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A comment on SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Starship spaceports. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by michaelscott on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @06:47AM (#25845268)
Oil rigs are super fascinating from an engineering perspective. Ironically, outside of space the ocean is probably the most inhospitable environment for man-made structures to be built where we still want them. Anybody wanting to build platforms/cities/anything else in the ocean would probably do well to start by looking oil rig construction.
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Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by Chris2048 on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @07:07AM (#25845441)
> Anybody wanting to build platforms/cities/anything else in the ocean

For anyone interested I think the term is "Seasteading"

And for the SV crowd, a little pie-in-the-sky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueseed

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Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by bnralt on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @09:29AM (#25846808)
That's an interesting point. The article says that the rigs were bought for $3.5 million each. At that price, it seems pretty obtainable for people interested in creating a floating city at sea to buy a few as a starting point.
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Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by m4rtink on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @11:21AM (#25848244)
I'm afraid maintenance costs will quickly eclipse any money saved by buying a second hand rig due to the rather hostile marine environment.
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Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by dghlsakjg on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @12:34PM (#25849251)
That's exactly why they are so cheap. They aren't an asset that you can mothball very easily. You have to either run it or scrap it.

I would expect the cost of running them for a year is far more than 3.5 million.

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Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by spyspy on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @10:24AM (#25847457)
We've come full Armageddon.
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Re:SpaceX acquires former oil rigs to serve as floating Star... by Mauricebranagh on Wednesday January 20, 2021 @10:50AM (#25847829)
Absolutely back when I worked in Hydrodynamics RnD we built a test rig that could simulate some aspects of that - 21 Cumecs flow rate! (fist time we turned it on its set the alarms of on Cranfield Universities Power supply)
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