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Giant Landship
Ocean-Liner Sized Ship Rolls Across Land on Giant Wheels | |
Imagine a giant ship the size of the largest cruise ships or even the size of a supertanker, but it would travel across land on giant wheels. Powered by a small nuclear reactor and designed to function self-sufficiently, it could be used to explore and tour around Antarctica or even some of the larger
desert regions.
It would be made of lightweight composite honeycombs and foamed alloy components, using all of the weight-saving tricks from the aerospace industry.
The upper part of the giant landship would be a large observation deck under a giant geodesic bubble canopy. Protruding up top would be the ship's bridge, used to navigate the ship. The rear part of the upper deck could have a helicopter landing pad.
The small nuclear reactor would be situated at the rear of the landship below the landing pad, and provide nuclear-electric propulsion. Superconductive motors would be used for locomotion. (In an Antarctic environment, it could mainly travel at night when temperatures will be plunging to anywhere from -80C to -90C, thus enabling the warm temperature superconductors to work perfectly with minimal additional cooling)
There would be six to eight giant wheels - up to 4 on either side - featuring some combination of air suspension and Magnetorheological (MR) Dampers.
The landship would also carry a complement of remotely controllable robotic drones to assist in any extra-vehicular activities, especially under harsh conditions.
Older Landship Concept, But Not As Big
https://youtu.be/hBlVosfvEgQ
[sanman, Aug 30 2025]
Russian "Leader" Nuclear Icebreaker Ship
https://www.youtube...watch?v=OsQ4vFXIYoA
[sanman, Aug 30 2025]
Halley VI
https://en.wikipedi...h_Station#Halley_VI
Skis not wheels [pocmloc, Aug 30 2025]
Sherp
https://www.youtube...watch?v=Un3ORKZhNm8
Large Inflatable Tires [sanman, Aug 30 2025]
Halley
https://www.youtube...watch?v=dhR-JZLtzvQ
[xenzag, Aug 30 2025]
There was literally a movie about this
https://youtu.be/IR...si=VVV9FoZ9ynT4oiCZ
Mortal Engines [21 Quest, Aug 30 2025]
The Sandcrawlers of Star Wars
https://youtu.be/GM...si=0XcDXTtqq47UDg5m
These also seem awful close to what you describe, lacking only the observation deck. [21 Quest, Aug 30 2025]
[link]
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This would require the evolution of some kind of extra-tall cherry-picker able to issue parking-violation notices to this vehicle. [+] |
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Giant landships are absolutely a thing that a certain fraction of people want to happen. |
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How giant are you talking?
You mention a number of weight-saving measures, but realistically if its got its own nuclear reactor it's probably going to be quite heavy. |
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I believe that wheels become quite problematic above a certain weight. There's something called the "fourth power law" - which "states that the stress on the road caused by a motor vehicle increases in proportion to the fourth power of its axle load." (see- wikipedia)
This must generalise to ground which isn't roads - the only problem being that arbitrary surfaces are not engineered to withstand such forces and will fail much more readily.
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There's a film called Mortal Engines, it's based on a series of books I haven't read.
It's okay, there's not as much giant landship as I was hoping (apparently the books are better.)
But something which I liked about it is the land in the film is covered by these enormous trenches, ploughed by the cities as they roll past. |
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I propose that you consider tracks as an alternative. |
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I was thinking about possible solutions for this. Check out my link to the Sherp, which is an ATV with large inflatable wheels. I think that could solve the ground stress problem by distributing the weight/load across fatter tires, which could themselves be deformable to spread out the load even more. We'd need giant Sherp-style inflatable tires. They'd also provide pneumatic cushioning for shock absorption. |
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Another solution is to have very wide tires that are like rolling barrels. I don't think tracked treads are good, because they'd provide too much rolling resistance. |
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Or imagine hybrid wheels where a wheel is surrounded by track along its circumference. The wheel would be very wide like a barrel, allowing the track tread to be very wide. So it would be a tracked wheel/barrel. |
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There are lightweight nuclear reactors that have been designed to be launched into space, as well as designs originally created for aircraft. Nuclear fuel offers weight savings over regular fuel, even after accounting for shielding. |
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The Halley seems very similar in concept - (video link) |
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//There are lightweight nuclear reactors that have been designed to be launched into space, as well as designs originally created for aircraft. Nuclear fuel offers weight savings over regular fuel, even after accounting for shielding.// |
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Sure, but those are generally not working to the same constraints. They don't typically produce much power, and shielding might be very limited indeed. And they use things like highly enriched (90%, i.e. weapons grade) uranium, which might get questions asked. |
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Traditional reactors have used Low-Enriched Uranium, which is 3-5% U-235. There is a newer category called HALEU (High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium) which can be anywhere from 5-20%, providing higher burnup and more energy output per unit of fuel mass. HALEU is meant for the newer generation of small modular reactors which produce higher power relative to their smaller size. |
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Yes, I've seen that base before. I'd like to see something that literally looks more like a giant ocean-liner, even if not exactly that shape. I think that with the right engineering and materials it could be done. See it as a giant rolling monument to our technology prowess. |
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Can anyone suggest a name to christen our giant moving Landship? |
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I was thinking of "Drift Ark" because it would be rolling across vast sandy or snowy plains. |
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Colossus Of Terran? Colossus sound like something you'd name a static big statue, but why can't something that moves be colossal? |
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You'd refer to "The arrival of Colossus." when it was on its way. I think that would get people's attention, especially if it had guns and armies on board. |
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Okay, lets talk small modular reactors. Wikipedia has pages like the one for "Small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor (SSTAR)" - which says "A 10 megawatt version is expected to weigh less than 200 tonnes."
