alt Hacker NewsGood article but uses a bad metaphor.
>> But do we know how to build every iteration of a ship in between wood and steel? Could you, say, slowly replace every piece of a man-of-war and incrementally turn it into a modern destroyer? And have it functional (for some definition of functional) at every step in the process?
Yes. Yes we do. Study ship architecture and you will indeed find every step between The Black Pearl and the USS Iowa. There were sailing ships made out of iron.(1) There were wooden ships with turrets.(3) There were battleships that looked more like hotels than ships. (2) There waw even a paddlewheel aircraft carrier used in WWII. (5) Nearly every idea has been tried and nearly every ship class at some point got a Frankenstein upgrade to become a halfway point between conceptual generations. Even the Iowa class was earmarked to be "upgraded" with the addition of a flight deck.(4)
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclad_warship
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ironclad_Hoche
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Monarch_(1868)