> And to think, some people would rather spend $700 million on a boat[1].

This is the weirdest thing to me. How do billionaires think a big boat is cooler than building nuclear fusion? If I was a billionaire, I'd build space ships and underground tunnels and nuclear micro reactors

Large yachts are functional. They’re mobile own territory for people operating on the level of nation states.

Booking out a hotel for hundreds of aides, attachés and visitors is very difficult outside the largest cities. Securing it can be impossible. Particularly on short notice. A yacht solves those problems.

(I’d still pick the reactor.)

I never thought of it from this perspective. A yacht could serve as a research vessel with slight added protection against political turmoil. One of the problems with setting up organizations inside of a nation-state are the economic and political risks. Without the necessary dive into the ethics of the proposition, it might serve as the Noah's ark for vital research and the associated minds.

Sergey Brin uses his yacht for disaster relief. He has a charity that sends teams around the world to help with disasters.[1]

He also has a startup, LTA (Lighter Than Air), aiming to build blimps for humanitarian purposes.[2] According to this article he also wants to the blimp to be "luxuriously appointed" so it can be used as an air yacht.[3] LTA is based at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, and I know I've seen blimps take off and land there every once in a while. When I see one I always wonder if it's Sergey's blimp.

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-...

[2] https://www.ltaresearch.com/

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-airship-c...

Are we sure this isn't one of those tax-haven "foundations" that get you adulation and praise from the march-in-line media and a tax-free yacht and airship to use on the weekends? Maybe a "luxuriously appointed" "humanitarian" "tax haven"? I'm out of quote marks now.

Right? If he wanted to spend 80 million on humanitarian missions he'd be better to have bought the HMS Ocean when it was in sale. As a helicarrier with a proven track record in humanitarian missions, it's vastly better equipped than a party boat stocked up from Home Depot.

Now there's a spec-fic book I'd read:

> Physicists trapped in indentured servitude aboard Elon Musk's converted droneship research station "Just Fucking Get It Done" as it sails the post-apocalytic seas.

> Just when they thought it couldn't get any worse, they dock at Peter Thiel's island bio-research facility and they have to take matters into their own nitrile-gloved hands before it's too late...

Or pretty much the whole snowpiercer plot

> A yacht could serve as a research vessel with slight added protection against political turmoil.

Fun fact, this was part of the setup for Tenet.

Most luxury yachts only have a passenger capacity of 12. There aren't hundreds of people on those.

They may have passenger capacity of 12, but they have a larger crew and servant quarters capacity. You can invite 11 more of your billionaire pals, and there'll be plenty of people around to serve their needs.

I've seen stories of megayachts that have their own smaller yacht following them with the water toys, and other humans who help provide entertainment for those owning the larger yacht. The first entry on the link below says that some kind of lab has been fitted into it.

https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/editorial-features/...

If not for visions of space-faring billionaires, I could easily foresee sea-based billionaires with a small armada of support vessels to provide for them:

Old tankers could potentially be repurposed as massive hydroponic farms, or even fish farms. Why trust the local's mercury-and-parasite ridden fauna, when you can instead pull some fresh Tilapia 2 (genome will be slightly modified to prevent breeding with 'natties', probably will have different-colored skin) out of The Pond's hold?

A cruise ship would probably be the best host vessel for your employees, since it already has a lot of the features you'd need (sleeping, eating, refit some of the entertainment spaces into workspaces), and a smart move would have been to buy one during the Covid crash the operators had early on. Force your employees to register as residents in your port town of choice for optimal tax shelter status, and minimal legislative oversight.

Nuclear submarines could be used as top-secret skunkworks, since they could dive down in order to guarantee some amount of isolation from corporate spies. Once you have your roster for a project, you'd dive down a mile or so, and give the teams metrics to see who earns the most sunlight during the bimonthly surfacings. Lines up nicely with 2 week sprints, right?

But here's something I can't figure out: What would the flagship be? How many people would it need to support? Would it be one of the biggest of the armada (like the capital vessel), or would it be an incredibly-well-appointed cruiser?

Still at least an order of magnitude fewer guests than was suggested above. A small hotel can host this many people.

Initially, I found this to be insightful.

Then I discovered that the $700 million superyacht Scheherazade can accommodate "40 guests in 22 cabins". I suppose you could fill the hallways with bunk beds as well for your "hundreds of aids, attaches, and visitors".

I don't think accommodating 40 guests is difficult "outside of the largest cities".

> Booking out a hotel for hundreds of aides, attachés and visitors is very difficult outside the largest cities.

Even the biggest yachts can't host even close to these numbers of people. E.g. the gigantic Azzam superyacht, at a cost of $600M, and 180m in length, can host only 36 guests according to news reports.

Probably that implies "36 guests" and their staff and support infrastructure.

I doubt when Buff Jezos goes to visit Gill Bates on his super yacht he shows up only with a couple suitcases.

Thing is that with that 700 million you could buy 2 - 10 million luxury property when you go new place.

