Apply Seasteading Concrete Shell Structures
I have been off forum for a while because i found that the group needs to discuss and consolidate things. It makes little sense for me to participate in discussions that try to discuss things that have been solved a long time ago.
It is a question of efficiency to NOT discuss things that the experts has already solved a long time ago – just the common public is not yet aware of it.
Questions like “what material a maintenance free permanent floating structure must be made from” has been solved by Troll A and Nkossa and similar applications a long time ago – the discussion is over.
Permanent floating structures hosting communities are out there on the oceans as we speak and has been so for a long time for the oil and gas industry.
People using floating structures for a nomadic lifestyle paying taxes to nobody are out there – we call them super yacht owners. Floating vacation condos exist we call them cruiseship.
Floating casinos, floating villages, floating markets all this exists.
The only problem that is left to solve is “massification of the market”.
As any technology seasteading – although it is out there somwhere for some specialist segments -has no mayor social impact as long as it is not available for the “average guy”.
This brings us back to the basics. As long as the average guy can not buy a floating home at normal housing prices – it will stay in those special segments of oil and gas industry and super rich yachting.
I find that ultimatly the forums are converging to the point that the ONLY way to build a “maintenance free permanent floating structure” at a decent price is concrete shell building.
As this is my thread i would beg anybody who does not agree with this conclusion not to post here but open his own thread.
Those who are inside this conclusion – let us chat about how to apply it.
Wil
concrete shell, modular, scaleable, now we are cooking.
There are a couple of questions left if we agree that we have to do it in concrete shell, modular, scaleable,
Should we go for “closed tiling concepts” with exact fit of standard elements – or should we go for a more “random connection” like grid seasteading, and spiral island.
How big should the “base floating element “be. Floating elements of the size of a bottle to the “size of a condo” has been suggested.
Clear is the bigger the “base element” the more difficult will it be to produce without owning “industrial scale facilities”. The bigger the base element the higher the friction potential when floating the first element out. You will hardly have a problem with authorities to float out a cube, hexagon, of 1m – you probably will have trouble when it has house size, and you bet you will have when it has condo size.
It would also be great if you could load the base element into a container and ship it worldwide.
I would incline to something of 1-2m that can be carried and floated out by 2 man without cranes and special equipment – any thoughts?
I would also suggest to have elements connected to rigid structures of “single family property size” – some 20m then switch to a long thin connection element to keep some distance to the next “family property platform” – it could look similar to the lake powell concrete shell float
ocean, hm – too ambitious?
The Rion-Antirion bridge in Greece is built on floating pylons that have 70m diameter – they are of course concrete shell structures – so the size has already been done by somebody but it is pushing the limits of technology . If you check on the size of the drydock where the baseplate was built, the size of the “float out operation” etc… you get a picture what kind of cost (and budget) are involved to build just the first of your “modules”.
Rion-Antirion
The legs of Troll A have a diameter of 24m a wall thickness of 1m – still quite a enormous building job…
The picture below shows the building site of the platform baseplate when floated out from drydock. You can see the round molds of the start of the leg building in the center of the floating construction site. Your site would have a comparable size.
xns,
I am a follower of your hexagon proyect and i would love to see it work. 15 kg for a metric ton of displacement sounds great ! I am envisioning opening a container – taking out the floats (2 man can carry them to the water) ending up with a decent platform i can move my camping gear to in just a day.
Then recieving containers on a weekly base making the platform bigger and bigger until i finish my “dome house” on top of it.
How many hexagons (squaremeter of platform) can you stack into a container?
Wil
IF we float out something BIG like a city block – and this is a very big IF – as we are currently not able to float out a small raft festival not even for a few days due to insurance issues…
What kind of structure (beside being a concrete shell) will it be? – Obviously it will be something that has been done before – nothing fancy in size, nothing fancy in shape, nothing that touches “never been done before engineering” ground.
So what has been done before in city block sized permanent floating concrete shell structures is the following:
A – round shell structures.
Here are some examples the pylon base of the akhasi bridge. A round (concrete cylinder) shape of city block size. Tanks in the oil and gas industry, cylinders, domes, and assamblies of cylinders and domes like the base of sleipner (right).
Taking what has been done already and variate it “slightly” is a good approach that takes the “guesswork” out of seasteading – there is no doubt that you can build a couple of buildings on such a structure and “roll some grass over it”.
What is not proven so far is the link between the modules – so minimum you had to build a dozend of those and show the “durability of the connection” in a long-term fatigue experiment – who will finance that ?
The answer “the investors will come out of nowhere and form a commitee” does not convince me – remember that kind of structures need a billion dollar oil and gas financial muscle behind to come to reality – and they are still “single pieces” not in dozends – so i don’t see it go farther than “computer graphics” at the moment.
What brings us back to basics – we probably have to do much smaller cookies and take it from there.
So family house or apartment sized concrete shell structures MIGHT be in reach – but it is still difficult to find an investor for building a 20m shell structure.
