Underwater ocean floor factory connected to a floating seastead base via a 4000 meter spiral tower

Shimizu corporation is a top 5 construction contracting company in Japan.

They have built terminal 3 of Singapore's airport and the The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line aka Trans-Tokyo Bay Highway. Aqualine is a bridge–tunnel combination across Tokyo Bay in Japan. It connects the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture with the city of Kisarazu in Chiba Prefecture, and forms part of National Route 409. With an overall length of 14 km, it includes a 4.4 km bridge and 9.6 km tunnel underneath the bay—the fourth-longest underwater tunnel in the world.

The Ocean Spiral would provide accommodation for 5,000 people and include research centers for excavating the seabed for energy resources.

Bitcoin and Seasteading

Bitcoin 2013 conference - Lasse Birk Olesen - Seasteading - Entrepreneurship in Government on the High Seas

Recorded at the Bitcoin 2013 conference sponsored by Bitcoin Foundation in San Jose, CA on 18 May 2013.

Bitcoin and seasteading have similarities.
Bitcoin can help seasteading.
Seasteading can help Bitcoin.
Seasteading institute is working towards an Xprize-like prize for the first seastead before the end of 2015 with over 50 citizens in the Seastead.

Blueseed Seasteading has a new tighter budget and a second quarter of 2014 launch

Blueseed will station a ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters. The location will allow startup entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to start or grow their company near Silicon Valley, without the need for a U.S. work visa. The ship will be converted into a coworking and co-living space, and will have high-speed Internet access and daily transportation to the mainland via ferry boat. So far, over 1000 entrepreneurs from 60+ countries expressed interest in living on the ship.

* Comfortable living quarters accommodating one to four individuals per room
* Catering and food services at cafes and 24-hour venues around the ship
* Recreational facilities including a full service gym, game rooms, and other entertainment venues
* A comfortable and inspiring environment enriched by international experiences and lifestyles

Blueseed is now trying to lease a ship and not buy one. They are looking to raise $27 million instead of $50 million.

Holland makes EFTE domed floating buildings that cover 4 tennis court area and plans 13000 floating buildings by 2040

In the Rijnhaven in Rotterdam, a new, eye-catching structure has been erected: a complex consisting of three floating half-spheres. The structure is 12 metres tall, with a total floor area the size of four tennis courts, and is fully relocatable.

The floating pavilion is remarkable not only because of the spheres floating on the water, but also because of its climate-proof, innovative, sustainable and flexible qualities. The floating pavilion is a pilot and a catalyst for floating construction in Rotterdam. The pavilion consists of three connected spheres, the largest of which has a radius of 12 meters. The floor area of the pavilion island is over 46 by 24 meters. It will be moored in the Rijnhaven until 2015: after that, it will be shipped off to another part of Stadshavens. The Rijnhaven is a suitable location for the pavilion due to the limited beating of the waves. Furthermore, fewer and fewer inland vessels will use the harbour. Moreover, the Rijnhaven is easily accessible by public transport, also over water.

The innovative pavilion responds to the objectives of Rotterdam to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 by 50% and to ensure that the city remains climate-proof also in the future.

The round canopy, built by Dura Vermeer, is made up of dozens of hexagonal panels made of corrosion-resistant ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) plastic, which is 100 times lighter than glass. The weight savings from the ETFE allowed the designers to reduce the materials needed for the buoyant foundation, which is only about 7 feet thick and made of sandwiched expanded polystyrene sheets and concrete slabs.

Rotterdam plans to build floating urban districts. The blueprint calls for 13,000 climate-proof houses in the Stadshavens area by 2040 – of which around 1,200 would be built on top of the water. People will live, shop, work and recreate on the water.

Blueseed seastead has applications from 800 entrepreneurs for offshore incubator

In 2013, Blueseed, will be the first-ever sea-based tech incubator.

After struggling with visa issues to come to Silicon Valley and start his own company, Dascalescu said he was inspired by the notion of creating ocean communities in international waters, so that entrepreneurs wouldn’t need a visa to essentially startup 12 miles off the California coast.

Dascalescu, who is an ambassador for nonprofit organization The Seasteading Institute, and his co-founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija, have so far received 240 applications from 800 entrepreneurs hailing from 52 countries. Venture capital firms and angel investors can also recommend startups to Blueseed.

