From: Patrick Salsbury (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 12/08/98
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19981208215421.00918384@mailhost.sculptors.com> Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 21:54:21 -0500 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com> Subject: Re: Recipe' for Sea-foam Housing
At 03:35 PM 11/4/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Perhaps some kind of polymer could act as hinges providing necessary wave
>motion compensation. Personally, I think the thought of riding on top of
>the water is a bit difficult to manage. What about the iceberg model for
>oceanic stability?
As usual, I'm waaay behind (about a month, in this case!) so I'm going to
answer a few old posts at once. (I've got a couple of pints of Guinness to
hand, and am in a pub in Central Ohio. What better place to plan future
ocean cities? :-) )
Riding atop the surface is what we do with most boats, but you're right
about certain larger constructs. Oil-rigs are usually "standing" atop deep
pontoons, which reside well below the wave-motion area near the surface.
They essentially "stand" on still water, and the rig rises above where
waves and chop are a concern.
I have some sketches in my design book (which I'll have to scan in at some
point) that work out an idea for an undersea superstructure where future
city hulls can be grown. These would all be well below the city, and
underneath a HUGE (we're talking hundreds of yards in diameter) dome, which
could be solid, or perhaps one of the polymer/bag ideas we've discussed
before.
This would be the hydrogen/oxygen bubble collection area, positioned above
the electrodeposition areas. Bubbles would stream up, catch in the dome,
and form a giant storage bubble below the city. From here it could be run
up a pipe and into the city's fuel-cell plants, generating electricity (for
more electrodep, as well as the general needs of the city.) There is
always, of course, the risk of combustion with H2-O2 mixtures, but if you
can't reasonably reduce the risk below several hundred feed of ocean, then
I'm not sure *what* would be a safe place! ;^)
Another nice thing about the H2-O2 is that when it combusts, it does *NOT*
"explode". Rather, it *implodes*, as the high-volume gas burns, and forms
water vapor/liquid. (Think of the volume ratio of liquid water to steam.)
Thus, the bubble might collapse, and seawater would fill the gap instantly,
but there's little likelihood of an explosion like we see on the surface in
a combusting atmosphere. (That's the theory, anyway...)
The practical upshot, though, is that we'd have a huge "bubble" reserve
below the city with an auto-pressurized (from the ocean) feed of the gas up
to our fuel cells. As I've said before, once this thing is running, with
solar cells, windmills, wave action, and electrodep gasses, we should have
more power than we know what to do with.
Coming back to Bladewing's original question, I think that we *could*
hoist the thing up above the surface. It might be more trouble than it's
worth, though. Consider a "raft" of hulls that's 1-2km in diameter. There's
no wave in the world that's got a combined wavelength/amplitude to move it.
(Unless we get hit by an asteroid, and then we've got other problems...)
Tidal waves will sometimes have a wavelength of 100 miles, but their
peak-to-trough height difference is only 3' in those instances. It's only
when that wave energy gets to shallow water that it rears up and smacks the
land. It would pass harmlessly past us without our even noticing.
Pat
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Patrick G. Salsbury - http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
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