Tower structures as core technology for seasteads where discussed in the early phase of seasteading. Later abandoned for being inefficient cost per real estate squaremeter solutions.
Early seasteading picture it graphics looked like this:
early seasteading tower “picture it”
early seasteading tower structures
Flip shares with other tower structures the base idea to “lift a platform over the waves” a fairly widley used building concept in the oil industry.
Recently this concept was put in question by the Draupner Wave
New developments suggest that an incredible tower height (60m) is needed to keep the concept on the safe side with decent norm approved safety factors.
Early seasteading concepts considered “flip ship without the flip is a tower” - but even so - a lot of overingineering…
Successful tower structure projects like Troll A deliver cost/real estate figuers like that: USD 5 Billion cost, offering a 170x50m (8.000 square meter) “seasteading platform”.
Flip ship far from making things better is probably worsening them by adding a expensive and complicated “flip” to the concept…
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Not very practical to flip living space 90 degree as part of the normal operation
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Tower structure leaves only staircase as living space.
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Tubular shell structure can take wave impacts.
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It reduces movements to the point of “keep coffee cup on the table”.
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Expensive per square meter
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lot of structural requirements to allow flip
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Big part of the living space is lost to ballast water for the flip process
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Towers and Draupners are not a great combination
Flip ship as a concept was discussed here:
http://www.seasteading.org/forum-list/topic/flip-ship/
somebody called it a “dancing bear” the news worthyness is in the fact that such a concept can work at all…not because it is “specifically good in dancing” (ocean habitation).
Its worth is in doing investigation in underwater acoustics - the field it was designed for.