The page also notes that development seems to have ended, but let us suppose 200 tonnes is feasible, and 10 megawatts should be plenty.
Remember, that's /just/ the reactor. You're also going to need a vehicle to carry it. |
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The standard maximum weight for an articulated truck (or 'lorry') in the UK is 44 tonnes, and that's with 6 axles. In the USA it's less. |
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I don't think the fourth power law was particularly well-defined - as you noted you'd definitely think that wider wheels would spread the load more; the 'law' takes no account of this.
However, you should recognise that your giant landship is well outside the scope of what even roads are engineered to support. |
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You know where you might put these? Mongolia. Basically a moving city, which is what they have now. My daughter was there last year, fascinating place. She pointed out that modern nomadic people drive cars and have cellphones. They also wear jeans, sneakers and baseball caps but they'll dress in traditional garb for pictures, celebrations etc. Know something else? They're smart, and yes, they could run a mobile nuclear reactor. They don't look up at the sky and when a jetliner passes overhead and scream "Ayee! Metal bird!" |
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And glad to hear the stigma of nuclear power being dumped. My tinfoil hat theory was that big oil/coal was promoting the story that nuclear energy would release demons into the atmosphere and used the example of the idiot caused Chernobyl debacle in the former Soviet Union as proof we were too stupid to have nuclear power. The alternative they said was coal, which releases tons of radioactive crap into the atmosphere on a daily basis. (Uranium and thorium.) |
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Without nuclear power this AI revolution ain't gonna happen. Large data centers and campuses can use as much electricity as a medium-sized city, with U.S. data center consumption projected to nearly triple from 176 TWh in 2023 to about 580 TWh by 2028 |
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@ Loris: There are nuclear reactors designed to power apartment buildings. There are nuclear reactors designed to be fit inside truck trailers. |
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Westinghouse eVinci micro-reactor weighs ~50 tons and fits in a shipping container. |
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Fine, a landship doesn't travel on roads, it travels on open plains or relatively flat open ground. |
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See? Perfect for Mongolian nomads. |
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I know Loris already mentioned it, but I do think this is pretty much exactly what Mortal Engines showcased. |
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//Westinghouse eVinci micro-reactor weighs ~50 tons and fits in a shipping container.// |
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Okay. But I looked at their website, and it's
a) something they're developing; apparently not exactly proven,
but more importantly
b) that's just the reactor itself. (I'm not clear on whether that includes shielding, or you're just supposed to stay away from it, but let's disregard that). So what other components would you need? Well, a steam turbine, a heat sink, the working fluid to actually drive those, pipework to connect everything, and so on.
c) It's transportable, not portable. The actual installation isn't small:- "designed to produce 5 megawatts of electricity on sites as small as two acres of land." |
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I'm not saying you can't have a nuclear reactor. I'm saying it's big and heavy. |
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//Fine, a landship doesn't travel on roads, it travels on open plains or relatively flat open ground.//
And it will make it much less flat as it goes along. |
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I'm thinking AMTEC (Alkali-Metal ThermoElectric Conversion) for electric power generation. Waste heat can be drawn off and used to heat the vehicle. |
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Fine, the vehicle can steamroller its own path as it goes along. In the desert, sand doesn't really get compacted anyway, as its already fine grains aren't amenable to compaction. In the Arctic/Antarctic snow and ice any trail can always get covered over with the next snowfall anyway. |
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