Shelter

{Wayne & Andy}

There is not much that we would like to say about shelter. The shelter can be as simple as a tent or as complicated as a multilevel house. For small initial prototypes, an option is to simply get some sort of inexpensive RV (recreational vehical) trailer and simply park it on one end of the seastead. An RV trailer provides sleeping accomedations, a small kitchen, a small bathroom, a place hang out, etc Since most RV trailers already have separate grey and black water tanks, it sould be very easy to integrate the trailer into the fresh water management system.

Edward Felton expands this suggestion:

something I’ve seen done up north (minnesota) for “travel trailer” type shelter, to be able to survive winter (and would help survive storms) would be to simply build a concrete structure surrounding the trailer (box it in) with an offset entry … that way you get cheap living space, inside “cheap as it can be build” hardening.. definately not pretty, but should give “stormproofing”

Homes in the US average 55 m2 per resident, while in Europe the average is 30 m2 [Chandler, p. 121]. In Beijing, China, it is only 3.3 m2 per capita [Silvertown, p. 55]. The US has an additional 21 m2 per capita of support space (offices, schools, restaraunts, warehouses, etc.) [StatsUS1988, tables 1237-1239]. As with other resources, space is more expensive on a seastead and will be conserved, allowing less usage than on land. A NASA study on space settlements suggested 67 m2 of footprint and 1738 m2 of volume [SpaceSettlements, Ch. 3]. While their budget is higher, their self-sufficiency requirements are higher also, and ocean provides us extra space for some uses.

The seastead’s shelter will, of course, need to be strong enough to handle the worst storms which may occur in the areas it is expected to travel.