Largest Cruise Ship

Freedom of the Seas is the largest luxury cruise ship in the world, owned by Royal Caribbean.

This cruise ship weighs 160,000 tons, it is 1,112 feet long, 184 feet wide and it has 15 passenger decks holding 3,634 guests double-occupancy. Freedom of the Seas towers 208 feet tall, approximately the same height as two of the Statue of Liberty, placed head to toe.A brand new featureis the H2O Zone, or the “sprayground” which has colorful fiberglass sculptures shooting jets of water, geysers shooting from the ground and water cannons. There’s even a lazy river and waterfall inside! At night, this area, with the integration of an incredible lighting system, will be transformed into a sculpture garden. Royal Caribbean says, “there’s nothing like the H2O Zone on any other cruise ship today.Another first-ever feature is a dedicated sports pool located in the main pool area. One of the two pools of the Freedom of the Seas is used almost exclusively for athletic pool games, ranging from basketball and volleyball to synchronized swimming. Other times, it will have designated lanes for lap swimming. The second pool is just for relaxing. At night, passengers can see this area transformed into an open-air nightclub with a large dance floor between the two pools.

Located at the heart of this largest cruise ship, the Royal Promenade is a 445-foot-long shopping, dining and entertainment boulevard that spans the length of an entire football field. At night, the Promenade hosts street parades, put on by select staff, commencing from a revolutionary new descending bridge amidst a fanfare of music, lasers and lights. Guests can also enjoy relaxed reading at the 3,600-volume Book Nook.

Guests can find their 15 seconds of fame at the On Air Club, Freedom of the Seas’ karaoke venue with state-of-the-art theatrical lighting, video cameras, flat screen TVs and even a "green screen" for aspiring music stars to record their own music video.
For professional entertainment, the Art Deco-style Arcadia Theatre (1,350 guests) features three shows: Marquee, a medley of performances, the musical Now You See It! magic show, and Once Upon a Time, a narrative piece combining the Brothers Grimm’s fairytales.

(Pics below->luxury-fantasy-Mind blowing)

For now, Freedom of the Seas is the largest cruise ship in the world, but how long will this title last? Well, time will tell !!

Transatlantic tunnel

The Transatlantic Tunnel is proposed to use a submerged floating tunnel which uses the same techniques as that of a submarine. The same idea is also being proposed for cars to use in crossing the fjords in Norway. The tunnel would be held in place by using 100,000 large tethering cables. The tunnel would be built using 54,000 prefabricated sections. The sections would consist of a layer of steel surrounding a layer of foam surrounding another layer of steel. If ever built it would be the largest and most expensive construction project in history.



A transatlantic tunnel is a theoretical tunnel which would span the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe and would carry mass transit of some type—trains are envisioned in most proposals. Using advanced technologies, speeds of 300 to 5,000 mph (500 to 8,000 km/h) are envisioned.[1]

Plans for such a tunnel have not progressed beyond the conceptual stage, and no one is actively pursuing such a project. Most conceptions of the tunnel have it between the United States and the United Kingdom, or more specifically, New York City and London. The main barriers to constructing such a tunnel are cost—as much as $12 trillion[1]—and the limits of current materials science. Existing major tunnels, such as the Channel Tunnel and Seikan Tunnel, despite using less expensive technology than proposed for the Transatlantic tunnel, struggle financially. A Transatlantic Tunnel is 215 times longer than the longest current tunnel[2] and would cost perhaps 3000 times as much.
(Take interactive tour-Discovery Channel)

History

Suggestions for such a structure go back to Michel Verne, son of Jules Verne, who wrote about it in 1888 in a story Un Express de l'avenir. This story was published in English in The Strand Magazine in 1895, where it was incorrectly attributed to Jules Verne,[4] a mistake frequently repeated today.[5] In 1913, the novel Der Tunnel was published by German author Bernhard Kellermann, which inspired four films of the same name: one in 1914 by William Wauer, and separate German, French, and English versions released in 1933 and 1935. The German and French versions were by Curtis Bernhardt and the English was written in part by science fiction writer Curt Siodmak. Suggesting contemporary interest, an original poster for the English version was estimated at more than $2000 by Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas in the Summer of 2006.

