Originally Posted by
sandiego89
Several catamaran designs have been explored for aircraft carriers, and they do look very glorious on paper and renderings, with acres of parking space, multiple layout possibilities, including totally separate landing and take off areas, or even multiple "runways" but the building and maintenance docks, and as others point out the stresses and other factors quickly make them problematic. The size requirement for a graving dock or floating dry dock would be massive, and if that dock is full (or sinks/gets damaged as the Russians found out) you are out of luck.
This just seems lacking in imagination.
There is absolutely no reason why the hulls need to carry anything but the propulsion units plus lots of spare buoyancy. So they do not need to be included in the dry dock.
The nuclear power plant and the air detachment , along with the sensors would be in the mid body, lifted from below into the dry dock when necessary.
So no need for a super wide dry dock.
I do not know whether anyone has ever built a big cat, but it does seem a better way for aircraft to deploy than the enormously expensive and inefficient VSTOL designs we are currently saddled with.