Garden Shed Technology

All I can say is that it's a good thing it's going no where near the sea!

The above picture shows the current progress of the full-size Noah's Ark  being constructed at the "Answers in Genesis" theme park. The line taken by the thin curving piece of wood on the extreme  right appears to show the shape of the hull in cross section. This cross-section is worth comparing with the cross section of Nelson's ship HMS Victory:

HMS Victory: This  is what a sea-worthy  X-section looks like!

Now it's probably true that HMS Victory as a warship was over-engineered, but even so look at the relative thickness of the hull  in comparison with its size: The Hull was about 2 feet thick for a boat 186 feet long by 51 feet wide; the internal floor beams are also very thick.  Compare this with the Ark's 500 foot length and 86 foot width - in volume much, much bigger than Nelson's ship.  Since weight goes up with the cube of linear dimension I would expect a genuine sea-worthy Ark to have a cross section that reflects this - that is, the amount of wood thickness employed in cross section to be proportionally greater than that of HMS Victory*.  Now, it's true I 'm not a ship engineer who has done the calculations but to my eye AiG's "Ark" looks decidedly flimsy: As an out-sized garden shed designed to support several floors of visitor exhibits and keep the weather out it's no doubt fine, but it looks far too spindly to stand the buffeting of a catastrophic global flood. This is no genuinely scientific or  technical demonstration of the Ark's plausible construction, but rather an Ark-shaped exhibition centre.  My guess is that the "hull" of AiG's Ark will be covered in a thin facade of planks and that's highly symbolic because in the final analysis that's what this "Ark"  project is all about: namely, a matchstick facade sufficient to give visitors the impression of being inside the Ark.  If AiG want an authentic testimony to their belief that the Ark sailed the high seas of a huge global flood they will have to increase the cross sectional thicknesses considerably; but I suppose that would be far too expensive. All in all it looks as though it's a monumental folly and an embarrassment to the Christian faith; This thoroughly sham construction will simply convey the message that Christianity is all about the ability to believe in fairy tales

Relevant links:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/sink-or-swim-probably-both.html

8/7/15: Panda's Thumb has a post on this subject here: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2015/07/awful-lot-of-go.html

Noah according to the gospel of toytown.

Footnote:

* Compare the way the cross section of dinosaur bones increases in relation to their increasing volume: small animals can walk on spindly legs: dinosaurs that weigh in at around 70 tons have extremely thick legs.