It's named the Freedom Ship, and should this most ambitious of projects ever come to fruition, it will no doubt become one of the most famous and intriguing places on earth.
It is more than a massive ship, though at close to a mile long, with a full scale airstrip on the roof and 50,000 people aboard, the sheer magnitude of the exercise is difficult to comprehend. The Freedom Ship is so large, that it will contain over 200 acres of open area set aside for recreation and relaxation.
Its volume would swallow the Titanic, the Queen Mary, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and the super-tanker Jahre Viking with room to spare. The vessel's superstructure, rising twenty-five storeys above its broad main deck, will house residential space, a library, schools and a first-class hospital in addition to retail and wholesale shops, banks, hotels, restaurants, entertainment facilities, casinos, offices, warehouses, and light manufacturing and assembly enterprises.
One of the challenges for the creators of this enterprise will be to make it a fun, stimulating and entertaining place to be. Accordingly, an array of recreational and athletic facilities worthy of a world class resort have been incorporated into the design. Probably the key to the ship's appeal though, is that it will continuously circle the globe, visiting most of the world's coastal regions every two years. Most of each year (eight months), it will be anchored offshore from the world's most prestigious tourist destinations and it will be in motion for the rest of the time.
Accordingly, the ship will be just minutes from a different and exciting destination most of the time. The ship will be home to a full spectrum of residential, resort and commercial community. Quite obviously, it would be a fascinating and unique place to live, vacation, run a business, retire, work or visit. Viewed from one angle, it is a unique, travelling, residential community, combining the amenities of a modern city with those of the finest resorts in what the promotional literature claims will be "an attractive, stimulating, and secure environment".
The Freedom Ship will be the world's first mobile modern city featuring luxury living, a major world trade centre and extensive duty-free international shopping.Viewed from another angle, it will be an incredibly vigorous commercial community with a broad range of privately owned and operated on-board enterprises which will sell their products and services world-wide and operate totally free of local taxes and duties. With its constant movement around the world, and access to the patrons of the wealthiest resorts, it will almost certainly become an incredibly powerful financial force. It will be the world's first portable tourist destination with a steady and substantial stream of resident and visiting customers, not to mention the world's largest duty-free retail shopping mall.