Re: [Phys-l] hurricane question

[Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net>]

Jack,
	I looked up the size comparison of the Nimitz class carriers and the  
current fleet of cruise ships.   We were on the Adventure of the Seas  
(Poyal Caribbean).  That ship is 1020 feet long and has a tonnage of  
137,000+, top speed of 22 K.  This is what they call the Voyager class  
of ships which has several other sister ships all built between 1999  
and 2002.   Royal is now building the largest cruise ships called the  
Oasis class which will be 1181 ft with GNT = 220,000.    The QM2 by  
comparison is 1132 ft and GNT 148,000.
	Wikipedia lists the Nimitz carriers as 1115 ft and 104,000 tons with  
top speed of 30 K.

	These cruise ships are remarkably stable and in 20 ft swells in the  
fringes of Omar the ship hardly ever *rocked and rolled*.  We once  
cruised the north Atlantic out of New York on a smaller ship, the  
Nodic Empress (since rechristened but I don't recall the new name) to  
Bermuda.  Now, that was a real *rock and roller* making the entire  
dinner table retreat to their cabins the first night at sea.  My  
friend and I were the only ones left *alive* at the table at the end  
of the evening and even my wife, intrepid sailor that she is, was in  
bed that night by 7 pm.

	On our previous cruise (Voyager of the Seas) they had a complete  
oceanographic lab on board and we jumped at a chance to go on a tour.   
The University of Miami set it up with a team of scientists and the  
only thing the cruise line demanded was that they give tours daily for  
passengers who signed up. Otherwise the scientists and the lab were on  
board *rent free* for the week.   Fascinating!    My wife jokingly  
asked if they needed teachers to give tours.  They actually said yes,  
so I wrote when we got home, sent them my credentials (no ocenaography  
experience needed, so they said), but we never heard from them.   Oh,  
well... I suppose we will always have to pay our own way....    ;-)

Marty


On Nov 8, 2008, at 1:31 PM, Jack Uretsky wrote:

> Hi Marty-
> 	I was struck by "these huge cruise ships".  As one who has been
> through a numbeer of hurricanes in the Atlantic, mostly on 30,000 ton
> aircraft carriers, your cruise ships are not that huge.  Nothing, in  
> fact,
> made by man is THAT huge, when mother nature really gets into one of  
> her
> frenzies.  Our carrier was a midget,  in the late forties, compared  
> even
> then with the Midway class, and one of those, steaming in our  
> company, had
> aircraft wasshed off the flight deck.  We pitied the poor destroyer
> sailors, tossing and bobbing as they kept their stations on the edge  
> of
> our task group.
> 	I think that Brian summed up the present state of knowledge of
> hurricane dynamics pretty well.  Weather prediction is one of the  
> future
> targets of future large scale computer evelopment.
> 				Regards,
> 					Jack