Retirees who live on cruise ships | Hacker News Reader

Retirees who live on cruise ships

cntraveler.com

33 pointscarlivar78 comments

I know not everything needs to be about the pandemic, but not to mention it at all in this article seems like a conspicuous gap since a lot of the early super-spreader events were on cruise ships, and my understanding is that the whole industry was on-hold for twelve months.

> Living aboard a cruise ship doesn’t come cheap. For example, fully furnished residences aboard the MV Narrative cost between $1 million and $8 million, and there are a limited number of 12- and 24-year leases available, which start at $400K. In addition, there are the monthly homeowner's association-style fees, which vary according to the size of a residence and cover everything from ship fuel to housekeeping, as well as all standard food and drink. In essence, it’s a fee similar to the kind of packages that you often pre-pay for on a typical cruise ship.

Not possible unless you work for a FAANGO.

alt title: "How to rapidly expand your carbon footprint before you die"

"Research shows that cruising emits up to four times more CO2 per passenger than flying. While air travel costs between 0,11 and 0,16 kg per passenger per kilometer – a significant amount -, taking a cruise ship adds up to a staggering 0,40 kilograms per kilometer."[1]

[1] https://www.geekyexplorer.com/cruise-ship-pollution/#:~:text....

While I agree ship cruising is a polluting lifestyle, I think it should be compared to living on land.

It's unequivocally worse.

Every single day, cruise ships worldwide emit the same particular matter as a million cars. A single large cruise ship will emit over five tonnes of NOX emissions, and 450kg of ultrafine particles a day. To give you an idea, it emits about the same amount of sulfur dioxide as 3,6 MILLION cars.

https://www.geekyexplorer.com/cruise-ship-pollution/

Sure, but also takes ~150 times longer

Came to say this. These are potentially the biggest individual polluters on the planet.

Private jets are far worse per Capita.

What's the math on this?

Cargo ships are far more numerous than cruise ships. They basically use tar as fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_fuel_oil

Comparing passenger jet emissions to cruise emissions is missing the point. The point of a jet is to get from point A to point B ASAP. The point of a cruise ship is to have a nice time, and maybe get from point A to point B. AFAIK many (most?) cruise routes even go back to the port that they depart from!

Surely a better measure is time, not distance. Ie what is a person's carbon footprint on land, for say a week, vs what is it on a cruise for a week?

On a nice hotel, because most cruises are nice hotels that sail. The amenities you can have in a cruise are far, far beyond what you would get on a first-class international flight.

I wish we lived in an alternate universe where paranoia about nuclear reactors wasn’t so much of a thing, and that we could have nuclear powered cruise ships just like the Navy has nuclear aircraft carriers and subs.

Because I _love_ cruising, and the climate impact is among the major reasons I don’t go as often as I’d like. (Yeah yeah, people who go on cruises get a lot of ridicule, but I don’t care. Something about a cruise just fits me lot more than “real” vacations. I don’t want to be challenged, or go to a place where I don’t speak the language, etc. I just want to be utterly hedonistic for a week or so and then get back to my real life. Insult away.)

Uranium is a finite resource, and nuclear energy does leave a very long term waste problem. Using that for leisure cruises seems very wasteful and a bad idea.

Sails, solar, and renewable hydrogen is much more appetizing.

True uranium is finite in the environment, but its hardly the only fuel source, combined with breeders/etc the fuel supplies are effectively infinite (aka we have thousands of years with just the current known reserves).

Similarly most of the "waste" isn't really waste if we choose to burn it. We have a couple centuries of fuel for our grand children sitting in "waste" caskets at the existing plants. Similarly to how we basically burned the "waste" from the soviet nuke programs in our reactors for 20 years.

So, sail might be cool, but its not going to happen for these huge mega cruise ships. There is a reason the navy uses nukes on their larger ships.

And the alternative renewables are pretty bad when considered in practical terms.

Solar which doesn't work half the time, produces an oversupply during summer and doesn't work during winter, requiring extensive and expensive storage setups while providing a laughable output.

Wind turbines which only work in specific places with stable wind speeds, with blades that last 20 years and can't be cost effectively recycled and produce a larger waste storage issue than nuclear. Not to mention the constant loud whine sound that drives people living close to them absolutely nuts.

