorious Church of Scientology. He was run out of every country he visited, primarily because he tried to forment a Scientology revolution in most of them. This is surely precedent for others to be suspicious of anything even vaguely similar.
Finally, while it may have a middle class, I wonder about its lower class - the people who empty the wastebaskets and so on. How are they provided for? And what kind of economy will spring up?
It's a fascinating experiment. But I'd be surprised if it is ever successfully launched.
D
If a British subject can prove he's been out of their nation for a set number of days a year (more than 180, I believe), they pay NO UK TAXES.
A floating off-shore residence starts to makes sense *financially* to those blokes.
Re icebergs- if those are such a threat, why aren't they sinking ships now? Gosh, I don't know...radar?
Re cape horn- if the weather is such a threat, why aren't ships breaking up right now?
Re a couple of boarders could take it over- well, given that the article mentions a a security force of 2,000, that seems unlikely.
Re: 20 foot waves in the north atlantic- anybody here a naval architect w/professional knowledge of the relationship between beam-length ratios, DWD, and sea keeping? I don't either, but then I'm not speculating about something I'm completely ignorant about...
This whole thing may be a cmoplete scam-I have no idea about the actual practicality of the project, either in terms of the technology or the business plan- but based on the comments I've seen, neither do a lot of the folks commenting.