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British Aircraft Carrier For Sale On Auction Site
Hugh Pickens writes "Time Magazine reports that just in time for the holidays, the British Navy has put the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible up for sale on an eBay-like website. The proud 690-foot warship sailed Her Majesty's seas from 1980 to 2005, and took part in the Falklands, Balkans and Iraq campaigns. The ship underwent a major refit in 2004 but was decommissioned in 2005 with the proviso that she could be 'reactivated' at 18 months notice if a crisis beckoned but over the years her engines, pumps and gear boxes were cannibalized for use in other ships. If interested go to the auction site and put her to your 'wish list,' or add her to your 'cart.' Interestingly enough, the Australian government had originally planned to purchase the ship in 1982 but the Falklands war intervened and in July 1982 the British Ministry of Defence announced that it had withdrawn its offer to sell Invincible and that it would maintain a three-carrier force."
Fuck.
Cue floating datacenter posts in 3... 2...
Better known as 318230.
I'm guessing China will try to get its hands on it. They've acquired four other aircraft carriers in the past.
Not so invincible now.
ACTUAL SIZE!!!
And I had my hopes up :(
Seeing as it doesn't have an engine the buyer would have to factor in towing costs of some description. I would hate to see how much the towing bill would be to somewhere like Australia.
I have an aircraft carrier in my freakin' shopping cart! I'm only two steps away from owning an aircraft carrier! God! I love the freakin future!
Fuck you.
Obviously, anything made of that much steel, and capable of being tugged where you want it, has a floor value as a substantial amount of quality scrap; but I have to wonder if it has much more than that. Given its age and poor condition, refitting it will be fairly expensive and require some expertise. It also presumably lacks any refinements made in carrier design in the past 20-30 years.
Unlike, say, low end armored vehicles, for which there is always demand because even tinpot dictators have even more tinpot rebels to crush with them, aircraft carriers are sort of a "superpower or nothing" weapon. Unless you have the cash to maintain one, the air force to be worth projecting into blue water, and the support/defense/meat-shield carrier group ships to protect the thing, it is nearly useless to you. I would assume, therefore, that your standard "diamond/oil/cocaine/etc. kingpin who buys weapons because his country is a shithole with no internal industry" is basically off the table, unlike the case of some APCs or crates of RPGs or such. On the other hand, even if the ship is actually a good deal for some developing wannabe power, enough military procurement decisions are made as pork/spoils/makework deals that support for just buying the thing, rather than having some native shipyard build one, would seem doubtful, unless a country simply has no such capabilities.
Can anyone think of a buyer, without invoking Snow Crash?
anyone else make that connection, also floating data centre would be awesome. hell, who wouldn't want to turn one of those into a city, put photovoltic cells all over the tarmac, or floating car show ..... THE POSSIBLITIES ARE ENDLESS
First Google earth then second life then this. Neal I salute you.
I think I would go with the plane.
I hope it goes cheap, the deck is warped.
Nothing quite as arrogant as naming a ship "Invincible".
That's like the kids in grade school that come up with "Team Winner" as their team name.
Is shipping free?
I watched them build Invincible - I was 5 years old when she was commissioned. She left a big gap in the skyline when she sailed.
A romantic gift for her this holiday season...
You are where you are at the time you are there.
What do you mean? If it were amazon you could 1-click it!
Because Amazon patented 1-click shopping they would have to license it from Amazon to offer a 1 click buying option just like Apple has to for iTunes.
They also have for sale the ultimate helicopter flight simulator: http://www.edisposals.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Disposals-Public-Site/en_US/-/GBP/ViewProductDetail-Start;pgid=MieqQ4wkQg8000ArvQ_8K1sp0000cOXI2HHn?ProductUUID=D7rAqBELzwMAAAEgOde5u7Ad&CatalogCategoryID=kjrAqBELD48AAAD_pWxpc4dz&JumpTo=OfferList. Image putting that in your basement!
What a great compliment this would make to my last purchase.
