Although traditional shipbuilding uses steel for almost the whole structure, concrete has also been used in the past in a few vessels. But in the last years, the offshore industry has been discovering the great possibilities that concrete presents as compared to steel, and it is being used in more and more projects, such as floating LNG terminals and in the development of the MOB concept (Mobile Offshore Base), as shown on the picture.
Not all nanotechnology entrepreneurs think small. Jim Von Ehr, founder and CEO of Zyvex Labs–a leading nanotech company–recently gave $100,000 to The Seasteading Institute (TSI) toward the goal of creating independent communities on the open ocean.
Ephemerisle 2010 tickets are now on sale!
This year’s event promises to be amazing, for all of the reasons Patri talked about in his recent blog post, How Ephemerisle 2010 will bring us closer to seasteading.
There are a limited number of tickets available, so get yours before they run out!
See you on the water…
Lauri Buckley from OnlineClasses.org wrote us to mention that they’ve done a round-up of interesting ocean-focused documentaries that can be found around the web. Some of these have direct relevance to seasteading.
Here are a few I liked:
Big Stuff: Water: This video is a great place to learn more about the mega-ships of the water industry.
As you probably know, the long-term goal for Ephemerisle is to be an incremental path towards seasteading, by cutting down the challenges along every dimension, and then advancing year by year. Here are some of the dimensions, and how we are making progress this year:
Some projects for establishing ocean communities are investigated and then given up for several reasons. One of them is the Mobile Offshore Base (M.O.B.) concept by U.S. Navy. It was considered technically possible, but too expensive. Nevertheless, working on the idea, we have developed a proposal for a seastead based on several barges moored between them.
Summary and conclusions:
Late in 2009, Francesca Galea wrote us to declare the completion of her doctoral thesis entitled Artificial Islands in the Law of the Sea. With her blessing, we posted the PDF of her significant and clarifying inquiries on our Research page, but it is more appropriate that we give her research the highlight it deserves. From the paper:
I spent last week in Porto Alegre and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to speak at a series of events. I was invited by Anthony Ling, winner of the “Personality” award in last year’s design contest, and had a fabulous time.
If your passion for making seasteading happen goes well above and beyond the call of duty, then consider joining the ranks of the Argonauts. Argonauts demonstrate their commitment to the seasteading dream by pledging $1000 a year for ten years. And we have now made it possible to receive the benefits of being an Argonaut for a full 10 years by pledging either $5000 over 2 years, or $10,000 all at once.
Many designs proposed for seasteading purposes suffer from the inconvenience of being suitable for calm waters close to the coast, but 
not for international waters, where waves, wind and current are bigger. But some lessons can be learned from these designs.
