Posted on 11/13/2017 4:44:17 AM PST by mairdie
...Long the stuff of science fiction, so-called "seasteading" has in recent years matured from pure fantasy into something approaching reality, and there are now companies, academics, architects and even a government working together on a prototype by 2020.
At the center of the effort is the Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. Founded in 2008, the group has spent about a decade trying to convince the public that seasteading is not an entirely crazy idea.
...The project is being partially funded by an initial coin offering, a new concept sweeping Silicon Valley and Wall Street in which money can be raised by creating and selling virtual currency.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Disappointing - I thought they meant floating in the sky. :)
Very dumb idea. The sea is not our natural environment. The land is. Putting people on water is not smart.
Where does the waste go? Into the water? That would be dumb. If it is brought back to land, then they are still dependent on the land, and have done something stupid in going to live on the water.
But this is the nytimes, a rag that lives in one fantasy world after another.
I could never live on or in a floating city. I would barf my brains out.
“As long as there are failsafe ways up to the surface”
That is the the kind of thing i was looking for in the article, that I did not see - innovative engineering approaches that are a clear break from the past.
Flotation materials that won’t rot or fail, structures that can inherently endure the worst storms at sea, or new approaches to corrosion resistance.
If it is essentially a just bunch of barges tethered together, a huge ship with propulsion, or structures extended from the side of an oil rig; maintenance costs will be huge.
Completely agree. My brother, on the other hand, would adore it. He lived on his sailboat for years.
WTF? Two ridiculously false assertions before the NYT writer even gets into details.
Good catch. I was concentrating on the buildings.
That one’s rather cute. But I keep expecting it to walk out of the sea onto land and go for pizza.
That pic looks like a very modern one.
But based on the stories I have heard from others, there won't be any floating cities in the North Atlantic or the North Sea after the first storm.
That pic is from "The Spy Who Loved Me"
That said, your technically wins the interweb...but great minds and all that.
Noticing the words “academics, government & San Francisco” in the first few sentences was enough to know this is another lib fantasy where they get to spend other peoples money.
1) Where does the drinking/bathing water come from?
2) Where does the poop go?
I know ‘other things’ that float as well...............
A tsunami could pass right underneath you and you might not even notice it..............
A boondoggle as big as solar and wind power put together.
Someone needs to go watch “Waterworld” another time.
I’ve been casually enthralled by such projects since http://oceania.org - building a new nation on artificial land is an attractive concept*.
Unfortunately, cost of living is surprisingly high in such places - made apparent by the grinding poverty occupying most natural islands of comparable size. It would require a “Galt’s Gulch” scale effort by the very wealthy & hyper productive to make work for any meaningful period.
Those contemplating such efforts might do well to consider something far cheaper and easier to access: one can easily find land “out West” at $1000/acre; that’s a whole lot cheaper than the $1000/_foot_ you’d be looking at to build & occupy a viable floating city.
There’s also places like China’s “ghost cities” where entire literal cities have actually been built, with practically nobody living in them. Would be a whole lot easier & cheaper to just arrange occupancy there, than to build it yourself starting with making the very ground to build upon.
But then again, I’ve noticed there’s good money in proposing “mega projects” - not necessarily actually building them (though that’s a great bonus if you can pull it off), but pitching a good proposal to the ultra-rich can get you enough $$$ for a small team for a few years to research the possibility and make impressive presentations to your patron’s swimming-in-wealth friends.
To wit: they’re neat, but I don’t see “floating cities” happening. There’s too many cheaper & more practical options available.
* - much later I discovered that the US military built & occupied an artificial island. The nearby political shift some years later resulted in failure to continue regional recognition of its ownership/independence, resulting it in being shelled and the occupants vacating. The artificial island was eventually retaken by its original builders, but at a staggeringly high human cost.
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