From: Patrick Salsbury (salsbury_at_sculptors.com)
Date: 02/17/99
Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19990217140551.00993480@mailhost.sculptors.com> Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 14:05:51 -0800 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury_at_sculptors.com> Subject: Multitudes of floating cities!
Here's something I found on the Aquarius FAQ, from The Millenial Project.
Nice to see some numbers put to this. I'd been thinking of cities of only
100,000 people, but 150,000 would also be fairly reasonable. From my
studies, though, I think the social systems begin to break down by 100,000.
http://www.millennial.org/~pzack/Project/Aquarius.html
Q: How many colonies would be needed for the plan to work?
The Millennial Project can be carried forward with as few as a half
dozen sea colonies the size of Aquarius. Once we know how to build them,
however, and have demonstrated the economic viability of life at sea, it is
likely that a large number of sea colonies will ultimately be built. How
many and how large they grow is a matter of speculation. The tropical seas
provide
an area suitable for OTEC of approximately 70 million square miles. This is
larger than the combined land mass of all the continents. Every acre of
this vast region is perfectly suited for this sort of development.
Limitations due to
ecological and energy concerns are the controlling factors. If sea colonies
were found to require as much as a thousand square miles of ocean each to
mitigate these concerns, the tropical seas could still accommodate over
70,000 of them. If a population of 150,000 people is determined, on
average, to be the most desirable size for a sea colony, then the Aquarian
League might eventually be home to over 10 billion.
Pat
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Patrick G. Salsbury - http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
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