Geothermal which works only in places with magma near the surface, otherwise you need to drill down so deep that you destabilize the ground and cause towns to start collapsing into themselves.

Hydrogen storage may be practical in some cases, but with 30% round trip efficiency it's probably not worth it when pumped hydro can do up to 85% and you also get what's basically a huge bomb waiting to level the city block.

Sails, or their more efficient version, Flettner rotors, are a good starting point for significant cargo ship fuel reductions but you aren't gonna be powering them by wind alone.

I think what Rolls Royce is doing right now with SMRs is probably the best way forward, depending on how small they can really make them.

Where are the breeder reactors in current use? This has been "just around the corner" for decades now, and if it finally materializes I would hope they would be put to better use than power floating resorts.

Nobody needs huge mega cruise ships. Rather than continue to burn fossil fuel or wasting the resources and trust on them by making them nuclear, there's a simpler solution: ban them. You want a ship holiday, there's plenty of sail ships available. You want to lie in the sun, go to movie theaters, pools, restaurants? Go to a hotel. None of these huge companies are paying the external cost of their wastefulness, and it needs to stop, not be enabled by tech pipe dreams.

In Asia?

I'm not sure I really understand your point. Breeders were victims of the fact that light water reactors were considered dirt cheap to build/fuel/operate (and were until greenpeace/etc got involved) and countries like the USA have very large supplies of uranium (in fact there tours you can take in NM where you wander around in the desert with a geiger counter and pick up hot rocks).

OTOH, if your going to spend 10's of billions building a reactor one might as well go full bore (particularly with modern computer control systems) and just build something that burns the entire fuel load. Breeder's problems are political same as conventional light water.

And the "waste" we have is 95% or so unburned uranium that could be reprocessed and by itself last the US nearly a century. Oh, and all this waste? By mass, its somewhere in the ballpark of a single rail car for carrying coal (course then it would fission and release energy) so its kept spaced apart in small quantities.

The more one learns about nukes the more the current energy environment becomes unbelievable. I mean the US and Russia dumped more radioactive material into the atmosphere, and created huge downwind radioactive plumes that make the civilian accidents a joke in comparison. Chernobyl was nothing compared to some of these tests, and we are still talking about it 3 decades later despite the fact no one has built a commercial reactor like that in 50+ years.

To many people conflated weapons programs with the safest, most abundant and reliable energy source we have humans have ever discovered.

I hate this argument so much. These ships spend $2 million a day on burning dinosaur juice and pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Nuclear is better than that, full stop. It's this perfect-being-the-enemy-of-better nonsense that keeps oil a trillion dollar industry decade after decade.

No amount of sails and solar panels is going to move a fucking cruise ship. We need to make incremental progress or there will be no progress at all.

https://climateer.substack.com/p/better-than-fossil?s=r

I agree with the sarcastic sentiment from another poster on this.

These companies don't take care of their employees, constantly dump trash and waste in international waters, inundate their ports of call with pollution and hordes of unruly tourists, and we're supposed to believe that they could somehow handle the security and disposal of extremely dangerous materials? They can barely handle keeping their guests from catching dysentery.

Sails worked great to move ships for a long time. If you can't make sustainable cruise ships then you shouldn't make them at all. This idea that we need to keep every single excess we're used to is ridiculous, if you're gonna use nuclear power you can use it to make something useful like energy for steel or aluminum production instead of driving lazy tourists between ports that doesn't want them.

Energy abundance was a luxury we had for a few decades, it's time to wean us off it and start conserving energy and resources, not find new ways of living above our means for a couple of generations before the next bill needs to be payed.

Ah so it isn't as much "there are better ways to complete this objective," it's "this objective is stupid and I don't like the people that like it." That makes more sense given your general attitude in this thread.

> I just want to be utterly hedonistic for a week or so and then get back to my real life.

Wouldn't a resort hotel do just as well for that?

Yeah, but I love boats too. Like, really love boats. Even though it’s so huge you can barely tell you’re on one, I like going out on the deck of my room and just staring at the vast ocean. Or laying out by the pool on deck and seeing the ocean around and knowing “hey, I’m on a huge boat! This is great!”… for some reason it hasn’t gotten old and I’ve cruised a bunch.

