Buy Your Own Aircraft Carrier 518
Vodalian writes "Distinction as the last surviving Aircraft Carrier built in England for WW II and commissioned as the HMS Vengeance in late 1944, this unique vessel served the British then the Australian Navy as HMAS Vengeance prior to her sale to Brazil In 1956. Undergoing reconstruction and overhaul in Rotterdam from 1957 to 1960 she was commissioned as the Minas Gerais in December of that year. During her service with the Brazilian Navy she was overhauled from 1976 to 1980 completing a 5-year refit in 1981. She was decommissioned on the 16th of October 2001 and is currently for sale."
Re:Perfect! (Score:5, Informative)
1. Change name ti L. Bob Rife
2. Create cable TV monopoly
3. Start own religion
4. Work on meta-virus
5. Buy aircraft carrier
6. Get residents of 3rd world country to do my bidding!
To the people not getting the above reference, go read Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash", in were a decommissioned aircraft carrier is the center of "The Raft", a shitload of floating things, well, floating around, with "refus" (refugees), waiting to get close enough to North America to get ashore to start a new life.
Re:Only one small problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Wanna bet?
There is one aircraft that not only can take off and land on it, -but- is also the only aircraft that is permitted to take off and land while *any* aircraft carrier is docked in port.
Harrier Jump Jets are reasonably modern as I recall.
With the angled ramp as it is (or even perhaps angled a little bit more) the AV8-B would be able to take off with a minimal amount of fuel and without using the Catapults. If I'm not too terribly mistaken the British are doing that for thier light carrier fleet - harriers included.
Landings would be no problem - at least no more problem than a normal Carrier Landing (controled crash anyone?)
Phoenix
Re:Offshore computing center? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Serious proposal... (Score:4, Informative)
HavenCo [havenco.com], operating Six miles off the Eastern shore of Britain [sealandgov.com], smarty pants.
Re:Only one small problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nice Price (little footnote) (Score:5, Informative)
For whatever reason, durring construction its hull sat around for something like 5 years for budgetarty reasons. At least 2 or 3 of its sister hulls diddnt get out of the construction phase.
Re:Offshore computing center? (Score:2, Informative)
Smaller than the amphib assault ships the Navy has.
The only current aircraft one could operate off this would be A-4s, Harriers, Hawkeye AWACS, Trackers, and helos.
Re:You think... (Score:1, Informative)
His daddy on the other hand was a bomber pilot in WWII at the age of 18.
You post proves that only those as ignorant as dubya support dubya.
Re:Hell of a dance floor (Score:3, Informative)
Most people tend to pick somewhere like Panama for their flags of convenience. Liberia's popular too, as are a variety of island states.
Re:I'm in! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bring good things to life (Score:3, Informative)
FYI: As of July 2000, according to Fortune Magazine, GE Corp. has the 40th largest economy [members.shaw.ca] in the world.
This is still smaller than Toyota, Exxon-Mobil, the big US Automobile makers, Wal Mart, Finland, Saudi Arabia and Poland.
But it is larger than Portugal, Venezuela, Iran, Israel, Egypt, IBM, Volkswagon and AT&T.
And GE is only 2.6X bigger than the 100th largest economy. But I do believe you're right in saying that 1% of it is similar to some small 3rd world nation.