 Currently the largest passenger vehicles are cruise ships. The largest of these in 2003 was the Voyager of the Seas and its sister ships. More than three football fields long and 65 metres high, Voyager of the Seas is an engineering marvel. Built in Finland, entering service in 1999, and licensed to the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Voyager was the first ship to be completed in their fleet of super-large cruise ships. It weighs 130,000-tonnes, and can carry 3,114 passengers.   Voyager is 311 metres long, and 48 metres wide. She can cruise at an amazing 24 knots. The ship's amenities include:
  Left: The Promenade, an indoor shopping centre. Right: Lifeboat drill. New Biggest Passenger Ship As of the fall 2004, a new 'biggest ship' has taken to the seas. It's the Queen Mary 2, the largest ocean liner ever constructed. Unlike other passenger cruise ships, the Queen Mary 2 is a true ocean liner, capable of navigating the seas of the north Atlantic. Built at a cost of $800,000,000, the Queen Mary 2 is 345 m long (longer than three football fields) and 45 m wide at the bridge wings. Its height from keel to the funnel is 72 m ... as tall as a 23 storey building! It weighs 150,000 tons.   Click here to see a large photo of the Queen Mary 2 The vessel is powered by four diesel engines and two gas turbines, with a total output of 157,000 hp. Underneath are four huge motor pods, each weighing more than a jumbo jet, which can propel the vessel to a top speed of 30 knots, more than twice as fast as other cruise ships. The Queen carries just 2,600 passengers; a stateroom for the 6-day crossing of the Atlantic costs about $20,000. Using GPS satellite navigation and sophisticated computers, the ship is fully capable of making this trip all by itself. Still Another Biggest Passenger Ship Due to be delivered to the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines in the fall of 2009, the Genesis will become at that time the largest cruise ship in the world. For how long?? Who knows! 
In the Future  These passenger cruise ships may be the largest passenger vehicles at the moment, but there's a bigger ship in the works. The Freedom Ship, a massive ocean-going vessel, is being planned as a community on the sea, a small town where people live and work, that is continually moving around the world. With a design length of an incredible 1.4 kilometres, a width of 230 metres, and a height of 107 m, Freedom Ship would be more than 4 times longer than the Queen Mary.Freedom Ship would not be a cruise ship, but a unique place to live, work, retire, vacation, or visit. The proposed voyage would continuously circle the earth, covering most of the world's coastal regions. The airport on the ship's top deck would serve private and small commercial aircraft. The proposed vessel's above-deck levels, rising twenty-five stories, would house residential space, a library, schools, parks, a hospital, as well as stores, banks, hotels, restaurants, entertainment facilities, casinos, offices, warehouses, and light manufacturing and assembly plants. The shopping mall, one of the world's largest, would also be one of its most beautiful. The ship's proposed flat bottom hull construction, along with its extraordinary size, would make it very stable, providing a smooth ride in the roughest seas. The ship's design ensures that it would be virtually fireproof. As Freedom circumnavigates the world, it would make a series of stops, including exotic tropical islands. These stops would provide the ship's residents and businesses with many different touring and business opportunities, and bring a multitude of visitors to the ship to shop, and visit the restaurants and entertainment facilities. The ship's design would accept up to 30,000 day visitors, and another 20,000 to fill the ship's 10,000 hotel rooms, giving the on-board businesses many customers. |
