Submitted by LilyFish- t3_10c73wv in askscience
HolyGig t1_j4fb52z wrote
There is theoretically nothing stopping you from making a ship as big as you want it to be. Practically speaking, that ship still needs to fit into harbors, through canals and enter drydocks for maintenance.
Ship size is limited by the infrastructure necessary to support it, not any sort of engineering limitations.
superheavydeathmetal t1_j4lyxn6 wrote
There are engineering size limits if you want it to be seaworthy. This is a constraint imposed by how well the materials used can tolerate the stresses that the ocean applies to the hull. For example, wooden ships can’t be much larger than 400 feet. The largest wooden ship ever made was the Wyoming, and it required many pumps to keep it afloat, because the constant twisting and bending of the hull would create gaps between the boards, allowing seawater in. It eventually sank in heavy seas.
HolyGig t1_j4ndq4e wrote
We don't build wooden ships anymore. There are no size limits for steel, and eventually the ship gets so big that weather just won't affect it much.
The Seawise Giant was 2.5x bigger than an American supercarrier. If there were a shipyard big enough to do it, there is nothing stopping us from building a ship 10x bigger, or even 100x bigger except the price tag and the lack of logical reasons to ever build such a ship due to how impractical it is
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