The ramp is kinda neat. How come US aircraft carriers don't have one?
The article says the ship weighs 10,000 tons. Scrap steel is worth around 15 cents a pound, so the whole ship is only worth around $3M as scrap. They said that they are hoping to get $1.5M for it, but I'm not sure that's realistic after the towing, drydock and labor costs are added in (though I guess if they tow it to some third world country for scrapping, the docking and labor fees would be minimal)
If I could afford to have it towed across the atlantic I'd put a bid in :)
A cruise ship company needs to pick this up and add free flyovers of the port cities they visit. I might actually consider going on one of those trips if they launched the flights from the deck.
-magister-
The problem with Carriers this small is that they can keep up just about enough birds to protect themselves, but no more. So it has barely any threat projection capability. Obviously this one won't even come with any aircraft, you would have to supply your own.
I guess we could fantasize about some billionaire grabbing this, fixing it up, and flying his personal jet off of it when he needs to dash off to a meeting somewhere, but it seems a lot more likely that it will just be broken up for scrap instead.
I read the internet for the articles.
Believe it or not, this isn't that uncommon, I've been involved in the purchase of ex-airforce aircraft, Dry-bulk Carriers and Tankers using crappy shopping cart software. It's not as if you can do it solely online, they're just re-purposing the cart for appointments and the like.
Apparently a guy named "L. Bob Rife" has put in a bid...
Come on, how am I supposed to impress my neighbors with a small aircraft carrier like that? I heard they were getting an 1,100 foot supercarrier for Christmas this year.
I work for a company that does work on private yachts and we joke occasionally about their owners continually trying to out-do each other. The first one to buy an aircraft carrier and refit it for private accommodations will win that battle. Though the stuff their building custom is getting close to the length of HMS Invincible!
http://www.yachteclipse.com/
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
It's also the carrier where The Stig was shot off the bow in an earlier series of Top Gear.
-Misao Little Weasel Girl
But pretty cool all the same...
Here was the HMS invincible's appearance on Top Gear when they killed off the first Stig...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eiJkQzpzRc (3 mins)
Can anyone think of a buyer, without invoking Snow Crash?
Sure, if you don't want to use it as a fixed wing carrier. It would be a cheap way of getting a helicopter assault ship (in the mold of the old USN Iwo Jima class). Considering how India has both cultural and economic ties with the UK, and has a history of buying their old warships... see the Indian carriers Vikrant and Viraat... I wouldn't be shocked to the see the Indians snap this up as a helo-carrying assault ship.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The Scientologists can buy it, rehab it, and then their "Sea Org" nutters can have a real warship to tool around in...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Heck, at that price Sergey could refit it so that he could have a "my yacht is bigger than your yacht" game with Steve Ballmer. Steve's yacht is only 126m. This is 210m. That's a lot of m's.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Larry Ellison is an avid sailor and seems to have plenty of money. He'd dump a lot of junk from the ship, and then charge folks a fee for just looking at the ship. A Premium fee will allow folks to actually board the ship. Steering the ship, is right out: Larry is always at the helm.
How can an aircraft carrier not win the America's Cup race?
First mate: "Um, Captain, that Norwegian catamaran is getting ahead of us."
Captain: "Launch an assault team. Fire at will."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Could you imagine the look on the Japanese whaling fleet if the Sea Shepherds turned up in this next whaling ... sorry "scientific research" season.
If i had the money.. I would buy that baby and turn it into floating nite club.. PS : wonder how many drunk people would fall off and drown annually ...... interesting statistics
Will it blend?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Maybe Sarah Palin and the tea Party could buy it to launch a strike against any country giving Julian Assange safe harbour
Consider this: don't even bother refitting the damn thing for sailing. Just use it as a giant floating estate! These things are designed to carry food and supplies for a couple thousand people for several months at a time- just imagine a couple of families living on it. Half the deck could be covered in dirt to grow food in, the other half used as a runway for a plane to go back and forth to land for supplies (though you could store enough food and water on the thing for like.. a hundred years). A ship that big wouldn't have to worry about much... and you could just drop anchor out in the middle of some ocean and sit there. Utopia, anyone?
