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Comment by taraharris | Hacker News Reader

Entering service in 1940, the America made regular passenger runs across the Atlantic

The Pentagon also quickly took interest in the project. ... Of the estimated $78 million budget, the Pentagon provided almost two-thirds, plus a portion of the yearly operating expenses.

Funny they called the US Department of War the "Pentagon," because it wasn't yet built! Construction of the Pentagon started on September 11th, 1941, and was completed on January 15th, 1943. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon/wiki/The_Pentagon

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

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> $78 million budget

$78 million? That's insane. An Iowa-class battleship cost about $100 million. Iowa was heavier (57000 tons vs 47000 tons), had a bit less power (212000 hp vs 240000 hp) and was slightly slower (32.5 knots vs 35 knots).

An Essex class carrier cost (per wikipedia) between $68 and $78 million. It was only 36000 tons, but it had a speed of 33 knots.

So this civilian passenger ship cost as much as the most expensive warships that the US built during WW2. Mind blown.

https://www.ssusc.org/history-design-launch

> The low and graceful superstructure was built entirely in aluminum, which gave the ship a dead weight of 45,400 long tons, compared to the 77,000 long tons for the similarly sized Cunard Queens.

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

> The construction of the ship's superstructure involved the most extensive use of aluminum in any construction project up to that time, which posed a galvanic corrosion challenge to the builders in joining the aluminum superstructure to the steel decks below. However, the extensive use of aluminum meant significant weight savings, as well.

The price of pig iron in 1950 ($/t) was 47.20.

The price of steel in 1950 ($/t) was 76.50.

The price of aluminum in 1950 ($/t) was 390. (The decimal point is in the right spot).

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

This makes sense.

But it's still stunning compared to today. The largest cruise ships today cost between $1 and $2 billion to build, and they weight more than 200000 tons and carry more than 5000 passengers.

The smallest (and newest) warship in the US Navy, the frigate Constellation, currently under construction, will cost about $1.3 billion [2], and weighs only 7300 tons.

[1] https://cruisedeals.expert/how-much-does-a-cruise-ship-cost-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation-class_frigate

Accounting for inflation, 1950 to today would but $78M to $968M so...

It's worth noting that american ship design and planning and infrastructure is kind of struggling, with multiple public and meaningful failures in procurement and planning (zumwalt gun, zumwalt deckhouse material, the entire LCS program) with the end result being we will buy some ships from nations that had better results until we get things under control.

Meanwhile, I think most cruise ships are built in the big, extremely experienced shipyards of china or south korea. America mostly doesn't build big ships anymore, excepting the supercarriers.

Armchair chief of staffing... I'm gonna say that the current philosophy of one design that can be "easily" modified to do anything (fighter jet, naval ship, etc...) seem to be showing its costs compared to purpose built systems. It will likely take another generational update of the military to change that philosophy back.

The "make a ship that can do everything" is likely met with a gleam in the contractor's accounting department eyes as they say "we'll need to do some R&D on this since it isn't something that we've successfully done before." I believe that this is a "the ideas are overly ambitious with the tangential goal of having parts made in every congressional district" rather than being first a useful system that is needed. ... I'm also sitting in an armchair at a keyboard so take my comments with the appropriate seasoning.

The general "America is lacking on its heavy manufacturing industry" is a real concern but one that I'm not sure how it can be solved without getting into significant subsidizing (see the chip production) that starts rising hackles over at the WTO. How far do you have to subsidize those industries to get them to be competitive... or do you have a government naval yard that doesn't really care about being competitive with Marinette Marine (aside: https://www.wisconsinmaritime.org is quite interesting).

Doesn't seem unreasonable for a potentially decisive military asset that's mostly self supporting in peacetime? I'm no expert (far from it) but I'd imagine that speed would be a major factor in success probability, sitting duck vs narrow interception windows.

You're conflating ships in the article. The 1940 quote is referring to the America while the quote about the Pentagon is referring to the the SS United States built in the 1950s.

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