I don’t know much about naval architecture, but I remember idly musing — while reading about World War II, of course — that a catamaran design would allow an almost arbitrarily large flight deck on an aircraft carrier — and I wondered what I was missing.
Now it looks like the Russians are considering a semi-catamaran design for their new Krylov light aircraft carrier:
The underwater part of the light aircraft carrier features a semi-catamaran hull which is the major distinction of the project designed by the Krylov Scientific Center, a representative of the organization told TASS.
“The project is distinguished by the underwater part of a semi-catamaran form. Catamaran actually means two hulls united by a platform. It has a wide deck which is important for an aircraft carrier. The design adds flight deck space on which the number of aircraft depends. As a result, a medium-displacement ship can carry a full-fledged air wing,” he said.
Catamarans have shown to have been less stable in heavy seas.
But, looking at images does not seem to be even a “semi-catamaran”
How would an outrigger do?
You’d have to build an enormous drydock for the thing, for one, one many times the size of the largest you have. That’s far from a small issue.
I don’t why anyone buys a mono-hull for the Ocean. Unless it’s cheap. If you get a hole in it, the ballast will take the whole thing to the bottom of the ocean in minutes.
My first rule in boating: “Don’t let the boat sink.”
You know you could build a big flat deck on two hulls and have them pivot. The one hull would go forward and one back making it narrower at the waterline. I wouldn’t do this but it could be done. My ideas about building boats are so different from what I’ve heard anyone else come up with, I hesitate to make it public.
I ran across this article on the Hickman Sea Sled. The hull looks like an inverted regular hull.
https://boats-from-usa.com/sites/default/files/boats/not-specified/56181/not-specified-model-16-618723.jpg
http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000tc2nSgLRYR0/s/750/600/sea-sled1.jpg
Below has links to articles about this type boat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickman_Sea_Sled
They were of course banned from being considered as PT boats during WWII. The guy was Canadian. There’s several advances that I know of that have been stopped because of politics or someone who just didn’t like someone else. Here’s another that was tested and tested better than other designs but politically it was a no starter because one of the backers plotted against Roosevelt the Burnelli plane.
http://www.aircrash.org/burnelli/index.htm
That’s why I’m suspicious of experts telling us that the only options are the ones we have now. There’s just massive amounts of stuff that’s sub optimal. Someone chooses some technological path that in many cases in not related to the actual capabilities or trade offs of the technology but for political or status reasons. Then everyone just follows along.