With big low rpm propellers they can move a 62 foot diameter fish farm though the ocean at about 1 foot/second with 12.5 hp.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14663
This is fun because we could use mobile fish farms and because we could use big low RPM propellers to push seasteads.
Aquaculture is really catching on. I think that it can give seasteading a really big push into reality. The world stopping hunting, and starting ranching. The world stopped gathering, and started farming. The world will stop fishing, and will start aquaculturing. It’s a natural transition. Seasteads will lead the way.
Very cool. I´m sure you can do dynamic positioning of seasteads like this, and keep it reasonably economical.
It’s not nearly as much mobility as uncaged fish have, but having a moveable fish cage could help find natural sources of food (smaller fish), reduce impact on a given local environment, etc.
Heck, train the caged fish to swim towards prey and have them move the cage themselves…. Just drop some food outside the cage in the direction you want to move and see what happens….. 
Fish power!
I think the big propellers are a very important part of making this work. The push you get from a propeller is proportional to the change in momentum the propeller gives some water which is:
mass * velocity
for the mass of water pushed out the back at some velocity. The energy put into that water by the propeller is:
1/2 mass * velocity^2
So if you are going slow you really want a big propeller that pushes slowly on a lot of water. Using a small fast propeller on a big slow seastead would take far more energy for the same push.
vincecate 4 years, 8 months ago.
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