I know it’s not super rational, and it’s not for everyone, but I always massively enjoy my time on cruise ships. Best vacations I’ve ever had.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Hahn_(ship)

Probably would be completely worthwhile to convert a cruise ship too, if it only cost the $270 million (inflation adjusted, was only 28M) it cost in 1959 to do this. It would pay for itself in fuel charges on a big ship in less than a year. Assuming it could provide sufficient power vs the $2 million/day in fuel costs of the big ships.

> I wish we lived in an alternate universe where paranoia about nuclear reactors wasn’t so much of a thing, and that we could have nuclear powered cruise ships just like the Navy has nuclear aircraft carriers and subs.

I think we can all agree that anyone who judges Royal Caribbean or Carnival Cruise Line to not be as competent and responsible in nuclear engineering matters as the US Navy is quite obviously paranoid.

I mean who cares?

If anybody thinks we're going to "solve" climate change by a couple oldsters staying off cruise ships (or honestly through any reasonable means), then I think they're deluded. The solution is going to come in the form of a world and way of life that's essentially unimaginable today.

For those of us alive right now, may as well do whatever we want at this point.

I care! You should care! Everyone should care!

This stuff matters, it matters today and it matters incrementally. A 10% decrease in carbon emissions today means millions of acres less wildfire destruction in this decade. It means preventing billions of dollars in destruction from severe hurricanes. It means hundreds of thousands of lives saved from becoming famine refugees from drought-stricken areas.

Pretending that it's an all-or-nothing, we need magical technological revolution is just enabling people to continue to cause harm more rapidly and severely. But the difference between 2.0 and 2.1 degrees of warming is huge, the difference of giving humanity another decade to replace fossil fuels for grid power is huge.

No one change, no one technology, no one law or policy is going to solve climate change. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pursue any given improvement, quite the opposite, it means we should be pursuing them all.

I live in small dense urban housing, I have never driven a car, I never fly in planes, I don't eat meat, and I will never have kids. That's what I'm doing and it doesn't matter at all.

Very few people are willing to make microscopic changes in their lifestyle. How do I know? Just look around.

It's clear to me societal change won't come when we're staring down the barrel of the gun. It's going to happen when we have a gaping exit wound in the back of our heads.

Fortunately I'll be dead well before the shot rings out.

Ah, but the point isn't to solve climate change.

The point is to engage in a public display of virtue by lecturing others on their shortcomings. This gives one the smug (and illusory) satisfaction of being a Good Person without requiring any actual personal sacrifice.

You're right. These particular retirees aren't even a rounding error of a rounding error of a rounding error. However, they are Climate Sinners, and must therefore be denounced.

You forget when people stay on the cruise ships, they no longer drive cars or take public transportations.

Ok but you also travel much less by ship than by plane and you also have your additional CO2 footprint by driving around on vacation.

> “The concept of combining a nice environment to work from and then going to sleep in Venice and waking up in Croatia,” says de Leede, “It's great.”

Half day stops in places just to say you were there? Not fond of that

I remember taking similar vacations as a kid: traveling the whole time and rarely staying more than one night in the same city.

There is an American view of vacations as speedruns, especially among older generations. Maybe coming from the culture where long, international vacations were seen as against the work ethic, expensive, and something to feel guilty about. So there was the perception you had to rush to see it all while you only had a set number of days because you may never get back.

They're still very much alive in the current generation.

Keep in mind that a huge amount of millennial and younger vacation in order to work for Likes. They don't really care about anything as long as they can get that really good Instagram post or Tiktok.

The speedrun style of tourism that you mention is very much catered to by tour guides and generally emphasizes how cheaply you can get through all these places.

A vast majority of them just have little to no vacation time, just like the older generations.

This is an odd thread.

I've seen articles about similar behavior among Chinese tourists in Austria. Bus load after bus load came to the small picturesque towns, unloaded, took their pictures, and then moved on.

An if course Japanese tourists where known for a long time for always taking pictures and video wherever they went.

Yeah the speedrun style is usually still in one locale.

> There is an American view of vacations as speedruns...

