A huge turtle-shaped boat, which is also referred to as a floating city, is undoubtedly at the top of the list of things that weren’t on our bingo cards for 2022. Nevertheless, here we are. According to CNN, the Lazzarini Design Studio in Italy has created ideas for a huge watercraft that is formed like an enormous tortoise with outstretched flippers. The ship is so enormous that its designers prefer to refer to it as a terayacht rather than calling it a superyacht. As a result, it was given the appropriately large name Pangeos as a homage to Pangea, the former supercontinent that included nearly all of the present-day landmasses of Earth. Lazzarini claims that the ship will have enough space to accommodate up to 60,000 people in a variety of hotels, residences, condos, shopping malls, parks, and other amenities. Even when Pangeos is not docked close to land, visitors will be able to visit the boat thanks to its ship and airplane ports. This is advantageous because the company currently anticipates no rigid itinerary and instead anticipates the turtle to merely coast around the globe.
The boat, which is 1,800 feet long and 2,000 feet wide at its widest point, is on track to become the biggest floating structure ever constructed. That is, of course, if it ever gets built, which presents its own set of challenges. According to the Pangeos website, the terayacht needs a terashipyard, which isn’t one at the moment. The project calls for dredging 0.4 square miles of the sea with a circular dam, as well as a yard that is about 200 miles wide and 180 miles long. The dam can be opened after the yacht is built, flooding the area and effectively launching the vessel. Saudi Arabia’s coast has been mentioned by Lazzarini as the ideal location for construction.
Boats rarely deviate from the typical V shape because the objective is typically to reduce drag, and they even less frequently take the form of marine organisms, but Pangeos’s flippers are more than just an oddity. The company claims that the extremities will absorb kinetic energy from the waves, enabling the boat to continuously cruise without emitting any emissions. If additional power was required, solar panels would also be installed on the roof; the design also incorporates electric engines.
The company estimates that $8 billion will be required to create the enormous vessel. Lazzarini estimates that it will take at least eight years to complete the construction and that it might not even start until 2025. The company has devised a strategy to reduce both the price and the wait time, which come at a hefty cost. The company is selling Unreal Estate, which enables interested buyers to buy virtual boarding tickets, hotel rooms, and even houses for a metaverse version of the yacht, which the company claims will be ready for (virtual) boarding by 2023. The project was created as an NFT crowdfunding project.
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