You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Issues' category.
The idea of seasteading has been around for a while, though nobody has made it work yet. Remember from grade school that 3/4 of the Earth’s surface is covered with water? We can’t figure out how to live on it?
Going underwater seems expensive and impractical. Water pressure kills, you need vast amounts of power, sunlight gets cut off quickly, etc. Let’s leave that to another team.
Short of wholesale terraforming, the seasteading possibility space seems to be bracketed by 
souped-up cruise ships (the troubled Freedomship project), large floating cities (the LilyPad and Ecoboot concepts) and totally DIY projects held together with baling wire and spit (Spiral Island). Web Urbanist has a terrific post summarizing what’s out there.
I’m picturing something more like connected rafts that are allowed to move with the water. Hinges that connect the rafts also collect energy. Underwater pens divided by osmotic membranes slowly filter potable water from the ocean (I know, it’s not that simple; can’t we get one wish granted?).
On top of these rafts, anything is possible.
Want to cancel wave motion? Gimbals/motion sensors/whatever you can invent. Want to raft together many elements to create a city? Go ahead. Prefer to live in small groups? Link small.
The rafts need some sort of power, so they can stay on station or move about. Clearly they’ll need to survive major weather. What else?