Wil
Ocean, how much space needs a human to exist? – The current land based housing market gives the answer, as much as one can afford. In japan people are “stored” overnight in “box hotels” a average student in a european city is happy to call 40 squarementer (no balcony-no park) his home.
So as soon as our waterbased construction can meet the average european, US, asian housing prices in cost per squaremeter/cubic meter, we will be fine. Those price levels are a direct function of what a individual or a family can earn, can afford, can accomodate – best thing is, the finance muscle behind that market is massive – because there are millions of individuals with their housing needs behind it.
Yes, European Submarine Sturctures AB can build floating and submerged shell structures that meet those prices 331 Euro per cubic meter living space for submerged units – less for floating units.
We have a 6m diameter shell float of 9ton of weight, and 23 ton of displacement at 2979 Euro in our program. This would be the size of a “student apartment” in living space.
The submerged Habitat we built for Ian is the space equivalent of a 68 squaremeter apartment. So we are already there, and mass production can still lower the prices.
The key is that we produce those structures in south america where labor cost is low – the difference in labor cost south america – US is about factor 10.
Ians submerged Habitat has about 6000 workhours invested.
Video of the submerged habitat in raw building inside outside : http://www.youtube.com/watch
Video of a surface floating shell of about 20m diameter: imulead.com/tolimared/concretesubmarine/marine/image/lens.htm
Wil
livefreerotry – easy fit parts will play a important role. I think it is important that we find a way to interconnect all the DIFFERENT easy fit sistems that has been suggested on the threads so far. I don’t see it how we can obligate everybody on a seastead to go with one single standard module – this would require a kind of “maoisitic mentality” as xns mentioned. It is also of essence that a family unit can not only have the shape and size that a owner wants, it must also be possible to keep a “socially healthy distance” from you neighbours.
This is why i am a bit sceptic about “closed tiling concepts” that require “maoisation of units” and living with your neighbour at arm distance. Happens that DISTANCE of units is not only a social healty thing it is also a good thing for technical reasons to maintain FLEXIBILITY in the connections – the longer and thinner connections between units are the more flexible they become – the easier it becomes to avoid grinding between units.
A seasteader should be able to choose the sistem he uses to build his home, like in landbased construction, you can go for a container house, but you should not be obligated to do so, you can build individualistic but ist is expensive. We should be able to choose from a variety of floating sistems and be able to connect them all together no matter what size and make.
An here comes in what xns is mentioning – it might be quite easy to start with something that is percieved in the public eye as a “floating marina” with a clubhouse in first place, then exteded to “several houses”, then extended to a “floating marina district” with hundreds of interconnected “houseboats” – becomming a independent community – in a gradual way so no one CAN pull the plug because there is no “moment of implementation”. It could start in a protected bay near a existing city, finally grow out to open ocean and cut ties with the land completly floating to EEZ.
All the parts even floating districts do already exist – we just have to “oil the process” and give really good “float options” and “shell purchase options” into the housebuilders hands, do some lobbying in politics and things will happen.
At the moment anybody who wants a “private floating living space” has to purchase from “yacht industry” and this is something only a few can afford. I think we can do much better.
Ocean, (octavian) – in fact “the business” is the core of “applying” if there is no business there is no large scale, no community, no city, no settlement, no social impact and relevancy. The reason why i wanted to chat about “Apply Seasteading Concrete Shell Structures” is that such concrete shell structures are the access road to “being permanent on the ocean”. If you check any “pioneer movment” in human history the “access road” and the “access road provider” has always played the central role. (horse, sailships, railway, wagon trail, jungle roads, rocket technology, ) – i agree that the business does not stop in creating an access and an opportunity for Joe Blow – it only starts there.
The “piece of space” you buy is like a “claim in the Prairie” if it is close to the railroad – (marina development) you pay a little if it is far far away you pay nothing. If you start floating out with no permit at all and no “Development Company” backing your claim on the “empty space” you might have the same destiny as “Ephemerisle 2010″ – Cancellation – somebody is against “wild settlement” and will move politics, insurance companies, landscape protection, wastewater watchers, etc.etc.
Somebody has to adress those “project implementation issues” or John Blow will not be able to focus working on his platform. He will be willing to pay a bit for this service.
In fact i have experienced that the “project implementation issues” of dealing with “third party” are the hardest part in any real world effort to float out something in the 20m range. As this is true for south america (where i am living) how will it be in US, Europe, Asia…
If you think i am envisioning some kind of concrete shell structure cast facility as my core business you are wrong. My focus is “market development” and “make it happen”. My team is doing at least the same amount of brainwork in “neutralizing hostile third party intents” and “cultivate third party support” as we are doing in designing, engineering, and structure building.
