Instead of retiring all of these modern marvels to dry-dock play smash-em-up on Worldwide TV for the edification of the world. Of course actual human casualties should be avoided at all costs (perhaps with rescue helicopters) but if someone accidentally goes "down with the ship", so be it.-- dgeiser13, May 27 2001 Airship Aerobatics http://www.halfbake...irship_20Aerobatics"Picture 200 foot airships going 'Bwoing!' every couple of minutes," says StarChaser. [egnor, May 27 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004] BattleBots http://www.battlebots.com/One of several TV shows featuring robots destroying each other. [Uncle Nutsy, May 27 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004] Robo-Ships to the Rescue? http://www.techtv.c...195,3370094,00.htmlNavy tests unmanned robotic vessels for submarine, mine detection. [dgeiser13, Jan 31 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004] be VERRry slow.......-- technobadger, May 27 2001 Half baked... Visit any Texas lake on a holiday weekend. You'll see plenty of drunk, unlicensed, and sunburned rednecks blazing around in their fish'n boats, quite often crashing into eachothers boats, jetski's, and even the occasional swimmer.-- andrewkorbel, May 27 2001 Well, that would eliminate the need for rescue helicopters and the concern over "human" casualties... ..... darn...have we opened this can again? ;-)-- Susen, May 28 2001 Rather than risk human life, why not outfit retired vessels with remote controls (or even remote-controlled weapons) and have the ships duke it out? Like BattleBots, only at sea and many orders of magnitude larger.-- Uncle Nutsy, May 29 2001 Just one thing about using criminals...you'd have to have the ships in some kind of enclosed arena, in case they all agreed just to take to sea and sail to freedom.-- -alx, May 29 2001 Once they were at sea they would be in international waters and therefore already free.-- DrBob, May 29 2001 What about fire? boats are full of gas and oil do you get points for sinking a boat with flaming projectiles?-- borivan, May 29 2001 Fire is Enemy Number One in any idea (Casualties Of Man And Beast). Enemy Number Two Is Pollution (Those Tragedies And More). Don't you just hate reality? I'd like this idea more than anybody save these two points. The sheer spectacle of it all - hmmm - wagering?-- thumbwax, May 29 2001 Best line overheard in re aliens: "I don't believe in intelligent life on other planets. I think they're all just as dumb as us."
[addendum: I believe that came from Michael Feldman's radio show "Whataya Know." I could be wrong, though.]-- Dog Ed, May 30 2001, last modified May 31 2001 "The most compelling evidence for there being intelligent life elsewhere in the universe may be that none of it comes here." (Steven William Rimmer [again].)-- angel, May 30 2001 The pollution problem pretty much kills this idea's appeal for me. Otherwise I'd be all for it (battlebots/Titanic style, not the convicted criminals thing). Maybe it could be done in a large, inland, artificial sea or lake which could be dredged & filtered afterwards.-- wiml, May 30 2001 17,000 Americans abducted by aliens everyday (according to UB and I'm not arguing with him) but how many Australians eh?-- po, Oct 24 2001 with comment to thumbwaxes comment about pollution, retrofit the vessels to use steam power, at least that way the fuel is coal and thereby a natural substance. Although saying that you'd need lots of people to shovel coal, and they'd be in the easiest bit of the ship to get trapped in, the bottom. Unless you came up with a steam shoveling machine, but that'd need power. I know use steam power....... <kaz trails off into a never ending string of impossibilities and eventually dies coz someone has enough pity to shoot him>-- kaz, Oct 24 2001 It's strange but makes sense that the people who invented aliens have fallen victim to them so many times. Why do abductions not happpen to people in china or freakin egypt for that matter. Anyway...crashing ships is a great idea, just do it far out at sea where the coral reef won't be harmed. Have the ships carry explosives so the impacts can be seen from the shore.-- thinck, Oct 25 2001 There's a beach in India where most of the world's largest vessels are scrapped. Miles and miles of this beach are covered with huge supertankers and cargo ships. 100,000 people work on the beach, stripping the ships and cutting them up mostly by hand.Anyway the ships get to this giant scrapyard by being driven at full speed up onto the beach. This idea reminded me of that.-- hippo, Oct 25 2001 With the pollution problem, you could have them all nuclear powered (OK, stick with me on this one) but have the actual powerplant centralised and detachable. Once the ship is damaged to the point where its sinking, airlift off the generator, or have it float away in a mini-boat.
Re-use the power-supply (hereafter known as the Big Battery(tm) ) in the next round. I appreciate having nuclear-powered ramming races with cargo ships dosen't sound the safest sport ever invented...-- babychaos, Nov 27 2001 I had an idea once that it would be great to kill two birds with one stone and drop retired battleships onto buildings that had to be demolished - imagine it hanging there above a block of flats for a couple of days before being released. Better yet, create a massive cannon to fire it into the building. That was pre-911, mind....-- Saveloy, Jan 31 2002 random, halfbakery