Reports
The ClubStead page has been significantly expanded as the executive summary has been replaced by a series of 7 reports covering a variety of engineering topics. Download them in a single zip file, or as individual PDFs:
- Executive Summary – Describes the design requirements and included reports.
- Architectural Design – The layout of the buildings and rooms on the platform, including the mechanical tower containing the power, water, waste, and propulsion systems, and the square footage figures for each level.
- Global Design – The dimensions, mass properties, stability, structure, energy needs & propulsion system, and cost estimate.
- Hydrodynamic Analysis – A long report describing the methodology, hydrostatic characteristics, and frequency characteristics of the structure’s motion in both normal and extreme sea-states. Also includes industry standards on acceptable motions for passenger comfort and comparisons of ClubStead’s motions to those of a ship encountering the same waves.
- Construction and Installation – The philosophy of the construction and installation plan, shipyard requirements, and stages of construction and installation, with diagrams showing how to assemble the structure.
- MetOcean Analysis – Data on the weather conditions (wind, waves) at the operational location, both regular and extreme conditions.
- Structural Analysis – Finite-Element analysis of the primary deck structure, including the main truss, truss for cantilevered buildings, suspended light-weight areas, and towers, as well as a brief overview of the column design.
The cost estimates have also been updated based on some feedback about additional costs that were missing, mainly installation, and total cost including platform, marine systems, hotel, and installation is now $114M, or $311/ft^2 of interior space. Also we’ve estimated annual maintenance costs at 3% ($9/ft^2/yr).
Importance
This is a major milestone in the history of the floating cities movement. There are numerous proposals for engineering designs out there, yet there is very little solid information available about them. For example, the Pneumatically-Stabilized Platform is one technique which may have superior performance characteristics and lower costs than other options. But all we have about this design is vague information, because it was developed by a short-lived private company which now seems to be defunct, and it is unclear how much engineering work they did on the design. Or consider Oceania — The Atlantis Project, which was a popular floating city proposal back in the 90’s and resulted in some pretty pictures, but little hard engineering data. Nor is this unusual – you can review the history of proposed ocean cities in my book and see it again and again.
In other words, before TSI came long, this was a field with many ideas, many pictures, and little engineering details. As a result, for most large seastead designs ideas, we have basically no idea at all about the most basic characteristics such as cost or hydrodynamic behavior (wave response). We don’t know their structural elements, shipyard requirements, or how best to install them, because learning these things takes significant work by trained professionals. (Caveat: I’m specifically talking about large designs – small designs such as SFSs offer the possibility for rapid prototyping and wave testing).
And that’s why ClubStead is such a major contribution to the movement. Thanks to our generous initial funding, we were able to commission a design with far more detail than previous projects. And as a non-profit (pending) research institute, we are making all of the information we have public. Regardless of what else happens, we have substantially expanded the general body of knowledge of the seasteading community and raised the bar for future efforts. Our validated design, complete with cost estimates and motion analysis, can serve as a reference point for business plans and future engineering work for everyone in this space.
Please consider becoming a member of TSI to support our continuing efforts to generate useful research related to pioneering the oceans.
Community Questions
As with the previous release, we have created a YayBoo poll where you can create and vote on followup questions. We will gather your questions for a month or so and then have MI&T answer them.
I don’t see anything plotted in the 2 graphs comparing ClubStead motion to that of a boat in the Hydro Analysis report on page 29.
I would rather have seen a comparison to a 15,100 st boat, so it was the same as CubStead, than the 3,879 st boat they did.
>(Caveat: I’m specifically talking about large designs – small designs such as SFSs offer the possibility for rapid prototyping and wave testing).
Modeling to test wave motion is not inherently harder for larger designs. In fact, a model of a 100 foot wide SFS could also be a model of a 400 foot seastead at the same time (without any changes to the model). The complexity of the design could make model buidling harder, but size alone does not. Modeling the exact shape of the underwater parts and weight distribution of underwater and above water parts accurately gets harder with more complex designs.
So to the extent that SFSs tend to be less complex, they tend to be easier to model.
Building a prototype at full scale, or 1/2 scale or 1/4 scale, is clearly easier for a smaller structure.