Icesteading: Executive Summary
The 5-minute Elevator Pitch for Colonizing Icebergs
What?
This summer I had an idea that is behind its time, so to speak: we should start colonizing the oceans on artificial icebergs. I call this icesteading.
Specifically icebergs that have been sealed and insulated and placed (either during or after construction) in the warm waters near the equator, far from land. Yes, that’s right, icebergs in warm water! I call these ice-islands.
How?
How do you insulate an iceberg? Wouldn’t it melt eventually? Would it be cold?
Firstly, to really understand this idea you have to understand the square-cube law. That is: when things get bigger, the volume increases faster than the surface area. That means that a small iceberg will melt fast, but a big one will melt slowly. It also means that insulation of the same relative thickness (e.g. 0.1% of the diameter) becomes vastly more effective when something gets bigger. And commercially available insulation is pretty good!
So you can surround the ice with a few meters of air or insulating foam spray and it will take many decades or even centuries to melt. The amount of heat getting through that insulation is just a few watts per square meter of surface, roughly the body heat of a small animal like a hamster.
The flipside of this is that the surface and the outside of the iceberg will not be cold or icy. It will be covered in concrete and then pavement or soil or whatever else.
It can be kept cold essentially forever with a cooling plant that can be run occasionally to top up the ‘coolth’.
What Do You Do There?
The ice-island can be for work, living, industry, etc. People might want to live on one to avoid oppressive governments or to found new nations on The High Seas. Space launch and AI server farms are two potential industrial uses. Space Launch needs to make lots of noise and poses some risk to local houses, so a dedicated ice-island adds a lot of value in allowing a higher launch cadence.
The Ocean in the tropics also provides lots of renewable power in the form of sunlight and warm and cold water. OTEC, nuclear and solar power can power these ocean-cities.
Medical research or other work could be done there without needing to persuade one specific government to allow it - only the people involved would have to consent. Surrogacy is an example, another is anti-aging research. The economy could also be more efficient due to lower taxes and more efficient taxation (e.g. a land value tax).
How Expensive?
I think a basic ice-island costs $200-$500 per square meter, which is a lot cheaper than you can get from concrete.
The reason it might be so cheap is that ice is very cheap to make from seawater. All you need is energy and a desalination/freezing plant. The insulation around it is a tiny shell, thinner in relative terms than the skin of a grape. Cheap sawdust or shredded agri-waste can be added to make pykrete which is much stronger than ice for only a small incremental cost.
Why Not Build On Land Instead?
Almost all land on Earth has been claimed by some government and so comes with political entanglements and taxes. The cost of moving some or most of civilization to the oceans to avoid those political entanglements may be low enough that it is worth doing now.
Food and other goods can be imported to an ice-island on the ocean via shipping. Ocean access means that any item or material can be accessed relatively cheaply as long as the ice-colony is large enough
Isn’t This Strictly Worse Than a Normal Island?
Normal islands are great but they are all taken already. They also often have extremely troublesome political entanglements and angry native populations who simply don’t want to do business or don’t want to do it honestly. And in a way, I don’t blame them since that island is their home. Ice-islands are islands without those problems, and with the advantage of being able to be sited wherever you want.
Ice-islands can probably also be built with vast underground levels that offer far more space per acre than any conventional land. 3-dimensional cities, essentially. It’s not possible to do this on any natural land.
Do you have a company or charity to do this?
Not at the moment.
i volunteer as tribute to live on this thing
1) Why not use Pykrete? You mention it briefly without describing how it would kick 90% of your lifetime costs away. Have you actually modelled this at all?
2)What is the actual problem you are trying to solve? 'Oppressive Governments' is not an answer. Oppressive governments don't let people build nation-scale structures.
3) There are vast swaths of land you could use instead, at far lower cost
4) Who wants to go and live on a slow-melting environmental disaster with no power, datalinks, waste disposal, water supply, or legal status?
5) no you can't drink the iceberg because you just contaminated it with a city
6) No Starlink is not the answer for datalinks for very obvious reasons
7) Where is the poop going again? This is a complex problem
8) How are people moving there on a daily basis?
9) WHERE IS THE FOOD COMING FROM?
10) OK, you're importing food and exporting poop. Not seeing the arbitrage here.
11) Do you know what a cyclone is?
12) Are you familiar with the laws that govern this sort of thing? You'll need to pick a nation and follow its maritime laws. Really. Yes, you will. Liberia is popular.
13) How are you going to settle disputes? Liberian courts don't really care, so......
14) Poop. You're just dumping it in the ocean. That's probably OK if you're 200nm offshore. But where are you getting power again?
Go and mine some Helium on the Moon. You'll be happier, we'll be happier, and the outcome is the same.