Post by Relyt on Jan 30, 2012 19:12:54 GMT 1
Not the spaceship. Plenty of those floating around.
I'm constantly reminded of the soon-to-be decommissioning of the nuclear carrier Enterprise to be begun later this year. Which means, for the first time in 50 years, the US Navy will be without an Enterprise. Basically unthinkable for someone familiar with the tradition to reuse meaningful names for warships. But now to the topic at hand.
What I'm doing is building a full scale reproduction of the USS Enterprise, CV 6. The one that fought in World War II, participated in all but one of the major battles in the Pacific Theatre, sank more than 70 enemy vessels with its planes, confirmed sunk by the Japanese at least six times, turned the tide of war at Midway when a few dozen of its dive bombers sank three carriers in a matter of minutes, and was rewarded the Admiralty Pin by the Royal Navy, the only foreign ship to do so. It's really no wonder at all that this is my favourite ship. Then it got scrapped. An Enterprise tradition, I guess.
The plan is to build this thing before CVN 65 (The current Enterprise) is scrapped. So far, I've made good progress, and thought I'd share it here so there's something pretty to look at.
This was the first step, carried out December 16th. Basically the length and width of the ship here. The blocks in Minecraft are one cubic meter, so there's 251 blocks for the length and 33 for the beam (Width. I'm going to be using a lot of nautical terms during construction, so bear with me). If you look at the left center, you can easily see I already made a mistake in terms of location. If not, then I'll tell you. There's an island in the way. I tend to be pretty stubborn when it comes to problems like this. It's just as easy as starting over, right?
Hell no, I'm too stubborn for that. ;D So I blew up the island with dynamite. Lots of dynamite. That sums up this step.
So that island got its a** handed to it, so I proceeded to lay down the keel. Then I noticed the colour was wrong. So I ended up starting over anyway (But I kept the location out of pride.), and now the bottom of the ship has its dimensions.
This was when stuff really began to take shape. The bow has taken form (These ships were very fast by the way, making 34 knots top speed, which is about 39 mph. The stern was also very streamlined because the Navy wanted a carrier that could go about 20 knots in reverse. They weren't disappointed.)) 1/4 of the underwater portion of the hull is constructed, and some of it is dry. Drying out the ship is a long and slow process. I drop sand into the hull one block at a time, then I remove the sand with (once again) dynamite. Put this way, it probably sounds like no big deal. But this thing is full scale, so its area is enormous.
This is the continuation of the water removal. Now you can see how much sand it really takes. The draught (how deep the ship sits in the water) is also accurate, being 8 meters deep. That's 7 blocks of sand for every single block along the ship's length and beam. Slow.
More sand.
The sand is gone. For now.
Last of the sand for the ship's front half.
THE FRONT IS COMPLETELY DRY TIME TO CELEBRATE BY BUILDING UP THE BOW OF THE SHIP. This wasn't easy either, since I had to construct the ship's flare (Flare is the inward curving of the hull as it reaches upward. It's commonly used to increase deck width without making the ship fatter in the water. Otherwise it would be slow or cramped.). A lot of times I had (And I still am.) to place blocks and see if it simply looked right.
The end of the beginning of the building of the stern. My brother works at the shipyard that built the Enterprise. He's a welder working on the construction of the Gerald Ford, CVN 78 (The first of a new class!), so he gets a good look at a carrier five days a week. The basic form of our carrier hulls really hasn't changed much during the last 75 years, so he was able to help me out with the curvature of the stern's length (My mind went blank when typing this. What I'm talking about is the red blocks curving outward. He helped with that.)
This is the condition of the ship as I type this. As you can see, it has a bunch of sand in it.
And that's it so far. Not bad for my first mega-construction, if I say so myself.
I'm constantly reminded of the soon-to-be decommissioning of the nuclear carrier Enterprise to be begun later this year. Which means, for the first time in 50 years, the US Navy will be without an Enterprise. Basically unthinkable for someone familiar with the tradition to reuse meaningful names for warships. But now to the topic at hand.
What I'm doing is building a full scale reproduction of the USS Enterprise, CV 6. The one that fought in World War II, participated in all but one of the major battles in the Pacific Theatre, sank more than 70 enemy vessels with its planes, confirmed sunk by the Japanese at least six times, turned the tide of war at Midway when a few dozen of its dive bombers sank three carriers in a matter of minutes, and was rewarded the Admiralty Pin by the Royal Navy, the only foreign ship to do so. It's really no wonder at all that this is my favourite ship. Then it got scrapped. An Enterprise tradition, I guess.
The plan is to build this thing before CVN 65 (The current Enterprise) is scrapped. So far, I've made good progress, and thought I'd share it here so there's something pretty to look at.
This was the first step, carried out December 16th. Basically the length and width of the ship here. The blocks in Minecraft are one cubic meter, so there's 251 blocks for the length and 33 for the beam (Width. I'm going to be using a lot of nautical terms during construction, so bear with me). If you look at the left center, you can easily see I already made a mistake in terms of location. If not, then I'll tell you. There's an island in the way. I tend to be pretty stubborn when it comes to problems like this. It's just as easy as starting over, right?
Hell no, I'm too stubborn for that. ;D So I blew up the island with dynamite. Lots of dynamite. That sums up this step.
So that island got its a** handed to it, so I proceeded to lay down the keel. Then I noticed the colour was wrong. So I ended up starting over anyway (But I kept the location out of pride.), and now the bottom of the ship has its dimensions.
This was when stuff really began to take shape. The bow has taken form (These ships were very fast by the way, making 34 knots top speed, which is about 39 mph. The stern was also very streamlined because the Navy wanted a carrier that could go about 20 knots in reverse. They weren't disappointed.)) 1/4 of the underwater portion of the hull is constructed, and some of it is dry. Drying out the ship is a long and slow process. I drop sand into the hull one block at a time, then I remove the sand with (once again) dynamite. Put this way, it probably sounds like no big deal. But this thing is full scale, so its area is enormous.
This is the continuation of the water removal. Now you can see how much sand it really takes. The draught (how deep the ship sits in the water) is also accurate, being 8 meters deep. That's 7 blocks of sand for every single block along the ship's length and beam. Slow.
More sand.
The sand is gone. For now.
Last of the sand for the ship's front half.
THE FRONT IS COMPLETELY DRY TIME TO CELEBRATE BY BUILDING UP THE BOW OF THE SHIP. This wasn't easy either, since I had to construct the ship's flare (Flare is the inward curving of the hull as it reaches upward. It's commonly used to increase deck width without making the ship fatter in the water. Otherwise it would be slow or cramped.). A lot of times I had (And I still am.) to place blocks and see if it simply looked right.
The end of the beginning of the building of the stern. My brother works at the shipyard that built the Enterprise. He's a welder working on the construction of the Gerald Ford, CVN 78 (The first of a new class!), so he gets a good look at a carrier five days a week. The basic form of our carrier hulls really hasn't changed much during the last 75 years, so he was able to help me out with the curvature of the stern's length (My mind went blank when typing this. What I'm talking about is the red blocks curving outward. He helped with that.)
This is the condition of the ship as I type this. As you can see, it has a bunch of sand in it.
And that's it so far. Not bad for my first mega-construction, if I say so myself.
