Week 3 (22-28.10)

HOW WE WILL BE LIVING IN THE FUTURE

“Vision of the future due to global warming”

FIRST ATTEMPTS

Seasteading isn’t a new idea. Back in the  1960s, former British Army Major Paddy Bates and his family took over a disused  gunnery platform in the North Sea. Despite  the government’s protests, the  platform is still occupied by the Bates  family today – it is called the ‘Principality of  Sealand’. In 1972 a group of libertarian  idealists established the ‘Republic of  Minerva’ – an attempt to forge a society  free from government intervention – on a  reclaimed atoll in the Pacific Ocean.  But no-one has ever attempted anything  on such a scale that TSI is advocating.   Financial backing for such projects  is already materialising. A billionaire  businessman Peter Thiel, one of the  co-founders of PayPal, has put $1.3m  (£830,000) of his own money behind TSI and  its goals. The organisation itself was founded  by Patri Friedman, the grandson of the famous  late economist Milton Friedman. Much of  TSI’s vision resonates with Milton’s ideas but it will take many years before a  seastead is ever recognised as a sovereign  state, able to run its own government. In the  shorter term, it will fly a ‘flag of convenience’,  exploiting the open registry that currently  enables ships from one nation to be  registered with another and use other  nation’s flag. One company, Blueseed, founded by two  former TSI executives, hopes to launch  its own seastead by early 2014, flying the    Bahamas flag. Its vessel will anchor 19km off the coast of California, offering a place of work for entrepreneurs and scientists wanting to launch tech businesses who cannot obtain US work visas. Ferries will operate between the Blueseed seastead and the mainland, and internet links between this ‘Googleplex of the sea’ and the land will be maintained by high- speed laser and microwave links.  

OPEN WATERS

Dodging the obstructive visa laws of some nation states is the first of many potential applications for seasteading. Scientists could use these artificial islands as independent labs where research in controversial areas, such as stem cell technologies, could proceed unhampered. They could also serve as sites for private clinics, where critically ill patients could receive life-saving treatments that are yet to make their way through the tortuous approval procedures of some nations. Blueseed’s entrepreneurial incubator will be a retrofitted second-hand cruise liner. This is the most inexpensive seastead design, but is perfectly adequate for the sheltered, calm waters off the California coast. For settlements further out at sea, somewhat more rugged structures will be needed. The most sophisticated are the so-called ‘semi-submersibles’. These resemble offshore oil platforms, with buoyant pillars that extend far below the waterline but aren’t actually bedded in the ocean floor. TSI has produced a proof-of-concept design for such a seastead known as ‘Clubstead’ that would accommodate 200 residents and 70 staff. Most seasteads of this size would have to be moored to the ocean floor using cables. In deep water, however, this is impractical and so-called ‘dynamic positioning systems’ would be employed instead. Here, latitude and longitude would be measured by Sat-Nav and thrusters would then correct any drift. Semi-submersible platform designs offer high levels of stability in rough seas. This is particularly true when the submerged part of the structure runs deep enough so that the platform’s centre of gravity lies beneath the reach of the waves. Semi submersibles offer the best tolerance to extreme environmental conditions.. But even a structure such as this may not stand up to the most severe of ocean weather phenomena – hurricanes. A hurricane spits out destructive energy at the same rate as a 10-megaton nuclear detonation every 20 minutes. Faced with such a savage force, there’s only one sensible course of action – get out the way. And this is something seasteads are quite capable of. Given that hurricanes normally strike with several days’ warning, there’s plenty of time for a floating city to pull up its moorings, fire up the engines and relocate to calmer waters.

FISHY EXPORTS

As with any nation state, seasteads will import the goods they can’t readily produce themselves – such as vegetables and meat – while exporting their own produce. This might include fish and other seafood that’s farmed in giant nets slung beneath the structure – a practice known as ‘aquaculture’ – as well as minerals mined from the ocean bed. Perhaps even oil. Fresh water will initially have to be imported, but advances in desalination may enable seasteaders to extract drinking water from ocean brine. But how would a seastead be powered? One solution is an emerging technology called Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). This is an energy-production system that works by exploiting the temperature difference between the ocean surface and the chilly depths to run a heat engine. The heat near the surface could, for instance, expand the gas in a piston and the cold contract it back again, creating a cycle of movement, the energy of which could be harnessed. A useful by-product of the process is freshwater, which emerges in the form of water vapour given off by the engine. It’s hoped seasteads will generate most of their own electricity, using OTEC together with solar, wind and tidal power. In the future, there is no real limit to how big a seastead could get, so floating megacities are theoretically possible. Even skyscrapers are not out of the question, so long as the floating platform is sufficiently stable. However, there is little motivation to build skyscrapers at sea. People build skyscrapers because open land within a city is limited and expensive.. At sea, there need not be any fixed boundaries to the city. As a floating city grows, so the inhabitants will require transport to get around.

ESCAPING NATURE

While moving around the city is unlikely to present a significant problem, relocating the city itself to escape an approaching hurricane would become problematic. So very large cities could be equipped with a flotilla of escape craft in which the populace would literally ‘abandon city’ in the event of a major natural disaster. However, one benefit that a lack of mobility will bring is that inexpensive, yet high- bandwidth cables laid on the ocean floor can be used for the internet and other communication rather than more costly laser and microwave links. Seasteading technologies will be much less polluting than those typically used on land.  And bear in mind that resources will be in limited supply and so more expensive, which means there will be pressure on seasteaders to use less of everything. With its promise of new resources, living space, lifestyle and a flexible government, seasteading offers new horizons and new opportunities to a human race that seems desperately in need of both.

Sources:

http://www.seasteading.org/engineering/clubstead-design/ 

http://news.discovery.com/human/floating-city-states-move-closer-to-reality.html

http://news.discovery.com/human/floating-city-states-move-closer-to-reality.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

http://youtube.com

Questions:

1.     Will those homes a wait for us in the future

2.     Would you like to live in the house like that

3.     How do you imagine your future life

4.     Do you think that technology required to build those platforms is available right now or it will be available in the future