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The Freedom Ship is presented by Roger Gooch’s company as the world’s first floating megacity: 1.6 km, 30 floors, and nuclear power for 80,000 people. The idea, created by Norman Nixon in the 1990s, would cost R$ 81 billion and make the Icon of the Seas look modest.
Forget the world’s largest cruise ships. An American company has presented the Freedom Ship, described as the first floating megacity in the world: a structure 1.6 kilometers long, 30 decks high, and powered by nuclear energy, designed to accommodate up to 80,000 people at sea.
The project, valued at around R$ 81 billion (US$ 16.16 billion), is driven by Freedom Cruise Line International, led by executive Roger Gooch. The ambition is enormous, but there is an equally large caveat: the idea has existed for about 30 years, since engineer Norman Nixon, and has never left the drawing board, still depending on funding to become a reality.
What is the Freedom Ship, the first floating megacity
The numbers explain why the Freedom Ship is called the first floating megacity in the world. The structure would be 1.6 kilometers long, 244 meters wide, 30 decks, and an impressive 2.3 million gross tons.
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The planned capacity is 80,000 people, including 50,000 permanent residents, 10,000 tourists and visitors, and 20,000 crew members.
To understand the size, it’s worth the comparison. The Icon of the Seas, by Royal Caribbean, is the largest cruise ship in the world and measures “only” 365 meters, carrying about 7.6 thousand passengers and 2.3 thousand crew members.
In other words, the megacity would be more than four times the length of the Icon of the Seas, which puts the current record holder on a different scale compared to the nuclear-powered project.
A city that fits a stadium, museums, and nuclear energy
The list of facilities resembles that of a real city. According to the company, the first floating megacity would have a research hospital, schools and colleges, shopping center, luxury hotels, a stadium for 15 thousand people, convention center, water park, two museums, concert hall, aquarium, nightclub, and even a two-story gastronomic market.
Four decks would be reserved for banks, shops, and services, and internal transportation would be done by electric trams.
On top, eight helipads would complete the structure. This entire “city” would be powered by nuclear energy, which, according to the creators, would ensure autonomy and fewer emissions for a community that never stops.
Compared to the Icon of the Seas and any other cruise, the leap in ambition is gigantic, even though all of this, for now, exists only as a project.
A ship too large for any port
According to the portal globo, being so colossal, the Freedom Ship would not fit in any port on the planet. The proposed solution is to keep the first floating megacity almost always in international waters, circling the globe every two or three years, at a modest speed of seven knots.
Passenger transport to land would be done by ferries and helicopters, and hull maintenance would occur with the ship in the water.
According to Roger Gooch, the proposal is to function as a private community, where entrepreneurs would rent or buy spaces, as in a common city.
He even commented that medical research facilities have shown interest precisely because the location is out of reach of regulatory bodies, a point that, although attractive to some, raises relevant legal and ethical questions.
If funding is secured, construction would begin in Indonesia, with the hull assembled in parts at sea.
From Norman Nixon’s idea to the challenge of funding
The project’s history is long. The idea was first proposed in the 1990s by American engineer Norman Nixon, who died in 2012 without seeing it come to fruition. Since then, the concept has resurfaced a few times and was shelved again, until it was taken up by Freedom Cruise Line International, based in Florida.
It was with Norman Nixon that the seed of what is now marketed as the world’s first floating megacity was born.
Now, under the leadership of Roger Gooch, the company says it is confident but acknowledges that everything depends on money. “We are very confident that we can make this happen, but capitalization is key,” said the executive.
Skepticism is warranted: experts remind us that floating city projects rarely move beyond the concept, encountering financial, technical, legal, and regulatory obstacles. For now, neither the Freedom Ship nor any nuclear-powered rival has moved past the drawing board, and nothing guarantees that Roger Gooch will have more luck than Norman Nixon.
A 1.6 km nuclear-powered city, wandering the oceans with 80,000 people on board, is the kind of idea that fascinates and frightens in equal measure.
Tell us in the comments if you would live in the world’s first floating megacity or if you think the Freedom Ship will remain just on paper, as it has for the past 30 years.
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