Marine

Seabrick aims to give "seasteaders" a floating foundation to build on

Seabrick aims to give "seasteaders" a floating foundation to build on
Seabricks: floating, interlocking Lego bricks for marine structure construction
Seabricks: floating, interlocking Lego bricks for marine structure construction
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Seabricks: floating, interlocking Lego bricks for marine structure construction
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Seabricks: floating, interlocking Lego bricks for marine structure construction
A cheap, carbon-sequestering construction piece for floating infrastructure
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A cheap, carbon-sequestering construction piece for floating infrastructure
Paypal founder Peter Thiel is one investor in a project that hopes to create floating cities outside the jurisdiction of any government
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Paypal founder Peter Thiel is one investor in a project that hopes to create floating cities outside the jurisdiction of any government
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Seasteading proponents envisage a floating society with a fluid geography, free from oppressive government in international waters. But they'll need something to build their watery utopia on top of, and these interlocking seaweed bricks might be it.

It's an odd little political movement, seasteading. An idea as old as the hills, it's been bubbling along in recent times with the Seasteading Institute as its main hub. But main hubs are hardly the idea; this is a movement for folk that feel the nation state has outlived its usefulness, who want to go as far off grid as it's possible to go.

To do so, they plan to abandon land altogether, and create independent floating societies at sea, every man his own L. Ron Hubbard, free to choose his own destiny beyond the reach of any country's lawmen. Seasteaders could clump together in floating villages, or drift apart. Groups could each try their own ways of running things, and if you were living in one group, but liked the cut of another group's jib, you could detach your home and move your family across to join them. They'd be modular political test-beds, encouraging people to criticize by creating, and the voting would be done with one's feet, or at least outboard motors.

Despite the backing of Paypal founder Peter Thiel and his bottomless pockets, it seems the group's plan to create its first extra-national floating city-state by 2020 are yet to be realized. But the dream is very much alive, and several groups are trying to get seasteads off the ground (yuk yuk) in various different countries.

Paypal founder Peter Thiel is one investor in a project that hopes to create floating cities outside the jurisdiction of any government
Paypal founder Peter Thiel is one investor in a project that hopes to create floating cities outside the jurisdiction of any government

Seabrick is a small company, toiling to liberate itself from the oppressive whip of the Canadian government in Vancouver, and it's created a building unit specifically designed for the high seas. Seabricks form a kind of floating Lego set, their complex shapes interlocking together to create platforms and structures.

According to the Seasteading Institute, it's 72% less expensive than floating concrete, at US$360 per ton as opposed to $1,300 per ton – and it'll last as long, or longer, than concrete. Compared with metallic pontoons, it'll beat the per-ton price of aluminum pontoons by 83%, and steel ones by 58%. The numbers get even better if you create hollow pontoons with your Seabricks, says Seabrick.

It's made primarily out of kelp or sargassum – the latter a seaweed that gets pretty stinky when it decomposes. Seabrick says that gathering this stuff up from shorelines is tantamount to a public service. These seaweeds are dried, chopped up, combined with "some biologically sourced additives" and cast in a compression press before being coated with "a non-toxic polymer." Each brick sequesters carbon, and takes "little energy and heat" to manufacture, making it a significantly better building material than concrete for the environment.

A cheap, carbon-sequestering construction piece for floating infrastructure
A cheap, carbon-sequestering construction piece for floating infrastructure

The company says it's designed to build "marine infrastructure of all kinds, from wave breaks and offshore platforms to floating homes and ocean-based communities." When you're done with whatever it is you've built, or you come into a new pile of Seabricks and decide it's time for a second story, your structure can be carefully pulled apart, modified or built anew re-using the original bricks.

There's no information as yet on availability, but we have a feeling you may be able to buy these things with crypto.

Source: Seabrick

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12 comments
12 comments
1stClassOPP
That’d be great for a pond or still waters, but what happens when the waves mount to thirty or forty feet? Not realistic, I think.
Bob Stuart
I heard of an experiment where a shape was made of chicken wire, put in sea water, and hooked up to a solar panel. It slowly became encrusted in limestone, becoming useful in a year, and continuing to thicken. I hope that ocean acidification has not ended that.
The Seabrick sounds useful on land as well.
Edward Vix
Not safe from pirates. There are plenty of them operating all around the world, and will get worse when the US stops protecting international shipping as it will be forced to do eventually.
Bob Flint
Why not just use some of the plastic waste already in the sea??
TechGazer
Yes, just what we need: more floating plastic.

I'm just guessing that the organic cores will break down due to compression/expansion as the structure flexes. Then the plastic coating will flex, rub against other bricks, releasing plastic particles, wearing a hole, after which the organic material will get wet and start composting.

While these floating communities are breaking down, the initial investors will be enjoying their profits on dry land.
Reason
Floating homes may come into their own as sea levels rise

But while I have gathered small amounts of seaweed for the garden, not sure 'gathering this stuff up from shorelines is tantamount to a public service' quite takes in the habitat destruction for the organisms that rely on that seaweed which in turn form part of a longer food chain
mfware
The illustrations that accompany this article display reasonable applications for Seabrick. However, Seabrick appears to be targeting benighted souls who intend to escape the long arm of evil national governments. Anyone who falls into this group should understand that each sovereign state's territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles from the baseline--usually the mean low water mark along the coast. These states' Exclusive Economic Zones extend 200 nautical miles from baseline.

If you can see land from your location, then you are in some nation's territorial waters. If you want to setup in international waters in the Gulf of Mexico, then you are limited to two tiny islands of water. The rest of the Gulf are part of the territorial waters of the USA, Mexico, or Cuba. Of course, there are vast expanses of international water in Earth's oceans and elsewhere. But you must cross territorial waters to reach them.
Nobody
I can't think of any place in international waters where this type of structure would be safe from storms or crime. A lot of people live on boats but they have to be pretty large to stay on the open sea. It would make more sense to just form an independent cruise ship country than a vulnerable floating island.
paul314
I hope the "non-toxic polymer" binder/coating is biodegradable, because otherwise these things will just be shedding microplastics directly into the ocean. (I'm also not sure about the idea of seasteading, where apparently everyone either magically retains the protections they want from land-based governments or maintains a standing army/navy to keep pirates -- er, aggressively alternative seasteaders with a different model of social organization -- from taking all their stuff. )
dave be
Anyone thinking they can just float some tiles on the water and head to sea has never been on the ocean for any decent amount of time. The ocean will tear apart those structures. You can really get a sense of how powerful nature is out there. Steel ships engineered to withstand that environment can be damaged by the power of ocean waves. Out beyond national waters is a long ways out in a very unforgiving and dangerous environment.
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