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Cunard's website is listing a interior cabin on the next sail of the QM2 for $799 (NYC->Southhampton, Apr 21 https://www.cunard.com/en-us/f... ) whereas Delta's cheapest seat is $878. (NYC->Gatwick).

How? Just HOW? [...] [T]here is often very few options when you have to cross big distances, and none if you have to cross an ocean.

http://www.cunard.com/en-US/Destinations/Transatlantic-Crossings/

There are still a few transatlantic liners. If you're stuck in Europe, the Queen Mary 2 sails from Southampton to New York in four days. There's already a waiting list, but it's quite possible that some people planning to take the trip as a cruise can't get to Southampton, and space may open up.

Is it possible to travel to USA from Europe by ship?

The Queen Mary II crosses the Atlantic in 7 days. (It only took four days in the heyday of transatlantic liners.) List price starts at $907.00, and big discounts are available. Includes movie theater, live theater, disco, hot tubs, video arcade, basketball court, swimming pools, tennis court, laundromats, casino, cell phone service, WiFi, an Internet center, and a library. Eastbound sailing dates for 2010 are Apr 29, May 21, Jun 07, Jul 06, Jul 19, Sep 12.

The one thing they don't have is single cabins.

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Queen Mary 2 - the grandest, most magnificent ocean liner ever built.

Of course, people usually colonize frontiers for other reasons than the luxury accomodations! Quite often, colonization is a side-effect of economic exploitation of the region. Several nations have manned colonies year-round in Antarctica, too. So, those arguments presented against colonizing Mars don't stand up to scrutiny. People don't have to want to colonize Mars for the pleasant environment of the Planet.

> Are you near death, obsessed with productivity or under heavy obligations?

No, I'm just concerned for the environment as well as my time, so I fly wherever I can.

Distance between LHR and JFK is 5555 km. This is about 37.5% of a 747's range, so assuming it would need a similar percentage of its maximum fuel, this means it will use 91252 liters of fuel. At about 450 passengers, this is 202.8 liters/passenger. Jet fuel density is about 0.8 kg/L.

A Freedom class ship uses about 12800 kg of fuel per hour. Traveling for six days, this is 1843200 kg, or 421.8 kg/passenger for maximum capacity.

These calculations are somewhat rough as those are different types of fuel and one could argue that releasing the pollution high in the atmoshpere is worse, but overall, sailing won't achieve anything, except perhaps wasting everyone's time.

well.. they were, anyway, until the queen mary stopped doing that

Not to quibble but...

1 - Buggy whip maker - Yup, still around.
2 - Horse Farrier - there are many thousands of farriers working in the US and around the world.
5 - Gold Miner - likewise gold mining still goes on, and underground mining is still common throughout the world.
9 - Transatlantic passenger liner captain - Um - who do you think captains the transatlantic ocean liners?.
10 - Japanese longshoreman... And who unloads ships in Japanese ports? The ten thousand unionized dock workers? Oh right, Sailor Moon...

the point is that a single jumbo actually WOULD transfer more people over the atlantic in a weeks time perioid than a cruiseliner ever would be able to.

But it will use disproportionately more fuel to do so.

I think you're wrong.

The Queen Mary 2, which is a modern and fuel-efficient cruise ship, moves 50 feet per gallon, which is about 0.01 miles per gallon. At 2,712 persons (which includes 921 crew, by the way), that's 25.8 person-miles per gallon. Source data.

A Boeing 747-400, which is a modern and fuel-efficient jumbo jet, moves 666 feet per gallon, which is about 0.13 miles per gallon. At 524 persons (not including crew), that's 66.3 person-miles per gallon. Source data.

That makes the jumbo-jet nearly three times more fuel-efficient than the cruise ship. I realize that they don't use the same types of fuel so a real efficiency comparison might require some additional correction factors, but I bet the jumbo jet still comes out way ahead. Especially if you didn't give the cruise ship the unfair advantage of counting the crew in the calculations.

I can just travel on this one instead. It would make for an even more spectacular terror strike.