We are working on a seastead design. The goal is to design our seastead such that all the parts can pack into a single a High Cube 45 foot container which has: width 7.7 ft height 8.9 ft length 44.6 ft max weight: 62,000 lbs (rated bouyancy at desired waterline is 27,500 lbs and we hope structure is enough under this that humans and their stuff can fit) Above the water there will be a big equilateral triangle frame, 44.0 feet on a side. The triangle frame is also the wall of the living area and will be 7 feet high (floor to ceiling). It will be enclosed and the whole inside the living area. Around the whole outside of the wall, except where the dinghy is in the back, will be a 3 foot wide walkway and railing that is bolted on and has some diagonal supports from below bracing to the wall (so walkway is 1 food higher than bottom of the wall). The walkway will have an aluminum grating that would let a wave pass through but you can walk on. Also two doors on the back side, one two feet in from left and one two feet in from the right side. There are 3 legs/floats/foils/wings/keels that provide the buoyancy, so it is a bit like a trimaran but with a very soft ride. Each leg/wing will 14.5 feet long and have a NACA 0040 foil shape with 8.5 foot chord except that the last 0.5 feet of the thinnest part will be cut short, so with foil does not come to a point at the trailing edge and fits within 8.9 feet hight of container. But the buoyancy is very close to that of an 8.5 foot chord foil. Each of the 3 legs will be attached to the underside of the big triangle near one of the 3 points. The center of the thickest part and going 1.5 feet in all directions from there will be within the area of the triangle, but within that constraint, each leg will be as close to the point of the triangle as possible. The legs will go down so that the lower half is in the water. This makes for a bit of "small waterline area" similar like a small oil platform but one that can move through the water easier because of the foil shape. It is not an extreme SWATH design as a 1 foot change in water level is about 1/7th of the total buoyancy, so still significant change. The 3 legs will all be parallel with the blunt or "leading edge of the wing" side facing forward so it is lower drag when moving forward than a typical cylinder on a semi-submersible platform. Each leg will be 50% under the water (so 0.5 * 14.5 feet) and the top 50% out of the water. On the top half of the front of each leg, so the top half that is out of the water, will be a built in ladder. The reason for these sizes for the triangle and legs is so they can pack into a container nicely and shipped to a shipyard anywhere for assembly. Imagine the 3 legs end-to-end with thin/trailing-edge of foil up and leading edge down on the right side of the container. So the right 3.4 feet of the container (width of legs) is used by the 3 legs. Then the 3 frame/wall sections will be upright (so 7 feet high) next to each other along the left side of the container. I am not sure the width of the walls but if they were 10 inches wide then 3 widths is 30 inches and some extra is 3 feet on the left side. There should still be lots of room in the center of the container for all the other parts. Connecting the mid points of the walls both at floor and ceiling level will be structural beams that make another triangle 22 feet on a side. Then all the remaining spans will be less than 22 feet. The rest of the floor and ceiling will be small pieces that are bolted in. On top of the roof there will be solar all over. With batteries and electric thrusters as the main propulsion system. There will be 6 RIM drive thrusters of 1.5 foot diameter, one on each side of the 3 legs/wings about 2 feet up from the bottom. These RIM drives will be all be fixed orientation to provide forward thrust. It will use differential thrust to turn. For slow movements in tight areas like harbors it can reverse thrust on one side and forward on the other to turn in place. There will be a conduit/pipe welded to the back of the trailing edge to take electrical wires down to the thrusters. There will not be any "through hulls" in the legs. The legs will also have multiple airtight compartments each for safety. Behind the back near the center will be two supports going out and 2 ropes going down to a dinghy. The dinghy is a 14 foot RIB boat (deflated for shipping) with an electric Yamaha HARMO outboard. It is sideways against the center of the backside of the living area. When the seastead is moving forward the dingy is shielded from the wind by the living area. On the lower part of each leg will be several bolt on heave plates. These will help dampen the response to waves. About 25% of the displacement will be for LiPo4 batteries which will be put low in the 3 legs. Each leg will have its own charge controller and inverter so there is triple redundant power on the seastead. Also, the thrusters for a leg will get power from that leg's inverter or batteries. So the 3 pairs of thrusters will have independent failure modes as far as power. When the seastead is going to be staying in one place for awhile, we can put down 3 helical mooring screws and give the seastead tension legs so it becomes nearly stationary when parked. Near each corner there will be a pair of helical mooring screws with a motor unit between them. We only plan to do this in the Caribbean where tides are very small and in protected places where the saves are small, so pulling down 3 feet will be sufficient to never go slack. Two seasteads will be able to connect together with a walkway, one behind the other, so that while underway people can move between seasteads, enabling a real community. The two computers for the two seastead will both work thrusters to minimize the movement of the walkway, particularly when warned that someone will be on it. Scaled Seastead Model as Smart Mobile FAD We are in Anguilla and plan to make some 1:4 scale versions (simplified) of the above seastead idea for testing. It seems if these can have good reliability they could marketed as long range USVs. So we are wondering about a testing plan that could pay for months of testing by helping with Anguilla fishing. I made a video of a time I rode along with a couple Anguilla fishermen fishing from FADs they had setup: www.youtube.com/watch?v=puqXYUVKs3s I am intrigued by the way this worked so well. I am interested in these "local FADs" or “artisanal