Alternative materials for building aircraft carriers

[McColm]

Hi,
I'm not sure if this has been covered before, but I caught an article on the telly about using alternative materials to iron/metal during World War II. Some bloke mixed sawdust with water and froze it. Trails were carried out in Canada, the sawdust mix made the ice rock solid and less prone to melt.
The idea was to provide landing strips at sea. There are some questions that need to be answered;
1) what is the maximum weight that can be carried
2) how thick does the material need to be
3) propulsion and steerage
4) rate of melting

Another discovery was the use of custard.
When the powder custard is mixed with water, it only needs six inches in height in a contained space to carry a human over a river without getting your feet wet. This is due to the density. Fortunately the Germans weren't told of this otherwise they would have bombed are custard powder factories.

[Hobbes]

For the first, check these topics: pykrete is the name of the material.
Seadude is building the carrier proposed in project Habbakuk.


The custard idea: how were they going to use this in practice? A custard/water mix remains a liquid until pressure is applied.

[proditor]

HMS Pork Pie anyone?