Not surprising, given there's no legal requirement companies give any paid vacation time at all, and most only give a couple of weeks.

Americans view vacations as speed runs because we get no guaranteed vacation time, and two weeks is considered the standard. When you consider that one week of that typically gets taken up by family visits, the urge to do as much as possible in what little time we have is understandable, even if misguided.

I've been writing software for 15 years and I currently have 15 days of PTO. I hate the hectic rush that passes for travel. I look forward to the day I can retire and slow travel, spending a month at each destination.

You need to renegotiate your time off or find a different employer…

As a related side note: unlimited time off gets a well deserved bad reputation, but there are plenty of real examples. A great indicator that it’s real is a minimum policy.

I like unlimited time off because its available instantly, whereas fixed time off accrues slowly per pay period and I am always chomping off small pieces of it or in the negative.

The people disliking unlimited PTO are too intimidated to take it. Most people have no leverage or need the job, so that's real, for them. I prefer unlimited and I'm never at a company long enough for accruals to add up 3-4 years in.

Well, that's my employer's policy. My manager and director are chill people, and generally don't track pto too closely, but I could easily see another manager being much more 'by the book'

I complained two hours ago to my brother that i only had 40 days (8 weeks) and not 52 and that the 20k pay increase is not worth if i don't have vacation to spend the extra money.

I hope you have unpaid overtime and make enough to be able to take some.

I want more free time, I think I work too much with 35 paid vaction days per year. I do not want to live for retirement.

>There is an American view of vacations as speedruns

What's your evidence that there is an "American" view of this? Can you link to a study showing different views of vacations by country? What's a Belizean view? How about Djiboutian?

It's weird how common it is on the internet to immediately claim things are uniquely American. It's essentially American exceptionalism with a cynical twist.

Some developed nations like in Western Europe and the Commonwealth have statutory paid time off policies that are much longer by default (thinking 4 - 6 weeks), with employers competing for talent with more weeks off than that, and this allows for greater flexibility in vacationing styles.

Gone are the speed runs centered around holiday weekends with an extra one or two days taken off of work, in favor of immersive trips in a different locale, if desired.

Given that the US distinctly has the resources to support 21st century advances of developed nations and simply doesn't do it, a cynical view of American exceptionalism is always warranted. Especially given that the consensus failures come from a lack of awareness of what developed nations really do. American exceptionalism has relied on comparing the US to the most undeveloped or poorly governed places on the planet, neglecting the idea of better functioning systems or lifestyle existing elsewhere.

>a cynical view of American exceptionalism is always warranted

Yeah, those weren't my words. Not a cynical view of American exceptionalism. A cynical VERSION of American exceptionalism.

I don't care what Western Europe's statutory policies are. Can you share any facts that show Americans "speed run" vacations and no other country on the planet does?

Considering the statutory minimum in Canada is 10 days - and the average worker between the US and Canada is pretty close in number of days off - I look forward your analysis showing how Canada takes luxurious immersive vacations.

Or more likely: you're like everyone else, where your version of "ONLY IN AMERICA!!" means "America is different than these Nordic countries, therefore it's globally unique".

Well since you are responding to a different person and that person (me) isn’t saying that no other country behaves that way, this is largely moot, since I am only talking about some developed Western European and Commonwealth nations.

Their ages range from almost 70 to almost 80. Most people in that age range, a view is more than enough.

> “Now I can say that I’ve swum in the Arctic Circle,” he says. “There aren’t too many people who can say that!”

OMG, this is the boomer who comes up to me saying how he did some thing unique and gets incredibly upset that I don't go out of my way to pretend to be amazed and act enthusiastic about it. And this is the same person ruining the environment for his boring lifestyle.

Yeah I prefer the stories where people have a purpose of being somewhere. An expedition, or something more immersive than simply going underwater. Not everyone has the time for that, but this guy does, so I'm really not so amused.

If they live on the cruise ship, they can stay as long as they want. They'll pick it up when the ship returns, or take a cheap flight to meet the ship somewhere else.

I do find those stops weird as a vacation. You get to see the very tippy-top tourist sites. My parents took one that let off in Le Havre, drove them a few hours to Paris, up the Eiffel Tower for lunch, past the Mona Lisa, and then back. They were happy with it, but that's not my cup of tea.

