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The recent news story about the sinking Korean ship got me thinking. Is it not possible to build a truly unsinkable ship by building one with huge sealed air spaces in the direct center of the ship? There is no way an iceberg or a rock could puncture it since it would be located deep within the hull itself.

You mean something like a submarines have, but on the inside.
First of all this would have to be evenly distributed, otherwise the ship might just become unstable if a part of it flooded. The air tanks would keep it afloat but it might turn up side down.
Secondly, the amount of air has to match the ship's displacement, so the air tanks would have to be huge.

It's not hard to build an unsinkable ship is it? Problem is as previous poster stated to keep it straight up no matter what. Just keeping parts of it over the water level at all times though is not hard.

Then what good is the actual ship?  The air pocket would take up all the internal space - there would be no room for people or cars.  Wouldn't be much of a ferry.

Well a submarine can sink but it can go back up as well so think a submersible class makes the most sense
AKA can escape the storm over yonder and ride the current to nice water

Was it captain error that the original ship sank? Seems that it's usually error on the captain or crew, either they're showing off and getting to close to land or not keeping up on maintenance...usually always human error.

I have no idea how the korean ship sank, but water weighs down quicker then you think.

If I may make one suggestion stay away from the design of battleships because they get sunk all the time I'll tell ya, heh.
I think the best best is to make a ship that is able to move under water as well as it does above water if not bettter

What you are saying is built a sub and use it as a ship  ;D

Ding Ding Ding you are correct... Tell him what he's won.. hehe.

Seems like a great idea to me anyway.  I mean you can add other features if you like but why over think a good thing you know?   ;D

Unsinkable ship hmm.. I've heard that before. Titanic was name of that unsinkable ship? If an idea of unsinkable ships was any good we would have those ships right now... and I don't see any :(

It will need more air

just make the hull with obsidian

I thought obsidian was very brittle but broke with razor sharp edges.

Not only would it break easy but it would cut everybody to ribbons as they tried to escape.

was thinking about minecraft's obsidian

I read about a submersible yacht projects, one is called proteus, look it up.

Making all ships built like submarines won't make them unsinkable, a lot of subs went down due to some malfunction or a fire. Remember that a sub needs a lot more expensive equipment than typical ship, like o2 generators and systems that automatically seal all air vents ant hatches when the ship dives, also the structure has to be reinforced to sustain the pressure.

AHHH!!

Sorry mate I'm afraid that I have never played Minecraft and don't know how that differs to Real World Obsidian.

The only way to make an 'unsinkable' ship would be to have it immune to all kinds of things like getting big fucking holes in the hull like how ships get sunk in the first place, no matter what you come up with you have to consider all the different external problems that get a ship sunk, like rocks, strong waves that could break the building material you're using etc. and then there's the fact that whatever method you use doesn't get the people inside killed if something goes wrong.

That's just the basics involving weather and stuff out in the ocean, I haven't even gone into all the military weapons used to sink ships yet, I think the best thing you could come up with is maybe some kind of method to use in an emergency that would at least prevent the ship from sinking if it's hull was breached etc. so that people have a chance of escaping rather than just sinking in the ocean, I don't think your air idea would work, mainly because the hull would still be the same material which could end up being taken out by exactly what you're claiming it will ignore.

This was the idea that I was trying to describe in my original post but in picture form. The air tanks are located deep within the interior of the ship so something like the iceberg that sunk the Titanic wouldn't go anywhere near it. And even if something did manage to penetrate one of the air spaces, the others would still be airtight and so the ship wouldn't sink. You could also separate the ship into watertight compartments just like the Titanic did.

http://s16.postimg.org/dexzvhgid/untitled.png

An even better idea might be to put the air tanks at the top of the ship (light gray part). That way, the air that keeps the ship afloat would be even more far away from icebergs or rocks and it would be impossible for the ship to even capsize since all the weight would be on the bottom (ie. the correct side) and thus facing down.

The problem with this idea is you'd need to have enough space and air in the hull to account for the extra thickness you're adding to the hull in order to make it so it's difficult to penetrate, even then, a rock or iceberg is still going to break through the hull if the ship is going at speed and crashes into something solid, then there's going to have to be all sorts of re-designing because in order to get this idea working you'd have to limit what you can put on the boat and there would be a lot of moving around of the insides.

Personally what I would do is have some kind of deployable ballast instead which is simpler and could be deployed manually depending on the situation, the only question is having a material strong enough and so on to keep the ship afloat.

As previously stated, if you build a unsinkable ship, what would
you use it for if there weren't any space for people to be on it?

Play Battleships with it?

Oh of course!
That actually sounds like fun. :)
How does one win though if the ship is unsinkable?

Yes, deployable airbags might work.
Why OP's idea won't work?
To keep the ship afloat you'd need at least 30% of its size to be the air compartment, which would greatly limit the space inside, and this way increase the transport cost.
When a cargo ship takes in water, its center of balance changes, so the air compartment won't change anything. You'd need special flood chambers, where you'd pump the water to keep the balance. (Japanese WWII battleship Yamato had this.)
There's a reason why submarines have ballast tanks on the outside :)

I don't think it would be possible to make a ship 100% unsinkable. They can always be damaged.

don't you think someone would think of this already?

sounds too simple :D

Damn you, you beat me to it lol.

The problem is every redundancy you build in can always fail or cause more problems. And the titanic taught us that telling people a ship is "un-sinkable" makes them overconfident, and that can be more dangerous than a normal ship with a crew that has a healthy and realistic fear of sinking if they screw up...

What if they're build with some impenetrable armor?

don't listen to him, he has forsaken his saviour, the doge

::)

I will say, my idea about how to make unsinkable ship is to make it fly :)
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080705072524/finalfantasy/images/e/ef/Enterprise_DS_Opening.jpg (http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080705072524/finalfantasy/images/e/ef/Enterprise_DS_Opening.jpg)

don't you think it is good this way?

Just I know you can say that it isn't possible, or that it is not a ship - as it is not floating on a water.
But. It looks like a ship. And it looks unsinkable :)

It's a ship, but if we took it down on earth and put it on water, could we make it sink? That's what we're looking for.