We can not expect John Blow to do the politics and the project management and the platform building – we need to cut him loose so he can focus on his platform – and has his back covered by a solid company. So one of the key points for seasteading inc. should be giving John Blow a solid starting point. (in politics, credit, engineering). The reason why it is not happening right now is because if a individual makes a serious intent it ends like Ephemerisle – the question is is the solution really move out to EEZ in the first step, or would it be easier to do some smart local politics and waterfront development.
reading the thread i found that there have been expressed doubths about the sea worthiness of concrete shell rafts. There seems to be a “general opinion” that this kind of structures should be limited to “protected water areas”. I would like to invite to reconsider this. In my opinion the wave behavior of a raft or a barge is very little understood and should not be compared to a boat. In fact concrete floats and barges have made it trough typoons in open pacific and the crews always talk about a “astonishing nice wave behavior” superior to a ship of similar size.
To bring it to the point i would like to invite to see a video of Thor Heyerdahls Kontiki raft expedition – this raft made it over the pacific ocean from peru to polinesia – watch the “freeboard” of the structure, see how it is NOT overwashed by big waves, see how it is NOT “rocking” NOT “surfing down the big waves” not suffering structural damages inspite of the structural weakness of its joints.
I would say that ANY of the concrete floats shown earlier on this thread are by far better equipped to cross the pacific ocean than Kontiki was – but they did it. Sea behavior of rafts is widley misunderstood and underestimated.
watch the video of kontiki sailing here:
See the picture of Kontiki to estimate its structural soundness compared to a concrete shell raft…
I am sorry to have to say it that directly but you probably have the bad luck to live in a world area where the “nanny state” is implemented. If you serve hot coffe you might be target of million dollar law suits. If you float out a bunch of idealists for a few days you need insurance and coast guard approval. If you give beer to a friend you need liquor licence, etc…
I lived in Europe half of my life and in South America the other half – so i can tell a bit about the DIFFERENCE – in a nutshell many things that are impossible in the US are just easy in south america. Imagine to get a licence to float out Kon-Tiki from the US coast guard – they managed it in Peru within a few weeks. Imagine to place spiral island based on PE bottle structure hold togehter with mangrove roots and fish nets florida – it was easy in mexico.
So i agree completly LOCATION is one of the keys. It is not true that you must move out of EEZ hundreds of miles offshore to be “OFF HOOK” of scanling rules. In fact the tool of choice to get off hook is internationalisation. Pharmaceutical Companies do their research and development in countries where stem cell research is legally “off hook” if they bring something new to the world markets US is the LAST market to tackle due to scantling FDA ruling.
We just should do the same and move our R&D to countries where “floating out” is no big deal, where people still find the idea “if it is new it should be forbidden somehow – or at least checked by authorities” as a “strange and unnatural idea” . Where everybody DOES naturally anything that is not strictly forbidden by law and anything that is not forbidden OF COURSE is within the freedom to do it.
Point is going off hook in south america is much easier than going offshore.
elspru – (What do you mean by “off hook”?) – going off hook means just to make yourself and your project free of entanglements of any kind.
Ocean gave testimony that implementing the OSDI project he got entangled with coast guard, liquor authority, etc… we just got news that ephemerisle 2010 is cancelled due to insurance issues. So the real world picture we have in US is that you can not do ANYTHING similar to float out without getting entangled (hooked).
I mentioned Kon-Tiki and Richies Spiral island as example that the general culture of “authorities let happen” for unusual projects is by far better in south america. So you can go “off hook” and become entanglement free by simply doing it there. Other industries are developing global “going off hook” strategies we should take Patri and his chat about “competing sets of rules” serious and pick the locations of our research and development projects in that sense.
“Just do it” works much better in south america – it comes natural to the culture. What you fear in a “pilot project” is not LEGISLATION – there is none – what you fear is ADMINISTRATION.
Rishi Sowa is not really fighting a souvereignity suit for his island he just wants to fly his own flag what is against mexican national pride – at the end he is blissfully doing his island project in mexican waterspace anyhow – ephemerisle in US waterspace is cancelled, and so i OSDI.
It does not matter what united nations say about floating islands – what matters is what your local port captain and coast guard official says about your project of floating something out you can step upon.
This makes the get rid of entanglement (off hook) strategy – the most important part of a real world floating development of any kind. Project management is the hard part.
ocean, the cost of dynamic station keeping are prohibitive. Althogh i see anchoring at 4000m (average ocean depth) as very possible, i agree that as seastead should profit from the ocean wherever it can – why give away the profit of mobility.
Happens that for a ship-like structure the cost of mobility is high some 3 horsepower per ton of displacement as usual for yachts – this sums to incredible engine cost and fuel need for a structure like the freedom ship which is a “glorified version” of a cruiseship.
Afortunatly there is a way out of this dilema you can combine very low cost of locomotion with full scale mobility – mother nature made a model for it – the whale. As soon as you have a submerged structure with little or no attack surface for wind you can go with incredible small engines. Whale energetics studies suggest that whales cruise at 5-7 knots with only 50 horsepower for a 200 ton structure.
The cost of locomotion for a structure that is only submerged to a depth of its hull diameter is 5 times lower than on the surface. Whale studies suggest that whales do those epic voyages crossing oceans mostly because living in a spot or doing a ocean crossing voyage comes to almost the same energy need.
For a submerged floating habitat this would mean that your engine has just to be big enough to cover your comfort electrics,
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