Saturday, May 13, 2017

Life-Sized Chinese Replica of RMS Titanic Takes Shape

Continued-in-part from here


I'm a Titanic nut and have been since I was very young. So, I'm fascinated by this project. What kind of steel are they using? It looks so shiny -- could it be aluminum or stainless steel?

18 comments:

chickelit said...

The original Titanic's dry dock is now a tourist attraction in Belfast.

The Dude said...

Aluminum would be a terrible choice. It fails without warning. Oh, right.

Stainless steel - not good, either.

I am going with used gum wrappers.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I'm a colossal nut.

chickelit said...

Titus is a tit antics nut

chickelit said...

Err, I should say Titus was a tit antic nut. Spinelli redeemed him.

The Dude said...

He has not been redeemed, he has simply moved on to a different set of lies. His mental decline makes him incapable of recalling what he has written, and since all of his comments were falsehoods, he simple set aside the old character for a new one in order to avoid contradicting his previous mendacity.

He is, and always has been, a man of the soil, as it were.

ampersand said...

The Chinese must have yuuuge amounts of time on their hands. Last year they put up an 120 foot golden statue of Mao, thought better of it, and dismantled it. When Nixon went to China,the Chinese built a full size replica of a Boeing 707, non flying.

Would be good to buy up some of those Mao statues, and like they did MLK start putting different heads on them, Obama, Bush 1 and 2 and Hillary. Hillary's you wouldn't even have to change the outfit.

chickelit said...

Hillary's you wouldn't even have to change the outfit.

Imagine Rachel Maddow interviewing Hillary Clinton. Who could outdo the other in drabwear?

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

amper- ahhhck - that's HER.

chickelit said...

Rene Saunce said...amper- ahhhck - that's HER.

Imagine her likeness carved into Rushmore -- or Stone Mountain after the Confederates are dynamited off by SWJs.

rcocean said...

So when are they going to build the iceberg?

edutcher said...

Britannic also went down, thanks to a u-boat and only the first, Olympic, passed a normal life.

ampersand said...

The Chinese must have yuuuge amounts of time on their hands.

The Chicoms are big into Potemkin everything. I guess they think it makes them look like they're a real country.

Chip Ahoy said...

I'm tempted to photoshop a Titanic hull with smokestacks replaced with Chinese junk sails.

I just now looked at Chinese junk sails and realized something. I always thought they were bizarre. But they're not. They're the exact same thing as Western boat sails. And I mean exactly the same. 'Cept differnt. The beams are like a bat wing. They're battened like a hang glider wing. Its design allows speed and maneuverabllityxxxx manuverabiliyxxxxxx muhewverabilityxxxxxxx zipping around.

Whereas before I mocked its ridiculous backward design that condemned the boats to sticking to near the shores and to rivers. But now after that insight derived from looking at browser images I deem them superior.

Have you ever studied a bat's wing? You must wonder, "Where are their little hands? Where are their fingers? How do they hold food?"

It's a flying mouse. So where are its hands? Turns out, the whole wing is their hand. They got hella webbed fingers. So how do they eat? FREAKY! That's how. Without hands. But if a human is feeding them a grape then they bring their freaky little fingers together like a regular hand and their finger flaps fold as they do so the longest finger on each hand does the job of holding like a corn on the cob and looking not unlike Nosferatu .

chickelit said...

Anatomy of a bat wing.

And here I thought that "bat wings" were what Cat Woman had. At least Julie Newmar. Turns out I was wrong. Another Urban Dictionary Legend.

XRay said...

Considering it's never going to sail, my guess would be cheap steel. Aluminum costs more and stainless even more than that. Plus, as SG notes, more difficult to work with both. 11,000+ pounds a night seems a little pricy for a room.

Chip Ahoy said...

So when the little bat eats a grape his fingers are folded backward and it uses its two thumbs.

Hang glider wings fascinated me from the first moment.

The battens are rigid flexible nylon ribs. They rolled up separately and handled separately. I don't know why the two glider models I'm familiar did not have them sewn in permanently. Maybe they get replaced. I don't know. Each flight session the wings are spread out and the battens inserted into their sewn pockets. They're tight enough to stay in. Not like collar stays that slip out. They might have an anti-slip mini-pocket or fold to prevent that. Slipping the battens into their pockets one by one as you go along the wing is ... let's just say Freud was banned from the training slope as his constant jokes became wearisome. Now the wings are stretched out.

On the first day you do this battening of the wings, and kite assembly then position yourself in front of your glider as if playing with a very large toy kite.

It's heavy. Sixty-five pounds. Holding the control bar the kite's nose can be tilted. Tilting the nose into the wind just so causes the air to flow over the wing as an airplane and suddenly the wind takes the kite away from you. You pull it back in. It tugs harder. You pull. It tugs and tugs and tugs and TUGS and tugs and TUGS and tugs and tugs and TUGS irregularly and feels positively alive. The kite feels exactly like a horse tugging forcefully on reigns, and I mean exactly. The kite, the wind, are alive!

It freaks you right out.

When the kite gets out of hand it feels like a horse out of control so you tip the control bar one way or the other so the wing stops flying and the full weight of the kite drops into your hands like a dead horse's head.

You tilt the the kite just so into the wind again and it flies again and tugs away again feeling alive again and gets out of hand again so you tilt out of the wind again and its full weight drops into your hands again.

You fly it again.

It makes you know right there in that instant what all that nonsense means about the wind being alive. This is what they mean. You know all about the weather forces meteorologically it's all explained very well but now you feel with your own hands and your whole body and your mind connected with this kite that feels like a horse your kite-horse is tugging in a medium that's alive. Wind is felt through the kite's controlbar the Earth's aspiration. Wind is life.

Then when you're flying with the wind you're in it.

Speaking of golden locks not blowing in the wind. Today the hairdresser asked what I want her to do.

"Oh, say from 0 to maybe 1 or 2 then this bit up here shorter. Do whatever you want. I give up. I don' t care. It's not even hair anymore. It's just fuzz. I'm over it. Do the best that you can with what little there is to work with."

Then she did a very nice job.

chickelit said...

Today the hairdresser asked what I want her to do.

I've never had a hairdresser. What's it like? I've always had barbers.

chickelit said...

WTH ever happened to Fruit Bat (the commenter)?