FADs” and not the larger “industrial FADs” or "commercial FADs". The total mass of ropes and stuff in the FAD could not have been too great as they could pull them up into the boat by hand. I would guess around 100 lbs not counting the long rope to the bottom. One idea I wonder about is using a scaled down seastead that was just a solar USV to control a FAD (fish aggregating device) so we did not need to have an rope to an anchor at the bottom of the ocean (some places are very deep). It would also let us slowly move a FAD around. So we might have a FAD that was moving at 0.25 MPH in a big loop such that once a week it was near Anguilla and we could fish by it. Instead of sending fishing boats out far to look for fish we could bring the fish closer to Anguilla. Have other people made FADs that can relocate using thrusters and solar power? If we wanted to pull a typical artisanal FAD at 0.25 MPH how many lbs of force do you estimate it would take? If we try to make an artisanal FAD that is easier to tow but still attracts fish as well as a normal FAD, how many lbs of force do you think it would take to move it along at 0.25 MPH? If we plan the route using the known eddie currents should this speed be enough to keep useful control of the FAD without any anchor to the bottom? Like we could get it to within 40 miles of Anguilla at least once a week? Really the design we have with all the solar will make a lot of shade and have 3 legs and 3 stabilizers in the water, so it would be something of a FAD just on its own. If we had no extra ropes/nets/floats but just a scale seastead of 1:4 scale, do you think it would be enough to be an effective FAD? If currently plan to use 6 of the Blue Robotics M200 thrusters on a 1:4 scale model. If this is moving at 0.25 MPH (very low wattage) will we will still attract fish? Another idea is to deploy a drogue or sea anchor that can be retracted later. With plenty of solar power we should put some underwater lights on at night to help attract fish faster. If the seastead was to go out to some location at high speed and then deploy a drag device and sit quiet, how soon would you expect it to have a good amount of fish? If we later started moving at 0.25 MPH would most still hang around? Will fish follow a FAD into shallow water? Like if they start following the FAD when it is 40 miles from Anguilla and the FAD gets closer and closer, at some point the water gets less than 100 feet deep I think. So before it the FAD gets 5 miles from Anguilla the bottom may be within 100 feet. Would this bother the fish? There is a big drop-off about 5 or 6 miles North-East of Anguilla, so we probably can lead the fish into there? Many of the fisherman in Anguilla live in the North-Eastern most village of Island Harbor, so it might be possible to lead a FAD full of fish to within 12 miles of the main fishing harbor. Assume we have worked with Anguilla fisheries and our FAD is approved by them. Does Anguilla give the owner of a FAD any legal protections from other people fishing next to it? I expect Anguilla Fisheries will ask us to put an AIS each of our FADs so everyone will be able to know where they are. However, we would be the only ones talking to it on Starlink, so we would be the only ones that knew how much fish were around each FAD. Also, if some other boat with AIS was coming toward our FAD we could switch into high speed mode and lose the fish so they gained nothing. It is possible that we can sell information about where to meet up with one of our FADs with lots of fish around it to local fishermen or someone taking tourists out to fish. So we might be able to monetize the smart FADs without doing the fishing ourselves. Another way to do this is to have dumb floating FADs that this smart FAD can relocate from time to time. So it might go off at 4 knots to FAD-2 and then move it at 0.5 knots for a few days so it was in some eddie current that moved it in a good direction, then let go of that one and go to another one. Or even if there was a single dumb FAD and one smart FAD stayed with it for a month and then switched off with another smart FAD so it could go to port for maintenance. We plan for the drones to be able to rescue each other by having an electromagnet on a float on a rope at the back and a piece of iron on a float on a rope at the front. So the rescue drone turns on the electromagnet and gets in position to snap to the iron and then can tow the other drone. So this same system could work for towing dumb FADs around. Are there "rules of thumb" for "artisanal FADs" on how far apart FADs should be so as to keep working well? What are typical total mass of the ropes/nets/etc used in an artisanal FAD? Typically what is the total biomass around an artisanal FAD? Typically how many lbs of fish will local fisherman catch at one visit to an artisanal FAD? How often do local fisherman typically revisit the same FAD? Another idea is to have the USV go out fast and far, like 100 miles or more, while carrying an "easy tow FAD" onboard, then dump it into the water, and them come back in slowly over a week or two. It could even go upwind so that drifting back was easy. It could bring some far away fish in close using a low cost vessel and solar power. Given the value of the fish and the cost of the vessel it seems like the economics could work out well. Make an interactive web calculator to look at the economics of this. Some user settable variables with defaults: 1) cost of USV : $12000 2) cost of dumb FADs : $500 3) dumb FADS per USV : 6 4) months till unrecoverable loss of USV : 12 5) months till unrecoverable loss of dumb FADs : 8 6) days between FAD visits : 3 7) lbs of fish caught per FAD visit : 80 8) price of fish in $/lbs : 7 9) percentage of fish sales $ going to USV operator : 30% The calculator should show weekly profit/loss number. The scale model will have cameras and Starlink. If we have some underwater cameras and fish sonar then the FAD could tell us back in Anguilla when it was a good time to come fish by that FAD. We could also have the FAD head closer when it had lots of fish around it. Having a smart FAD seems like it could have lots of possibilities. Do fish make enough noise that just listening with good microphones can detect them and classify them or estimate the number? Someone said that people have started using the term eFAD, for electronic FAD, to cover FADs with extra smarts like this. What do you think of this idea in general?