Floating Islands

With satellite phones it is becoming reasonable to vote with your feet by living and working anywhere, even the ocean. Traveling the ocean you don't have to pay property taxes or income taxes, which could save many families more money than it cost to live on the ocean.

Our idea is to make a boat that is sort of a wide moving platform. It will be solar powered for low operating costs. We are aiming for a price around $100,000 for our first model. It will be much easier to operate than a sailboat. Much lower cost to operate than either a fuel powered boat or a sailboat. It will be so stable that we call it a "floating island" instead of a boat.

Basic design is a triangle with a leg coming from each point. Support cables go from the end of each leg to the other 2 points on the triangle. On the end of each of the 3 legs is a pontoon. Two of the pontoons are angled so that they are in a straight line, one following in the wake of the other. The 3rd pontoon is parallel to these. The pontoons have the same shape at each end and can go either direction, which makes this a type of Proa.

Along with solar/electric it will also work well as a kite powered boat. To stear we will move the kite attachment point forward or backwared. So no rudder is needed.

Personal work

  1. Human IPO
  2. wavebreak design and experiments in waves
  3. writings on seastead wiki
  4. making vegetable oil from seaweed.

Seasteading

We liked the term Single Family Seastead but The Seasteading Institute has been excluding anything less than 100 people from their seasteading contests and focused all their effort on 100+ person seasteads. It is as if they have defined seastead to mean more than 100 people. So we have decided to call our designs Floating Islands. There is lots of good stuff in the seastead wiki. Amazingly, they don't even link to the wiki from their home page.

Solar Ships

There have been a number of solar ships.

Communications

If you want to be 200+ miles from any other country, communications is a bit tricky.

Troposcatter

Toposcatter can propogate signals using the troposphere. It uses higher power and more complicated electronics. Has been mostly used for military and offshore oil rigs. Electronics are getting cheaper all the time, so not so expensive now..
  1. wikipedia on troposcatter
  2. TM-20 Troposcatter Modem by Radyne
  3. troposcatter intro
  4. another troposcatter product
  5. General Dynamics SATCOM Technologies troposcatter products
  6. Comtech Systems Troposcatter and also here

Satellite

Satellite has a delay that is bothersome.

Fiber

Laying a fiber is expensive but could be done if economy can justify it.

Starting Your Own Country

Existing Country Sizes

Existing Cruise Ship Condos Plans

Cruise Ships for sale

Cruise Ships

Offhore Oil Industry

Catamarans

High-Tech boats

Fast Catamaran Ferries

Other Ships / Barges

Note that a 400 foot long and 100 foot wide barge has 1 acre of surface area. Used these seem like $2+ mil. Ocean front land on a nice taxhaven can cost you $2 mil/acre.

Condominiums - Residential cooperatives

Floating Islands

  1. Wikipedia on Floating Islands
  2. Spiral Island Reishee Sowa - nets, soda bottles, dirt, and magrove trees
  3. Uros

Wikipedia Links

  1. Wikipedia on Ocean Colonization
  2. Wikipedia on Micronations
  3. Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States

Floating / Wavebreak tech / Wave Attenuators / Docks

Ocean Data, measurement, etc

Buoys and Floats

Sargasso Sea

Ocean, waves, fish, and Seaweed

Misc

Floating Houses

Marine Fenders

ISO Containers

We could have containers that we put on individual foam mats for people to live in their own space, but that we could quickly load onto a container ship to move if hurricane coming.

Simulation Software for floating structures

Structural Aluminum Plate

Steel Plate

  1. Cost is about $0.50/lb
  2. Steel Structures Painting Council
  3. Stainless is $2600 for 4 by 10' and 1/2 inch thick 866.5 lbs or $3/lb
  4. Clad Steel - stainless only on outside - interesting
    When welding you have to first weld inside steel then outside stainless
    So welding is at least twice as much work.
    One place put cost at 70% of stainless steel
    Seems like it should depend on thickness

Cable / Wire / Rope

  1. POLYPROPYLENE - strong and very cheap $0.11/foot for 4,000 lbs - floats
  2. SUPER POLYPROPYLENE - very strong and cheap $0.11/foot for 4,600 lbs - floats
  3. Spectra Rope
  4. Spectra Rope - covered - pricing
  5. stainless steel wire 1/2 inch is 45.8 lbs per 100 feet and 20,520 lbs minimum break strength
    5/8 inch is 71.5 lbs per 100 feet and 31,500 lbs minimum break strength
  6. word list
  7. 1/2 inch stainless steel is about $5.76/foot in 1000 foot lengths If wires every 12 feet for 600 feet then 50 sets. If each set is 4 wires of 120 feet average then 24,000 feet. At $5.76/foot that is $138,240.

Marine Supplies

  1. wholesalemarine.com
  2. westmarine.com

Barge Runway

On Saba they have a runway with 1300 feet of which under 1000 are "usable". Getting a few big barges and putting them together might be reasonable.

Could have a cable that planes hooked, and a catipult, to make it like a normal aircraft carrier.

