From: The Butterfly (salsbury_at_bootstrap.sculptors.com)
Date: 01/08/98
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 01:01:50 -0800 Message-Id: <199801080901.BAA08493@bootstrap.sculptors.com> From: The Butterfly <salsbury_at_bootstrap.sculptors.com> Subject: Re: Arcosanti...
->From: salsbury_at_sculptors.com
-> Arcosanti is (unfortunately) a good example of this problem. While
->they are making definite progress, it's taken them a long time to do
->so. They are still working towards a "Critical Mass" in order to jump-start
->the Arcology/City into full-functioning ability. They've been at it for 27
->years, and it's still quite a ways from this point.
-Date: Sat, 03 Jan 1998 23:00:03 -0800
-From: James Rogers <jamesr_at_best.com>
-This method of implementing a project comes across not only as glacially
-slow, but as incredibly inefficient as well.
-
-They would be far better off spending their time developing a business that
-would generate "real" revenue, and use that money to hire seasoned experts
-to build the place (in that order). It is apparent that the Arcosanti
-people are neither concerned with actively generating revenue nor with
-efficiently engineering the construction. They have basically done a
-pretty spectacular economic "cart before the horse" with predictable
-results. If they spent their energy on acquiring the necessary capital
-instead of inefficiently using the little revenue stream they have, they
-could have this done in years instead of decades.
I agree. I've been interested in Arcosanti since hearing about it
perhaps 10-15 years ago. I'd heard it wasn't moving very fast, and that it
was pretty much being built by hand. (Both of these things are still true.)
I was rather disappointed that the entire tour of the place was completed
in about an hour. It seems that if they want to make real progress, they're
going to have to bring in people, keep them interested in staying for a
while, and probably pay them reasonably well for it. (Right now people get
inexpensive lodging and minimum wage.) All of this involves more cashflow.
I (and several others on the tour) asked about their finances, and
they prefer to be "self financed" rather than going out and seeking lots of
investor money. While I applaud the general idea _in theory_,
realistically, it's not going to prove very fruitful unless they have their
own revenue stream, and the bells bring in some money, but after all's said
and done, they have about $175,000 per year to spend on materials, food,
and pay for people. Not a whole lot. Not when you're trying to build a
city.
If they were doing investment banking, or were all independently
wealthy, or writing shit-hot computer code, then they could probably secure
a tidy revenue stream, it's just not there, yet. They fear that a large
investor would come in and start dictating the project, and apparently
they'd rather work slowly than risk that.
This is a very valid fear, but as my SO and I were discussing last
night, they might be able to set up something to accept "no strings
attached" donations, or, as Bucky Fuller termed it, put an "ice-cream soda
clause" into their financial donations/investment contract. (This is where
he said, basically, "If you want to invest in my project because you think
it's cool, that's fine. But understand that this is risky, there are no
guarantees, and if you put in money, I get the final say in what's done
with it. If I want to go and spend it all on ice-cream sodas, then that's
fine, and you understand this going into it.")
Crazy? Perhaps. But when he was building the Dymaxion Dwelling
Machine (also known as the Wichita House), enough people beleived in the
prospects that they readily agreed and gave the money needed to get things
going. The house development went fine, although the final install of the
prototype was not done correctly, leading to problems over the years. (The
prototype is currently under refurbishment and will be going on display
sometime in 1998, I think...) What eventually happened was that people
began to slather at the financial prospects, and although the house design
itself was sound, the air-delivery system to bring these Dwelling Machines
anywhere on the planet was not yet in place. Bucky wanted to proceed with
this rather crucial part (delivering the manufactured goods to the
customer) and others thought this was just "detail work" and not
important. He eventually invoked the "ice-cream clause" in order to shut
down the project. Mothballing it for future use when the air-delivery
infrastructure was in place. (Which wasn't really there for at least
another 5-10 years, and some might say still isn't really here now.)
-Or more to the point:
-
-*I* could, starting right now with nothing, completely finish an Arcosanti
-clone long before the real Arcosanti is finished, simply by keeping my
-priorities in order.
-
-Far, far too many "alternative" cities try to bypass economics with vision.
- And this is why there are so few alternative cities around. Economics
-doesn't give a damn about vision.
-
--James Rogers
- jamesr_at_best.com
-
Well spoken. And I agree. We should try to harness that kind of
attitude, but never forget the economics lessons that others have learned the
hard way. Arcosanti is an example of a project with great ideas, and little
capital. The Atlantis Project is an example of a project with great ideas,
and (this time around) still little capital. (The first time they went
bankrupt, raising about $160,000 and blowing it all chasing more capital,
with almost nothing to show for it. Certainly nothing floating, nor even
near an ocean.)
One of the nice things about the electrodeposition method of
growing hulls for a city is that it requires very little in the way of raw
materials, energy can be harnessed from the sun, wind, and wave action of
the ocean, as well as a snowballing effect of collecting the hydrogen from
electrodeposition to run through fuel-cells, providing more electricity to
grow more hulls, providing more hydrogen, etc.
Refer to http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/Oceana/ in section VII
and Figure III for details on hull construction methods. As seen in Figure
III, and also in Fig. 412.01 (p. 117) of Fuller's "Synergetics" (c. 1975),
the closest packing of equal-diameter circles (spheres, discs, rods, hulls,
etc.) grows at an accelerating rate. You start with 1, surround it with 6,
surround that with 12, then 18, then 24, then 30, then 36.
In this fashion, you are adding rings of hulls like the layers of
an onion. And by the 7th ring, your hydrogen production from
electrodeposition is 36 times that of when you started, and that's just in
the outer ring alone. Total hulls at that point is 127, with a diameter of
13 hulls across. At 100 meters per hull, this would give you a hexagonal
floating structure with a 1.3km diameter.
Another nice variation on the electrodep technique which I'd been
reminded of by Mark, (the tourguide at Arcosanti), is making "seacrete". This
is done by running the electrodeposition through a bed or form filled with
sand. The electrodeposited minerals bind the sand together into a structure
much like concrete. This should allow for just about endless amounts of raw
materials, gathered from the ocean floor and minerals in the water.
Stepping away from the tech for a minute, we come back to what
James was saying. This will take more than vision. It will take effort. It
will take resources. It will take smarts. How many of you know how to scuba
dive? How many are willing to learn? Anyone interested in mariculture and
fish-farming? How about naval architecture? (There's a nifty design Bucky
came up with for a breakwall/wave-generator that could provide lots of
power for the city...) Solar power? Wind Power? Fuel cells? Structural
Engineering? Offshore international banking and finance? Education?
What's your interest? What brought you to this list? At this phase,
the Reality Sculptors Project is fishing around, gathering mindshare,
hashing out ideas, and figuring out where to focus to get the greatest
efficiency. There are groups to discuss fuel cells, water systems, housing,
food production, and of course, floating cities. :-)
What sort of things do YOU want to do with a floating city?
--
Pat
___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com>
http://www.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
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