The retirees seem happy just being on the ship. The entertainment and dining options are oriented to them. The port days are just an entertainment option, not the goal.

> If they live on the cruise ship, they can stay as long as they want. They'll pick it up when the ship returns, or take a cheap flight to meet the ship somewhere else.

hmmm, thats more interesting, kind of similar to how I already travel especially in Europe (while on vacation, leave stuff in one city for a sidequest in another city/country return to it a week later)

this would be like a super cheap yacht with much greater resources

It's bonkers how cheap. Less than many hotels, and includes food. You'd have to be moderately wealthy, but not ludicrously so.

Interesting way to use your vast retirement wealth. I wonder if these kind of luxury retirement expenditures will exist in the coming generations who haven't accumulated huge sums of money.

You can cruise year round on like $3k a month, it's not that luxurious when you consider that it includes room, board, food, maid service, activities, etc. Especially compared to how expensive old age homes are.

The article mentions upwards of $300/day or more, which is 110k/yr. That's a lot of money, not to mention the cost of your fixed home and other living expenses (medical?). Plus, I would not want to do a "budget" cruise every single day and be at the mercy of their menu.

It just sounds unappealing and expensive to me, but that's me.

$300/day seems high. Are they staying in staterooms with balconies?

To me, a better title would have been "How to get to Hell before you die".

Not affiliated, but-

Cheapest 15 day Cruise on Norwegian is $649. Just line those up back to back. They even have an offer for 70% off for your second guest, which makes it ~$900 for 2 people.

https://www.ncl.com/vacations?duration=15+&sort=price_low_hi...

That doesn't include all the fees, primarily "gratuities". Also, I think prices are pretty good right now. It also varies with the time of the year. I would expect prices to go up as the industry recovers from the pandemic. Of course, frequent cruisers get added upgrades and special offers from the cruise lines, too.

Interesting way to reveal your true motivation.

I "accumulated" huge sums of money by working my butt off, not demanding I live in San Francisco six months out of college, investing wisely, and upsizing when the market was favorable. Today's younger generations have the world at their fingertips, and use all those resources to stare at TikTok.

Wow, that is a massive 'fuck you' to the next generation in terms of climate impact.

i disagree, it is actually super optimized, food delivery, food cooking, waste management and ton of other stuff

i wonder if a nuclear proposed ship would be a solution to make it carbon neutral in the future

You missed the 'nearly indentured servitude of the larger portion of the crew'.

https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2016/06/articles/crew-member-r...

> I disagree, it is actually super optimized […]

Well, you live in fantasy land then.

> One study found that passengers on a seven-day Antarctic cruise cause as much CO2 to be released as the average European over the course of an entire year. […] While cruise vessels represent only a fraction of the global shipping industry, they account for around a quarter of all the waste produced by the sector, the review found.

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/cruise-shi...

i was talking about the life on the ship, not the carbon footprint of the ship

in a city, each individuals uses their car to go buy food, then come back home and use car to go do their other activities, then cook things at home, wasting a ton of resources and producing ton of useless waste

something that doesn't happen if you are living on a ship where everything is optimized for the group

hence why i then mention if using nuclear propulsion would help fix the latter problem, like submarines

> One study found that passengers on a seven-day Antarctic cruise cause as much CO2 to be released as the average European over the course of an entire year.

There are, what, maybe a few thousand people who do an Antarctic cruise every year?

The EU has a population of about 450 million.

The climate does not care one bit about per capita emissions, only total emissions.

You can't legislate morality, you can only price externalities. Add a hefty carbon tax and I'd bet that'd change the calculus a bit.

> You can't legislate morality

Why not? That seems like a big statement to make without any reasoning to back it up.

https://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question95438.html

Yeah, we’re going to solve the climate crisis by taking less cruises, and not reworking our transportation, energy, and agriculture industries. If you don’t have kids (or have one fewer) you can do whatever you want with regards to climate change.

Doesn’t this imply they have given even a seconds consideration to following generations? I bet they haven’t. Soon they will die and simply cease to exist. Why would they care if humanity continues on after them? From their perspective, humanity will completely cease to exist at the moment of their death.

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