Blueseed office seastead to open within 21 months

Blueseed (seasteading startup) plans to launch in the third quarter of 2013, offering living and office space in an elegantly designed modern tech environment so compelling that it will be called the “Googleplex of the Sea”, attracting top entrepreneurial and technology talent from all over the world to Silicon Valley, where they can create companies and jobs, and develop disruptive and innovative technologies.

Blueseed planned location

Blueseed rent

Blueseed will have a wide assortment of living and office space packages for rent. Tentatively, depending on the ship we will end up selecting, we estimate that prices will be starting at $1,200/person/month for our basic accommodations. For comparison, the average monthly rent for a studio in San Francisco is $1750 as of October 2011, competition for apartments is fierce, and incubator spaces sell for $400-$650 per desk.

In addition, each resident will need to deposit in escrow an amount sufficient to cover transportation back to their home country in case of necessity. This amount will be returned when the resident permanently leaves Blueseed.

Blueseed Seastead funded by Peter Thiel

Blueseed a seasteading company is getting a funding round led by Peter Thiel

Venture beat talks about the seed round and other details about Blueseed

The Economist covers seasteading and Blueseed and other companies.

A breakaway group from TSI (The Seastead Institute) is working on a simpler and cheaper idea called Blueseed. The idea is to convert a cruise liner into an offshore “incubator” for small, high-tech start-ups and position it just outside American territorial waters off California. The attraction for the start-ups is that they would be able to hire foreign engineers and scientists without the hassle of getting work visas for them.

Dario Mutabdzija of Blueseed says chartering and adapting a cruise ship should cost $15m-50m, depending on its size, and the combined rent for a tenant’s living quarters and office space might be around $2,000 a month, comparable with costs in Silicon Valley.

There is a 328' ice classed expedition cruise ship with proven polar capabilities for sale for about $2.9 million. The vessel has a comfortable layout with attractive accommodations for up to about 230 passengers plus up to 70 crew. The vessel is in Class with current certificates and is in fully operational condition. It is equipped and set up to be able to do polar cruises in both the Arctic and Antarctica.

Seasteading Institute's position on the recent Details article

This is a planned (concept) seastead boat, but they will NOT be launching it next year

Seasteading has recently received a lot of media attention after an article published in Details on August 13.

Nextbigfuture also provided coverage of Seasteading

Nextbigfuture also covered David Brins comments

Seastead has some corrections
Not launching a big seastead boat next year

Details indicated- Architectural plans for a prototype involve a movable, diesel-powered, 12,000-ton structure with room for 270 residents, with the idea that dozens—perhaps even hundreds—of these could be linked together. Friedman hopes to launch a flotilla of offices off the San Francisco coast next year; full-time settlement, he predicts, will follow in about seven years; and full diplomatic recognition by the United Nations, well, that'll take some lawyers and time.

While we're researching such architectural plans, there are not any plans to build such a seastead in the near future. Friedman isn't launching an office flotilla next year. However, our former staff members are developing a business that will take place on a ship off the coast of Silicon Valley: blueseed.co

Seasteading Discussion

Here is a discussion on Seasteading.

1- The core aim is to escape meddling by any modern states - mostly advanced enlightenment democracies, with their heavy taxes and regulations, while seasteader owner members will still retain full, web-accessed control of their investment portfolios and dividend incomes from those societies.

Floating Microcountries

"Big ideas start as weird ideas," Patri Friedman, an ex-Googler and the grandson of the late economist Milton Friedman, recently told Details. And Friedman's idea is weirder than most. The libertarian blogger is tired of the restrictions he feels are imposed on him by American society. The solution? Floating chains of micro-countries, each little colonies in the vast Petri dish of the sea, and each an experiment in a new form of government. The idea, which Friedman terms "seasteading," caught the eye of PayPal founder Peter Thiel who sunk $1.25 million into the idea.

I saw Patri Friedman at a Singularity University event giving a talk on the idea of seasteading as a means of experimenting with government.

Land based charter cities (like new laws passed in Honduras) will enable more experimentation with governance to find ways to achieve maximum economic efficiency.

Microcountries are really more accurately thought of as city states.

