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Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

> the nation’s flagship

> one of its most iconic symbols

Kind of wild spin from the owners, it's just a cruise ship. It can't be an "iconic symbol" if essentially nobody in the country has ever heard of it.

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It's egregious that this conservancy group can waste the time of the city's government on something that is trash when A) there is a LOT of historical shit that needs preserving in Philly and B) the city has •actual• problems (highest rate of extreme poverty of any large city in America). Something tells me if I parked a "historical" no-start '88 Ranger outside of a board member's Main Line McMansion that it would be promptly removed.

The Conservancy is, as far as I can tell, a privately funded organization, not a taxpayer funded initiative. The biggest financial loss seems to be the $730k unpaid rent that the pier (also privately owned) waved to get them out faster.

Philadelphia has a $6.3B annual budget. I doubt public funding spent (if any at all) letting this ship stay idly docked while the conservancy chased the pipedream of a $400M ship renovation meaningfully impacted any of the other problems the city has.

"The city shouldn't spend money on X because Y is more expensive" is a lazy argument anyway, it's possible to do more than one thing at a time.

It wasn't a cruise ship. It was a fast ocean liner. An obsolete concept. Business class, US to UK, at high speed. Only 3.5 days!

The SS United States was famous, but a long time ago. Back when Elvis and the Beatles mattered.

I know it's different, just trying to find the closest modern comparison. You bring up Elvis and the Beatles, but they still matter to quite a few people. This ship does not, and that doesn't mean it's worthless, but it does mean that it's not a national icon that the president should step in to save.

It does mean something to a lot of people. It was a monument to American engineering. Once it launched, it immediately won the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic in a passenger ship, a record no US ship had held for a century. That record still stands 70+ years later. It's just a really cool ship? It's a shame that it's been neglected for so long and will now almost certainly be destroyed.

The point stands though. Warships that served the nation and have actual name recognition have trouble raising funds to stay afloat as museums. Keeping some unheard of commercial vessel afloat as a floating ballroom or whatever seems totally unrealistic.

Incidentally, if you're ever in Philly, check out the USS Olympia. There aren't many ships from that era (late 19th) still around. Really cool ship.

Collectables too big to lift often have negative value. The cost of ownership and maintenance is too high. The Living Computer Museum hit that problem. Used locomotives are cheap, if you can move them and store them. Linotypes are cheap.

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