- There's a long-lived niche interest in making yachts out of concrete and rebar.
It's not quite as stupid as it sounds. While it's not ideal for speedy sailing, it's cheap, exceptionally strong - which matters for adventures around ice - and low-maintenance.
But if it fails, it really fails, and the boat suddenly sinks like a rock.
Not everyone thinks it's a bad idea, but it's not exactly a mainstream hobby.
- Also for canoes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_canoe).
A fun challenge for engineering departments at technical universities.
- How is it low maintenance? Concrete piers get concrete cancer from the rebar and spall like crazy pretty quickly. Seawater is generally unfriendly to concrete.
- >it's cheap
even here it seems that the labor is expensive. It may be considered cheap only if one does it themselves and discounts the one's own labor. One though can imagine a 3d printing of something like this like those houses printed out of sand - that way it may be cheap.
And sidenote. From the link :
>The country to have built the most vessels in ferro-cement is the UK >An estimated 9 million tons were built in the period Sept 1943 to May 1944 alone.
UK innovation during the war is really something - from low tech like ferro-cement boats and gravel-between-wooden-panels armored vehicles to the spinning to skip on water bombs to using BBC broadcasting equipment to jam/mislead German bombers to computer/codebreaking and radar and that automated anti-aircraft targeting. ( Spent a lot of hours reading Wikipedia :) As far as i see Hitler lost the war the moment he decided to stop his attempts to take over UK.
- "As far as i see Hitler lost the war the moment he decided to stop his attempts to take over UK."
Improvisation is one thing. But tons of cheaply massproduced T34 (or Sherman) another one. The german warmachine was actually not so good at mass producing and had a faible for overengeneering and Hitler well, "was thinking big" (but with no connection to reality)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte
Full invasion of UK would have been very expensive and Hitlers main ideological goal from the start was gaining new land in the east. ("Blood and earth")
And they came very close to Moscow. If they would have succeded, they would have settled with the west for sure somehow.
- >But tons of cheaply massproduced T34 (or Sherman) another one.
Absolutely, and UK shines at that too - they produced 130K aircrafts (US - 350K, USSR - 150K) and 47K tanks (US - 110K, USSR - 120)
>The german warmachine was actually not so good at mass producing
and the US and UK bombers were a major reason
- > "Blood and earth"
I'm no expert, but I thought the "Blood and Soil" mantra was referencing how the "real Germans" was of "German blood" and "German soil". It was a calling for nationalism, for kinship based on blood connections.
The expansionism used the "lebensraum" mantra. That the "real German people", as identified by their clean pure blood and soil heritage, needed more space to live.
- (I do not claim I am a real expert either, but I did read a lot about it and had loong debates with various neonazis about it)
Im general, yes you are right, but it wasn't so much about the "germans", but the aryan white master race. That must take its natural ruling position over europe. And conquer the lowly slavic lands, not to exterminate them, but to use them as slaves for the pure blood aryans who then would own large lands with workers there.
(It always screamed inferiority complex to me, that the dark haired Hitler installed the blond aryan as the great pure blood example)
- Fascism isn’t about reality, it’s about the common delusion.
Anyone who will tell the folks what they want to hear (and isn’t impossible to be delusional about!), can lead.
- Capturing Moscow would not have been a victory condition for the Nazis.
- No, crushing the bolshewiks was that. And it is up to debate, whether capturing moscow would have lead to that.
I really don't know, but the russian red army (and with it the sovjet regime im general) was close to collapse at some points.
- It takes labor to build anything. Building concrete forms and cutting/tying rebar together takes way less labor than building a boat hull out of wood or steel, there’s a reason every warehouse built these days is a tip-up constructed from prefabricated wall sections. Prefab concrete is cheaper than any other building method (excluding stick built).
- Construction isn't a good bell-weather because it's so micromanaged by regulation. If they're doing tip up around you it's because the rules disadvantage steel buildings.
Building anything these days is like responding to a government contract RFP, it's an exercise in cost cutting to get around whatever industries, companies, etc. got the crap that makes them money written into the rules.
Don't look into it. You'll want to armor a bulldozer. Igornance is bliss
- One small thing: it's kerkschip, not kerkship. The article wavers between these spellings, but schip is the Dutch word for ship.
- <<POINTLESS TANGENT ALERT>>
Het schip vaart naar Engeland (the ship sails to england)
which for the non dutch speakers sounds like skip fart, which brings joy everytime I hear it.
- Church ship or kerkschip, but kerkship is an incorrect combination indeed.
- And now adding to that schip is also the main part of a church building, we can worship in the kerkschip's schip on a schip while it's being shipped.
41 points by surprisetalk 9 days ago | 19 comments