Just wondering ,would it a good idea to create a Seastead that consist of a barge filled with soil ( To make it more land like) and if it is where would we put it ?
http://newyork.corante.com/archives/Floating%20Island.jpg
a sample of a barge island
Well that question has been asked quite a lot already. Mostly the consensus seems to be that barges won’t do well in the open ocean when faced with large waves and storms with out some sort of artificial breakwater or wave dampening.
Putting soil on a barge is fine for plants but not for buildings. Soil is inherently unstable and when you put a building on it and subject it to wave like motions, things don’t go well (think earthquakes).
Keeping the soil in containers is probably the best option.
You could make it a park, and have living quarters on a neighboring safer structure. Then if there is bad weather you disconnect and hope for the best. If the barge goes under it’s no major loss.
I think some trees and bushes would be appreciated on the ocean. You could probably even charge admission.
Define a major loss. That seems like a major investment in both time and money just to let go of it so easily. Even if it cost twice as much to make something that would ride out a major storm, consider yourself ahead of the game once you make it through the third big storm.
A human life is a major loss. Of course losing supporting infrastucture can be a big economical setback, but economical setbacks can be overcome with hard work.
And if you choose your location well, the risk encountering storms big enough to sink your barge might be lowered to some reasonable level. And there is always the option of at least trying to outrun the storm.
My point is that there will always be risks involved with anything. Cheap but less seaworthy structures might make economical sense in the long run (for non-human rated tasks of course).
Of course it is possible I am underestimating the frequency of storms. Maybe there is nowhere where storms are less frequent.
I do not share completly the opinion that barges are not suitable for seasteading – there are lots of examples in the oil and gas industry where barges (especially big and heavy concrete barges) do a great job hosting technical infrastructure and living quaters – one of the most outstanding examples is the “nkossa barge”.
Mfg
Wil Ellmer
concretesubmarine.com
I agree with Wil; while barges dont do anything clever in particular to minimize wave impact, they do have one advantage: they are cheap, and because of their simple shape can economically be constructed out of concrete. Now if you can translate that advantage into making a big enough (300m+) structure, good motion performance will automagically follow.
On the other hand; we do not want to start out with a large structure of that kind. But their simplicity makes barges a candidate for having them practically, modularly and rigidly connected together out on the water (unlike other concepts, for which I dont really see that happen). So you might start with fairly small sections near land, and once a critical number of them are built, they might be assembled into a structure large enough to do well out in international waters.
As for covering them with dirt: a square meter deck area of such a barge will cost you about as much as an acre of dirt elsewhere (~$2000), and it is one of the cheapest options available.
So you might start with fairly small sections near land, and once a critical number of them are built, they might be assembled into a structure large enough to do well out in international waters.
In fact, IIRC, the barge Wil mentioned was built pretty much like that. OK, the individual parts of it weren’t floating out in the sea with people on them, but it was built in modular sections in different countries and then the sections were tugged to the same place and combined to form the whole.
The Nkossa? No sir; ive been reading all about the details of its construction, and its a single piece. Its hull at least; the topsides I dunno..
I recall reading about one floating concrete structure that was assembled on sea; but annoyingly, I cant find it anymore.
As far as the $2000/m2 is concerned: ill eat my words. Unwarranted extrapolation. Its more like 6000/m2. That is, per m2 footprint, not per m2 floor area; you can have have lots of floors, obviously. Thats still pretty encouraging though.
That comes-out to 2 acres… Plant some ‘dwarf’ root-stock fruit trees, plant some salt-tolerant grass, add a small barn, a cow, a couple of sheep, goats, whatever…
With 16 meter height, that takes care of the little waves…LOL Move it, before a storm, with some of those sewage transfer units I saw in another thread…
Thanks,
Been looking for something like that!!! The wife will be pleased!
BTW the hull IS a cast, pre-stressed unit. The equipment on it, came as seperate units…
The Nkossa Barge was built as one single large barge but there was modular building in the outfit – livingquaters, industrial installation etc was built in modules in different sites. The building of a modular barge as floating platform was suggested for the lower section of the Freedo Ship, and it was also present in the mega float airport in tokyo bay – so it might be seen as a already established engineering technique for building large flat floating structures.
A interesting sector to look at might also be submarine tunnel building, as those tunnel concrete segments are built in drydocks, floated out like a large concrete barges, and finally connected to a existing structure (the tunnel) – basicly the same technique just with the additional difficulty to connect the segments under water – so connecting them on surface is a simple task compared to what those engineers are doing right now in the bosporus tunnel and similar civil engineering projects.
ellmer 3 years, 4 months ago.
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