2 thoughts on “Condolences”

  1. –Rick Tumlinson
    EarthLight FOundation
    “Space Pirate.” Thought leader, a founder of the NewSpace Revolution of Musk & Bezos with 35 years of experience in the field.–
    I think Musk’s will to put a city on Mars, is going to cause ocean settlements on Earth.
    This is because the need to have a lot of Earth launches, and particularly with large rockets like Starship will require launching from the Ocean.
    And to launch from ocean will require floating breakwaters.
    And I think cheap floating breakwaters are needed for
    ocean settlements.
    Also it seems we will need good weather to launch a a lot of rockets.
    And I think we need to launch at zero inclination [or from the tropical ocean]
    But all this may take a decade or two.
    What might happen within couple years is launching from the two oil platforms in Gulf Mexico near Texas {I assume}.
    And it occurred me, that to launch from these oil platform, one could need floating breakwaters.
    And also breakwater which can moved to different locations. If Hurricane going to hit area in 3 to 4 days- you could want to want avoid a direct hit.
    And purpose of breakwater is to stop large waves and even small waves- such as 1 foot high.
    So perimeter of 1 km or more in diameter stopping large waves and secondary breakwaters which stop smaller waves.
    And you can move the whole thing.

  2. I think an important element related to ocean settlements is making surfing beaches.
    And non surfing beaches.
    And freshwater lakes.
    Moving the freshwater lakes might be problem
    and it seems moving them slowly would be required.
    Or general idea is one would move ocean settlement
    slowly, but having a freshwater lake would be element
    making slower.
    Keeping ocean settlement stationary will require keeping stationary against any ocean currents, and seems that most of the time you want to stay within a small region if you are settlement which interacting and involved with land settlement(s).
    Or an ocean settlement doesn’t have cars, but people could cars [or cars available, like Uber] on the land settlements would could be close to Ocean settlements.
    But as said one could want to move the settlement due to things like weather events or other reasons.
    So, there would be a fair amount traffic daily between
    an ocean settlement and land and the ocean settlement
    is basically a suburb.
    For surfing beach {which also a breakwater] I would have large diameter pipe which mostly submerged with two smaller pipes submerged lower and running on either side of large pipe.
    I would make them from thin wall titanium- because doesn’t corrode in seawater.
    But if didn’t want them to last long, you make them out marine aluminum or stainless steel. Or maybe even plastic. But it for settlements you want things to last a long time- so, titanium generally seem better.
    So would put pressurize freshwater in the pipes which almost float because of the denser seawater.
    With rockets one have balloon tanks and these are basically balloon tank and smaller attached pipe would would air would provide most of buoyancy.
    So big pipe is about 9 meter diameter and float just above waterline due to the freshwater and air, and two
    pipes push it slight higher above waterline.
    So surfing waves would go over the large pipe and to make the waves larger, you ramp which cause wave get higher [like a beach does] and breaks going over large pipe. And in terms pressure about 20 psig.
    The ramp, other making better waves, is also reducing force of wave- as most that energy is below the waterline.
    A km length of this is very massive but so are cargo ship and trains- it be far more than any train, but ships can be far more massive than trains.
    As general rule a cheap breakwater should have less than 1 ton of material per foot- and this is a lot less than that. But 1 ton of Aluminum is a lot cheaper than a ton titanium. Though the construction cost could much more money than the material- so you want make fast, like SpaceX makes it fast.
    Anyhow this type of breakwater seems like one can move fairly easily.

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