Another Look at Seasteading, Rich Man Style

Seasteading is a familiar topic here at Al Fin. Now there is a new player in the game, who is playing with high stakes--Peter Thiel.

With a $500,000 donation from PayPal founder Peter Thiel, a Google engineer and a former Sun Microsystems programmer have launched The Seasteading Institute, an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities "with diverse social, political, and legal systems."

"Decades from now, those looking back at the start of the century will understand that Seasteading was an obvious step towards encouraging the development of more efficient, practical public-sector models around the world," Thiel said in a statement....The seasteaders want to build their first prototype for a few million dollars, by scaling down and modifying an existing off-shore oil rig design known as a "spar platform."

This schematic illustrates the ballasting system that Wayne Gramlich imagines would keep the seastead from tipping over. The amount of water in the ballasts could be raised or lowered to move the seastead up and down.
Holl Liou/Wired.com

In essence, the seastead would consist of a reinforced concrete tube with external ballasts at the bottom that could be filled with air or water to raise or lower the living platform on top.

The spar design helps offshore platforms better withstand the onslaught of powerful ocean waves by minimizing the amount of structure that is exposed to their energy. __Wired__via__NextEnergy

Seasteading is an expensive and dangerous game. Any serious attention given to creating intelligent and durable seastead architecture is welcome. The ocean is one of the most hazardous environments on Earth, aside from the polar regions and extreme mountain heights.

Previously, seasteading was in the hands of the savvy and hardy folks who wrote the Seastead Book, at Seastead.org. The book is a work in progress, and should see some new material later this summer. Anyone who wishes a good introduction to the topic should go there first.

But there is something that big money brings to a project that can not so easily be done on a shoestring. Expensive and hopefully competent sea architects. Expensive ship-building facilities and crew. The ability to build and launch impressive structures in a timely manner.

That is not to say that Thiel's approach will be the first or last seastead floating defiant against whatever the ocean may throw at it. Thiel is also invested in The Methuselah Foundation, which suggests that he has a healthy degree of caution when viewing the future. He may want his seastead over-engineered with redundant systems which will make it impossible for those of more modest means to replicate. Or it may turn out to be an expensive piece of junk that sinks like a stone.

The long term viability of ocean living will be determined by multiple approaches, just as in any biological or economic niche. The design shown above appears far too limiting. It is not modular or expandable. It looks more like a very expensive toy, than a genuine attempt at a sustainable mid-ocean human living environment. But wait and see.

Seasteading.org (as opposed to seastead.org) is not the first word on seasteads, and will not be the last.