Category:Plastic Floating Structure

Not all sea stead infrastructure needs to be on the sea stead.

Many systems are more wave tolerant than people are.

Its been suggested that I post this to cover the option.

I've, Wesley Bruce, created the floating ponds idea and this expands it. See http://vacoyecology.com/Bubble_ponds_fluke_boats.html

To summarise float ponds these are flatish plastic bubbles and tubes filled with air and fresh water. They move with the waves rather than fighting them. Crops of fresh water floating plants are grown in some. Saline tolerant crops are grown in others. The site above also covers fluke boats; wave powered robot boats that carry more sensitive crops. This shifts 60 to 90% of the agriculture off the sea stead leaving it for people and tennis courts.

Not all these crops would be food. The technology can support saline algae oil production.

There are also several proposals for floating solar arrays system, some large some small. http://www.sunengy.com/images/LiquidSolarArrayDraft4US.pdf

and http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9954667-54.html

and http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/floating-solar-island-concept/

Several other technologies fall into this category. Fish farming technologies like: http://www.oceanfarmtech.com/aquapod.htm and http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/fish.html These tend to be polymer coated wire netting or relatively stuff plastic netting on composite or metal structures.

Back in the first oil shock days the idea of growing giant kelp algae around up welling pumps was raised. The original paper was 1975! The original paper is here: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1976cfms.proc..253L

Rich deep water was pumped to the surface and distributed through 'irrigation lines'. These had giant kelp algae and bags of molluscs attached. Fish also thrived in the floating forest. The kelp was harvested and converted to fuel to power it or augment any wave power. The idea was to send the bulk of the fuel to shore. I believe Jacque Cousteau was even photographed on the prototype but I can't find an image. This technology has been forgotten. When the oil shock ended in the 1980 so did all funding. This is a major fuel technology. Abundant storable energy in the form of methane or methanol. Both are plastics precursors. The best web links on macroalgae farming are: http://www.pacaqua.org/Documents/Marine_Macroalgae_Culture.pdf and http://www.agen.ufl.edu/~chyn/download/Publications_DC/Reports/marinefinal_FT.pdf

Bulk storage of fluids can be handled in double shelled buoyant flexible tank/ bladders. Dry storage and refrigerated storage in unmanned surface vessels. Robotic lighters with wave sealed and wave streamlined decks, like kayaks, jet ski's or modern lifeboats these can't fill with water if a wave tips them over or over tops them. Half forgotten technology like the high bows and sterns of Viking seacraft would also help.

Recreational platforms are also easy to do if we make them cheap, robust and autonomous. On good days they are our beaches, party decks and swimming pools. In bad weather they're abandoned to fend for themselves. Why put rubber fenders on a boat hull when you can make the whole thing out of rubber. Pools,'beaches', barbecue decks, could all be made to bend with the waves when needed and made rigid where needed with folding mats, tensioned poles or even vacumatics now often called 'Jamming': http://www.gizmag.com/chembot-robot-blob/13119/. [If you vacuum pack a free flowing course material, foam filled beads, it becomes rigid.]

Our sea stead is surrounded by a fleet or mat of unmanned vessels. These damp the waves while surviving them by flexing or moving freely. When the storm comes we pack them with any loose items. Most are packed automatically. The barbecue turns off when you close the lid and it locks. When the storm clears we send out someone to round up any that have gone adrift; and send a robot sub to find and retrieve the ones that have sunk. These would be recycled if they can't be repaired.

There is a defensive aspect to this also. If any navy decides to pick a fight they're not dealing with a few big easy to target sea steads but thousands of little targets any one of which could be streaming their actions to youtube. This raises the cost of any action or aggression. It makes a sea steads mysterious "accidental" sinking impossible. Their also dealing with hundreds of small unmanned surface vessels (USV); robot boats. Even if none are weapon equipped it makes for a powerful deterrent. http://searobotics.com/

If your storm is likely to be rare, violent but relatively short taking to the life boat may make sense. Even the main sea stead could be relatively small pod attached to two or more flexible floats. Like Vince Cate's water walker http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/User:Vincecate/WaterWalker or like the up market Wam-V vessel. http://www.wam-v.com/ essentially a rubberised hull and suspension close to my wave stead idea. http://wiki.seasteading.org/index.php/Wave_stead

The Key to making this cheap and easy is to build the factory and recycling facilities on the sea stead or as part of the fleet, a small factory lighter USV. It wont work if you bringing in units from out side. Mass production is also viable if you can sell them to low islands and salt effected estuaries as a cash industry. The catch is that any manufacturing at sea is more expensive than on land.

This wiki entry overlaps both the basic structure design idea with a lot of infrastructure elements but that's the point. Waves matter to us but not to many of the other things we need out there.