Robert H. Goddard, the father of rocketry,[6][7] was issued two of his 214 patents for the idea.[8] Arthur C. Clarke mentions intercontinental tunnels in his 1956 novel, The City and the Stars.[9] The 1975 novel, A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, describes a vacuum/maglev system on the ocean floor.[10] The April 2004 issue of Popular Science suggests a transatlantic tunnel is more feasible than previously thought and without major engineering challenges. It compares it favorably with laying transatlantic pipes and cables, but with a cost of 88 to 175 billion dollars.[11]

variations


Many variations of the concept exist, including a tube above the seabed, a tunnel beneath the ocean floor, or some combination.

A 1960s proposal has a 3,100-mile (5,000-km) long near-vacuum tube with vactrains, a theoretical type of maglev train, that could travel at speeds up to 5,000 mph (8,000 km/h). At this speed, the travel time between New York and London would be less than one hour. Another modern variation intended to reduce cost is a submerged tunnel floating about fifteen stories below the ocean surface to avoid ships, bad weather, and high pressure. It would consist of 54,000 prefabricated sections held in place by 100,000 tethering cables. Each section would consist of a layer of foam sandwiched between steel. It too would have reduced air pressure.[1] The cables would be anchored into the seafloor, and would have room to sway if a submerged object like a submarine were to hit the tunnel. If a hole was punctured in the tunnel the trains would be going faster than the water and would be blocked off from the section the hole was punctured in by titanium pressure lock doors. The theory of rocket, jet, scram-jet, and air pressurized tunnels for train transportation have also been proposed. But only way to stop the G forces from killing passengers was proposed. Spinning chairs with future models of anti-G suit technology would be standard for each train. But the spinning chairs would also cut down massively on passenger capacity, and would also be expensive, therefore raising the cost per ticket to a way higher level.

A proposed alternative route suggests a tunnel north from Newfoundland over the ice sheet of Greenland and across Iceland to the Faroe Islands and then Scotland. This route is cheaper to build, not least because it can have multiple tunnel heads, but more difficult due to adverse weather conditions in Greenland and the difficulty of maintaining the system near the ice sheet, though lessons learned from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System might mitigate such difficulties.

There are also some issues with what the purpose of such a tunnel would be. If was intended for passengers, then the journey might be too slow to make it competitive with aircraft. If it was intended for freight, then a Bering Strait bridge or tunnel could present fewer problems.

longest bridge

world's longest suspension bridge-The Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge




The Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge (明石海峡大橋, Akashi Kaikyō Ō-hashi?), also known as Pearl Bridge in Japan was completed in 1998 and is the world's longest suspension bridge (measured by the length of the centre span of 1,991 metres/6,532 feet). It links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshū to Iwaya on Awaji Island by crossing the busy Akashi Strait. It carries the part of the Honshū-Shikoku Highway.

The bridge is one of the key links of the Honshū-Shikoku Bridge Project, which created three routes across the Inland Sea.

World's longest, 36-km sea bridge opens in east China



China opened the world's longest sea bridge, spanning 22-miles across Hangzhou Bay, linking Shanghai and Ningbo, an industrial city. The previous record holder was the 20.2-mile long Donghai bridge, which links Shanghai and a port by the name of Yangshan.

So what will the bridge accomplish? The vice-president of an electric company based in Ningbo said it best: "I think it will be easier for our company to recruit high-calibre employees, who always prefer working in small cities like Cixi but living in big cities like Shanghai. They can leave Shanghai for Cixi in the morning and go back in the afternoon. It's only 1.5 hours' drive." Aside from the living in big cities part, that sounds a lot like America. Granted, the bridge will reduce the driving distance between the two cities by 75 miles, but it will clearly enable increased sprawl, congestion and car-ownership. But hey, given development patterns in the U.S. over the last 50 years, who are we to judge?

Amazingly, the gargantuan project was completed in under five years, and is supposedly designed to last 100 years. One wonders whether a different sort of infrastructure project--such as a high-speed rail line--would have been a better long-term investment for the country. Then again, in China, as in most countries around the world, the near-term is nearly all that matters. It's just that in China the scale of everything--the mistakes and the successes--are orders of magnitude greater than they are anywhere else in the world.