That is an interesting result. A 20 mi long piece of electronics floating in the open ocean would have [:deadpan:] more prohibitory issues than drag. Even if it were more optimistically estimated, this has obvious maneuverability (not to mention production) problems. They build ships the way they do for smart reasons, but I do like to explore the possibility space.

The application that no one will ever pay for might be a permanent, autonomous, very large, plastic garbage consuming vessel in the Pacific Gyre.

The form factor is less a limitation (in theory) than the will to allocate resources in such a way.