STOL Airplanes

With a STOL airplane you might use an even shorter runway. For 2 person airplane a single 400 feet barge may be enough.
  1. Peterson 260SE 400 feet - Cessna conversion
  2. QuestAircraft.com Kodiak 700 feet - 1700 ft/min - 3325 lbs useful load - 1075 nm range - 8 passengers 2 crew
  3. mountain goat The Mountain Goat can cruise at 160 MPH and have a stall speed of under 30 MPH if lightly loaded and 40 MPH with load. It has a range of 800 miles at 155 MPH. Seems like trying for 10+ years to get investors to pay for FAA certification.
  4. Sky-Maxx
  5. others
  6. Anatonov An-3 biplane - 12 passengers or 4,000 lbs cargo - Antonov says 9 passengers and 500 meter runways About $500,000
  7. DeHavilland DHC6 Twin Otter 1000 foot runway - 19 passengers - 150 nm range
  8. Islander500 meters with 6 passengers
  9. STOL CH701Sport Pilot Kit Aircraft - ~100 foot takeoff More than 400 flying.
  10. STOL CH8014 person version of CH701
  11. German Stork 1936 - under 100 foot sometimes - could fly as slow as 32 MPH and cruise about 100 MPH

There is more info on barges as runways.

Could always use a parachute or grab a cable to shorten landing distance. And a launcher could be used for takeoff. So you could sort of make your own aircraft carrier infrastructure.

Novel ways to land airplanes

The Brodie Flycatcher uses a cable.

Seaplanes - Flying Boats

Living on the ocean it might be possible to have wavebreaks around an area to make a sort of seaplane runway. Might only need to get rid of the chop and not the swells. In WW2 flying-boats were used to rescue downed airmen. So landing in the open ocean is possible. Landing on a part of the Sargasso Sea with any kind of wavebreak should be almost easy. For a small seaplane a catipult launch could be easy as well. So even if waves were rough you could run to a doctor if needed.

"Various methods were used to quiet the waves for seaplanes. Warships that carried scout planes would make a fast, wide turn to calm the water, and the scout landed in the calm spot. The Germans set up a system for crossing the South Atlantic where the seaplane was refueled at sea. The refueling boat laid down oil to calm the water, then towed a mat behind it, onto which the seaplane taxied and was brought up close for refueling. " from rec.aviation.military

All Composite Flying Boats Available Now

I like composites since salt water does not seem to bother them. I like "flying boats" since add-on floats have lots of drag and hurt gas milage and range.
  1. Seastar Amphibian also US distributor and Edra Aeronautica in Brazil (english/airplanes/super-petrel). paturi in Brazil 169 sold, 500 hours to put together, they can sell finished plane for $60,000, can make in Brazil and get pilots license too, biplane
  2. seawind.biz Now under $400,000 but seems used to be under $200,000 4/5 seat, 980/1,460 miles there is a seawind pilots site
  3. Glass Goose Biplane amphib - 2 seats, 1,100 miles
    Started as mods to SeaHawk
    has a yahoo group

Other seaplanes

  1. Antilles Seaplanes is making an updated Grumman G21 - 9 passenger plane but has been coming soon since 2005
  2. Seastar Aircraft looks like seawind - not sure how real - not much on site
  3. Lakestar Aircraftlooks like seawind - not sure how real - not much on site
  4. lsa-aero Freedom Amphibian - Spain
  5. Shearwater/Seaflight Composite but seems still in development
  6. Searey part fiberglass, part cloth, some rivets, ...
  7. SeaDragon 1/2-seat, 480 miles, only pictures of 1 with no wheels not flying or in water
  8. SeaHawk
    SeaHawk instructions did not explain removing peal before attaching wings
    because it was biplane with big alerons, pilots flew after losing a wing.
  9. Osprey by Sirius AviationWood flying boat - more than 500 flying
  10. Aerocat composite with composite floats
  11. aeroadventuresinc.com / sea-plane.com Ultralight flying boats and floatplanes
  12. Coot
  13. Republic seabee
  14. Seaplane Manufacturers
  15. aircraftdealer.com seaplanes
  16. Lake has made aluminum seaplanes for 50 years only FAA approved in production today
    Names like Lake Buccaneer, Lake RENEGADE, Lake SEA FURY, Lake SEAWOLF
    Some used prices here
  17. seaplanes.org
  18. List of flying boats and seaplanes
  19. Spencer Aircar wood - about 40 flying
  20. Widgeon WW2 twin engine flying boat
  21. PBY Catalina1935+ sizeable plane
  22. Mermaid
  23. airshark kit, 4-seat, 200 mph, 2000 mile range
  24. Hydroplane.ru 2 small pull engines above high wing
  25. Amfibie StorchSweden - comes with floats
  26. Avidair.com - Airdale Flyer Companytraditional looking floatplane
  27. page with bunch of seaplane pictures and des

Seaplanes other

  1. 329 Amphibian Design for catamaran float with 2 people in each half
    Interesting design but I worry that where the spray from the 2 hulls
    hits together some will splash up into the engine. If the front of the
    hulls came back, and the engine forward to ballance, some catamaran design
    could be made to work (ducted fan or no).
  2. global plane search.com find planes for sale - glass goose, seawind, etc
  3. rec.aviation.homebuilt
  4. InterFlightOcean.com seaplane design firm - interesting designs

    Energy

    1. Solar Downdraft Tower would work well at 30 degrees North.
    2. making vegetable oil from seaweed.
    3. wave power in open ocean