Costa Rica is rather famous in Central America for not having a military of any sort. What better gift for a country with no military than an aircraft carrier with no engines, gear boxes, or pumps!
Well, at least the next time they declare war, the enemy will have something to sink.
You see, Costa Rica jumped into WWI by declaring war against Germany and Japan - still, with no army, navy, or air force, mind you - and Germany sent a U Boat to go sink some of Costa Ricas navy. The German U Boat commanders tried to be sneaky and went down and around the cape of good hope and attacked from the Atlantic side - thinking that is where the navy was hiding. Imagine the disgust in that German officers heart when all he found were fishing boats.
Now do you get it?
http://Communityville.com - A free place for new and old neighborhood webmasters to hang out.
How else am I supposed to estimate my maximum bid?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The Brits figure they can always get the US to come in and save their asses. And then complain for the next hundred years how stupid and fat Americans are. I guess it sounds like a pretty good deal in London.
The thing is basically gutted. Propellers gone, rudder locked, machinery removed or broken, much of the super structure gone, electrics shot to pieces. It's a floating bathtub. I suppose someone could tow it somewhere, a naval museum or whatever and restore it sufficiently for tours. But I expect it's really destined to be scrapped. It's sad in a way. Looking back on WWII it's a shame all the military hardware which ended up just getting scuttled or dumped overboard and the value it would have had if it had been saved.
Obviously not an engineer. Despite converting more of its economy percentage wise to a war economy than anyone else, the UK was basically bankrupted by WW2. Churchill was always being frustrated in his initiatives by not having the money or the resources. And the Allied advance into Germany was stalled, at a crucial point, by lack of logistical support, prolonging the war (summary and bibliography in book by Max Hastings).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
CARRIER LOST :(
feel sorry for Will.
That would be strange.
My rights don't need management.
Regardless of who the winner is, they will simply be offered 2 to 10 x what they paid to sell it to another bidder. And the ship will end up in China. This is the last thing that the brits need to do. And for the last time that an aircraft carrier was sold this way, it was the Russians and it went to the Chinese for a casino. Never turned up as a casino, but CHina now has several backbones done for an aircraft carrier.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Take a good look at her flight deck. This ship is designed for STOL jet aircraft such as Harriers. Conventional jet aircraft such as F14-F16's wouldn't have enough runway to takeoff or land. You could manage a fleet of small Cessnas such as 172/182 aircraft or even aerobatic stuff such as Pit's specials though.
It would be a great platform for a Pirate Radio station.
About the last place left to host WikiLeaks.
Someone should buy this for Julian Assange with a lot of cable off the back end.
and park it in international waters.
This would be great for the civil-assistance/rescue mission of the US Coast Guard if used for search-and-rescue helicopters and air-ambulances. Something like this would have been handy to park in the Gulf of Mexico as a mobile operating base during the oil-spill or to twin up with the USNS Mercy during the Haiti Earthquake or Indonesian Tsuanmi missions. Since the USNS Mercy and its sister [the USNS Comfort] have limited helicopter capacity, this would be a good supplement.
back in the '60, when The Penguin bought a surplus nuke sub?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Maybe once it's sold, the space it once occupied can be used by the Brits to park all their non-existant aircraft on. Britannia no-longer rules the waves, -the waves are all she owns :(
How many lawyers would this hold? Filled with attorneys and scuttled into the Marianas Trench... WIN!
Potential buyers better be sure to kick the tires and take it fir a test drive (...er cruise). To this day, the Argentine Air Force claims they dropped some bombs on the HMS Invincible during the Falklands War. The UK government denies the claim, saying instead that it was the HMS Avenger that got hit.
Stick it in international waters, put a geostationary satellite above it and run a large electronic micronation from it. Include black jack and strippers, fly in the stupidly rich; Profit!