Singapore is a prime example of success as were the Chinese economic development zones.

Patri Friedman was thinking to start with the economic and governing rules of Texas and then experiment with variations from that point.

Aluminum foam could reduce the weight of ships by 30 percent

Researchers from Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, have experimented with an aluminum powder that foams when heated up.

The aluminum foam could cut the weight of ships by 30 percent. For an average sized freight vessel with a capacity of 7000 m³ this corresponds to a weight reduction of more than 1000 tons.

* Less weight for the structure can mean more weight for payload.
* A lighter ship can also be designed to have a shallower draft so that it can go into shallower water
* A lighter ship can use less fuel relative to the amount of payload
* there could also be seasteading applications

The new material is lighter than water and has a high stiffness. Within seconds a cube made from aluminum starts to inflate into the shape of a sponge under the impact of heat. The secret of this reaction lies in the compounds of the new material. The metal is a mixture of aluminum and titanium hydride powder, which acts as a blowing agent just like yeast makes dough rise.

Translation of a finnish page on a aluminum foam ship design, bioship 1

Two World Industrial Bootup -- Enabling Seasteading Through Space and Lunar Development

Enabling Seasteading Through Space and Lunar Development
By Joseph Friedlander

Previous related articles by Joseph or myself -

Setting up an lunar industrial village on the moon using the nuclear cannon.

A summary of the original idea of a project Orion pulse propulsion variant of a nuclear cannon. A system using existing technology of nuclear bombs and a deep hole to launch cargo and materials into space for about $10-50 per pound.

Sea based launch version of the nuclear cannon.

After setting up the lunar industrial village, creating a solar sail loom at L4/L5 and progressing to a solar empire.

Why not use the lunar materials, then, to create what Friedlander calls a ‘gigantic solar sail loom,’ one that would stretch reinforcement wires in loom fashion over a framework that could reach 10 by 10 kilometers in size. The idea for this space shipyard is to create vast solar sails, spreading a volatile material on the framework, vaporizing thin amounts of aluminum onto it, then removing the volatile and support structure to create an ultra-thin, 100-square kilometer sail.

Use Al Globus’ idea of an asteroid-retrieval project called AsterAnts. Globus and colleagues Bryan Biegel and Steve Traugott (all working with MRJ Technology Solutions at NASA Ames) came up with the notion back in the late 1990s, presenting it as a NASA technical report and developing its ideas in a presentation at Space Frontier Conference 8. The notion is to retrieve small (1/2 to 1-meter) Near Earth Objects for orbital processing, and to do all this with solar sails that could be constructed and tested near the International Space Station.

Centauri Dreams discussed the article on setting up a solar empire.

A Strategy Of Liberty and Prosperity In Our Lifetime --

Dr. David Criswell has written extensively about the prospect of developing a 'Two Planet” economy, urging us to see the Moon and Earth as part of a unified industrial system. Specifically he advocates lunar surface generated solar power beamed to Earth (using the Moon as, essentially, a big powersat) which saves enormous expense in launching and stationkeeping, yet gains the advantage of constant output (given the fact that some part of the Moon is always in sunlight, and that the rotating Earth below can be beamed to (with the aid of geosynchronous relay satellites) at all times. (Excepting the polar regions)

How Independent Could a Seastead or a Colony in the Solar System Be ?

Jamais Cascio, Open the Future, claims that ending politics is a delusion and provides the following example.

In the early days of the dot-com era, this attitude resulted in the absence of digital tech industry voices in Washington, DC, allowing the incumbent telecom and entertainment industries free rein to write laws and buy politicians without opposition. Companies and industries that had considered themselves beyond politics found out just how wrong they were. Stung by that experience, today's advocates of the "escape politics" position usually articulate it as more of a wishful whine, as with Thiel's line quoted above.

This is an example of the Africa-lite problem of North America and Europe. Africa being the poster-continent for massive political corruption and systems that massively under-deliver on the potential of the people and societies.

Jamais Cascio is correct that it takes a lot more to escape corruption or disengage from a political system than running a new technology and trying to ignore the current systems.

What are the historical examples of "escape from [old] politics" or massive reduction in corruption ?

There was the colonization of North America and the American revolution. The new system was not escape from politics but it was new politics and one that escaped from much of the politics of Europe.

