by Kylon » Sat 24 Jun 2006, 13:32:49
An edited down/shortened version of my former post concerning the construction of ocean dwellings-
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I was thinking, "Where can I escape too?", and the fact of the matter is, there are no countries that are habitable, that are left untouched.
Even the uninhabitable countries(Ethiopia and the like) and filled to the brim with people.
You/we could grow edible seaweed as a food source, maybe modify it to be more nutritious, and grow seaweed as a source of food.
I have an idea(I'm not telling what it is, because I just realized this could be worth alot of money, as every future distillery would need this process) on how to cheaply/efficiently extract drinking water from salt water.
So, this process, in combination with a floating city like boat, could allow people to survive in/on the water.
The ocean cities could cheaply grow biofuels and trade them with the mainland in exchange for phosphorous and other essentials, as well as machinery, and consumer goods.
For construction of this easy ocean city-
Use double layered inflatable plastic(or plastic substitute)
One layer is the inner layer of plastic, first you pump that up, then you pump up the outer layer, then once you have pumped the inner and outer layer, you inject a type of hard paste/cement type material. This provides structural integrity to the plastic like material so that when it's faced with great external forces, the plastic holding the air in won't be the thing that suffers most of the stress. It will be the cement like material.
On the surface this seems kind of stupid, "Why put a cement material in there, isn't Cement heavy?" the answer is yes, but not if you increase the amount of the amount of volume displaced by the air in the inflatable material.
The outer plastic layer acts to minimize water leaks that might enter the cement like material. There may be a very, very small number of leaks, but not many.
If you really want things secure, then you simply increase the number of layers, and in order to compensate for the increased weight of hard materials, you increase the volume displaced by the inner most layer.
These can be cheaply, and quickly deployed, allowing quick construction of artificial land.
I don't mind talking about these ideas, because I'm sure other people have had similar ideas about using this to construct structures, just not oceanic ones.
The downside is the larger the structure, the more difficult it is to deal with waves, as waves put stress on the entire structure. This can, of course, be minimized by using tidal generators, which subsequently produce power.
Ontop of this, tidal generators can/do generate alot more power for the amount of infrastructure, due to the fact that water is much denser than air, and ontop of that(I believe this is correct), you could simply build deeper and deeper tidal generators, to generate power in the same spot, and then you could harness the water farther and farther below you(although it would just be easier/cheaper to expand because there is so much ocean to expand on).
The inflatable/cement paste method can be used for quick construction of any structure, and it makes the building capabilities very, very adaptable.
From the construction of artificial land masses, to the construction of tidal generators, to the construction of houses, that method can be used to produce most of the basic structures. Certain parts will still be required, but this would make things very easy.
This would also make it where only a major facilities are needed to produce the goods for a large variety of products. The cement/paste plant, the production of power(tidal plant), the basic machinery plant to produce the machines to inflate/pump the artificial paste, the paste supplier(probably a modification of algae), the inflatable materials plant, and the plastic supplier.
That seems like alot, but when it comes to industrial production, especially for the variety of products we have in the United States, that's NOTHING.
Another advantage of building an ocean dwelling, is it can be placed near almost anywhere(that's friendly of course). You could build your ocean dwelling near Japan, or near the United States, or wherever you want. Or you could leave all the countries and start your own city, with your own laws, where you would have to have a military."