"The King" is selling his jets......

True, but it is not a cruise liner never was. Its an ocean liner designed to blitz across the Atlantic in any weather at speed. A cruise liner does what 26 knots, the united states could go that speed in reverse and apparently hit something like 45 knots going forwards. Its like comparing a concorde with a 737 max, different jobs different performance different machines.

One is also a pinacle of huma accomplishment and the end of a type the other a barge for fat tourists going nowhere.
would have been nice to save United sates for posterity, but its too big and nlost its interior long ago. There were plans to have it be a hotel in NY so something like that, but it never came together and i guess the economics not there.

i guess the queen Mary survives as does QE2, but United states was fastest of them all and uniquely American in many ways, from its designer, to the women engineer who designed her propellors back in the early 50s.

I guess were lucky air museums exist and those priceless artifacts are saved, as are a few battle ships.

 

She was doomed once they stripped the interior out of it in 1984. If the interior was still there I bet they could have made enough as a museum ship to pay the rent.

Philly used to be an impressive graveyard of old big ships. Between the SS United States, the JFK and Kitty Hawk carriers and the New Jersey. Least the New Jersey will still be around.

 

Not to mention the ships on display at Penns Landing. The USS Olympia is the only remaining ship from the Spanish-American War, and the tall ship Moshulu has long been a restaurant that I ate on once. The Gazela was another tall ship that took part in Operation Sail back in 1976.

 

I agree if it had its interior that would have been better.
part of the issue with the interior is Gibbs was so fire obsessed that most of the interior was made out of a fiberglass asbestos so no one today would stay in such accommodation. It was towed to ukraine early 90s? to have the asbestos removed then towed back.
The furnishings though were sold off.
As it was 70% paid for by the navy(so it could carry troops in an emergency) they pickled the powerplants in 68. if one really wanted to. it could run as could the NJ if you put a billion or two into it. One could make one of those convair 880s fly too, or even a pickled B47, but the costs are yuge and why.

Id love to see the ship kept for posterity, a symbol of American achievement, but were not an inherently naval nation. It would look great in Manhatten tied up at a pier, a hotel restaurant. I guess an artificial reef is better than scrapping.

QE2 still survives although in what condition is a question mark after laying dormant for a decade or so in the UAE,

 

Sorry to hear... My family came back from Germany on the SS United States in late '59. Rough crossing, the North Atlantic in winter. The ship was incredible though...

 

Elvis Jet visited the Hilton Head Concours this past November. Its sort of like a WeinerMobile now.

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