This involved being in a physically separate place where the forces of the old system could only project forces able to be delivered across an ocean. Plus France supported the breakaway.

There was the relatively peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union.

Geopolitical groups that had been conquered and had an identity before being conquered were able to breakoff and form (reform) and adopt new economic and political systems. It helped that the old central system had weakened. The US and NATO provided cover and support for the nations that broke away.



New nations have been formed in the 1990s and in the 21st century

The group or place that is breaking away seems to need to have enough critical mass and level of capability and to find a new sustainable position in the world system and often needs support from other established powers and political groups.

How the new group or place is run is less important than how it relates to the existing powers to create a sustainable niche.

Any seastead would have to deal with all of the Ocean going Navies and the political forces that they represent.

In future, any sizeable space colony (millions of people) would mean that there is massive space going capability. This would not be a capability that is exclusive to the space colonists. The space colonists would need to deal with US, Chinese and other nations with space capability.

Breaking away for a new political system and entity is a non-trivial task and there will be a relationship to the major powers of the day. Also, those who want to do it (libertarian or whoever) must be willing to go to substantial lengths to achieve it.

City States and Regional Autonomy
There are also some trends toward more regional and city autonomy. Quebec received a great deal of autonomy from Canada. There are successful city-states like Singapore. Hong Kong has a certain amount of autonomy and has its own business systems and laws.
Dubai is a successful small entity with its own systems and laws.

Future Technology, Space and Sea Colonization
Assuming that there is sea and space colonization, then what would the political systems be and what would be the geopolitics of that situation ? Would the traditional powers be able to maintain control ? Over the course of decades what would happen ?

Canada is about 142 years old. The USA is 233 years old. India (1950) and Pakistan and Israel only formed in the 20th century.

Political change can happen and new entities and relatively indepedent systems can be formed.

How small is a viable entity now ? How small might it be in the future ? What are the non-violent paths where more seasteads, space colonies or regular land regions might become independent ?

If change is desired enough it will probably not be non-violent.

The demographics and votes for Quebec sovereignty do not seem to be there anymore.
However, it seems that if a referendum for Quebec Sovereighty was successful, then Canada and Quebec would likely be able to effect the change without violence. The likely issue would be many lawyers and politicians working out the new arrangement and determining how to split up the national debt. If there were orderly progressions to sovereighty in this or other situations (Texas) in developed countries, there would likely be useful precedent established in the right way to enact new nation forming.

The current best example of an orderly spinning of nations is the Commonwealth of Nations. The Commonwealth of Nations uses the Singapore Declaration.

The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of independent sovereign states, each responsible for its own policies, consulting and co-operating in the common interests of their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace.

Commonwealth is compatible with membership of any other international organisation or non-alignment.

The next ten articles in turn detail some of the core political principles of the Commonwealth. These include (in the order in which they are mentioned): world peace and support for the United Nations; individual liberty and egalitarianism; the eradication of poverty, ignorance, disease, and economic inequality; free trade; institutional cooperation; multilateralism; and the rejection of international coercion

The Singapore Declaration seems compatible with a capitalist libertarian system that might be formed by someone like Peter Thiel (who wrote the article to which Jamais Cascio was responding).

Would the USA or other developed nation adopt something like the Commonwealth system if in the future groups of citizens wanted to breakoff ?

FURTHER READING
Rwanda anti-corruption success

20,000 nations above the sea

Billionaire with his own inherited small nation. The Sultan of Brunei

Brunei had about 500,000 people when it became indepedent from the UK i 1984 It stopped being a british protectorate in 1984.

Politics and law as related to seasteads

Cascio, OpentheFuture response: Brian -- you're right. For groups. In which there will be... politics.

Libertarianism as espoused by Thiel would be an escape from old politics. Just as a nation with an official position of atheism in regards to religion would be an escape from all old religions.

A place with libertarianism in the form compatibile with what Thiel is espousing would be a significant break from the political past.

Cascio statement that there would still be politics in a Libertarian state is semantics and does not address the viability of an independent libertarian entity.

Michael Anissimov, Accelerating Future, has a post "Politics is Truly the mind Killer" which is responding to the OpentheFuture post. H/T to michael as his article led me to the Openthefuture post.