User:Jesrad/BunkerStead

A BunkerStead is a minimalist design for a spar seastead, where the spar does not reach high enough above the waterline to avoid having its top submerged by the taller waves. Its purpose is to fill the lower range of seastead price and size while retaining ocean-going capability, possibly enabling individual owners to take to the sea and join a seastead compact.

• The shorter spar is more resistant to bending and shearing than a longer one for the same diameter.
• The overall smaller structure means a lower mass, with lower cost to produce, launch and tow, for roughly the same inhabitable surface.
• The expected submersion of the whole stead implies the structure's top will have to be sealable, and equipment on its top has to fall under two categories: seawater-resistant and bolted down, or transportable and storable inside during bad weather. It also makes necessary an elevator or trap door for moving this transportable equipment inside when needed, and additional storage space.

Because the BunkerStead is supposed to be sealed shut when waves risk being taller than its emerged height and might wash over it, it might require solutions for transporting people and things to and from other seasteads even during bad weather. Because the zone being washed by the moving surface of the ocean is exceedingly dangerous during those periods, and because the BunkerStead does not reach above it, the only area left for this transportation to occur safely is below this zone: deep enough underwater to avoid the waves' surfaces entirely.

The simplest method is to have a diving well inside the BunkerStead at the waterline, that connects to a hole through the spar somewhere around 15 to 20 meters deep (so it would remain below even the tallest rogue waves), for going in and out of the stead by scuba diving. Guidelines loosely connecting those holes would allow reaching other seasteads with relative safety. No decompression steps are necessary after staying up to 30 minutes at 20 meters depth.

Sealed tunnels with water-proof hatches could also be extended between seasteads for this purpose (doubling as supporting struts keeping them spaced) but the mechanical stresses from heaving and axial shearing make this solution very impractical. A sealed or pressurized "cable-car" (a captive, non-autonomous submarine ?) running between the seasteads underwater would make more sense than such a permanent structure.