Not mutually exclusive. How about a fusion powered yatch?

Could be fission powered, if it's an old aircraft carrier.

You'd think a billionaire would have gotten one of those by now. Like China with the Liaoning... though, even the Liaoning isn't nuclear.

Actually, that's pretty amazing. The Americans have several nuclear carriers. The Soviets/Russians had/have several. And the French have one: the Charles de Gaulle. That's it. Nobody else has any. Not even China. Not even Britain (which does have nuclear submarines).

That's pretty amazing.

It really puts into perspective how powerful the United States is.

Granted, there's an argument that these are becoming floating targets, what with ASBMs, and as hypersonics come online. But still. They're pretty impressive things.

And even the Russians seem less capable than expected.

Which leaves basically just the US. Still.

Complacency would be a huge mistake -- and China is projected to start working on nuclear carriers pretty soon -- but, nevertheless, maybe reports of America's dethronement are premature.

Many countries have rules which forbid privately operated ships powered by fission-reactors docking/anchoring. The German-built Otto Hahn wasn't allowed passage through Suez and Panama Channel, the US-built NS-Savannah was excluded from ports in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Though that was long ago, I'm unaware of changes regarding that.

So no cruising to your bunker in NZ on your supernukular toy when the SHTF :-)

Interesting. Your post led me to [1]. Even including all the (mostly Russian) icebreakers, the number of nuclear-powered vessels is quite small.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Ci...

Aircraft carriers are large targets because they're so valuable. WWII Pacific Theater was centered around taking out enemy aircraft carriers while preserving your own. If you can have one that can operate on its own for months and out-speed any chemically-fuelled vessel: that's a huge advantage. Now imagine having a fleet of them. Nothing short of ready for war.

For Russians you'd want a nuclear ice breaker as the ultimate flex.

Wouldn't that be ironic: oil billionaire buys a nuclear icebreaker just in time to never be able to use again because there's no ice to break.

Many megayachts are chartered when not in use by their owner. So in the end they are investments that produce a return [1]

“ It's worth acknowledging that while owners will ultimately spend a huge amount for the privilege of having their very own superyacht, they're able to recoup some of these costs by chartering them out. Connor estimates that around 12 weeks of charter represents the annual operating cost of most yachts, which means owners can break even if they hire their boats out for the same length of time they use them during the year.”

[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/hidden-costs-of-owning-a-supe...

Silly question, but who is renting the superyachts? Is it all just money laundering and tax sheltering back and forth among billionaires?

I assume people worth several hundred million dollars won't spend 10%-50% of their total wealth on a $100+ million yacht, but will still pay $1mil/week to rent one on occasion.

You might break even on running costs, but when do you break even on the outlay?

I guess you get some back if you sell it, and you probably never actually laid out for it as such rather than though some mad financial chicanery because simply paying for stuff is decidedly plebian.

Here's an example: Moonlight II. It's a 300 foot yacht owned by a sheik [1]. The price is $100 MM. You can rent it for "from $705k per week" [2]. Could be more, I guess. If they manage to charter it for 30 weeks a year, that's a nice $21 MM. That more than covers any conceivable financing and operating costs. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find an investment with a similar return.

[1] https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonlight-ii/

[2] https://www.fraseryachts.com/en/yacht-for-charter/moonlight-...

> If they manage to charter it for 30 weeks a year

that's a big "if"

Something like that probably has a one week turnaround between charters just to deep clean the thing, and reposition for the next trip.

Ew, yes can you imagine the mess.

I'm surprised no authority has raided one just after an investment banker party cruise, looked for the forgotten baggies and seized the vessel for "drug smuggling".

In most localities, the purpose of drug laws is not in constraining the behaviour of people wealthy enough to party on a super-yacht.

10 weeks would put it on par with Equity returns. Still not bad.

Doesn't that also have the benefit of making the yacht a business expense?

I think superyachts are too "tax-efficient" to be thought about in such simple terms.

I’m not sure that’s the point. I think it’s more about minimizing costs. The rest is just part of the opportunity cost.

Eventually, yeah, I’d think so. I’m not nesting-doll-yacht rich but as I understand it:

1) You don’t buy something for $100+ million out-of-pocket. It’s easy to borrow money when you have money. The purchase would be financed at very close to market interest rates, and the repayments factored into the running costs.

2) The vessel would then be run as a business and chartered out for conventions, luxury cruises etc. Any profits would go to the owner.

3) The owner would then use the vessel as needed, maybe even paying like any other customer (albeit out of the profits generated by the boat itself, I’d imagine.)

4) Any remaining profits could be used to pay off capital, but probably aren’t. Instead, they’d be used to fund new ventures.

Well the yacht is now an 'investment' so you get to claim it on taxes and get an instant 30% refund.

Your buddy sets up a special company just to build it and stiffs all his employees and suppliers. Then the quid pro quo gets you another 30% or so back.

Renting it out for another 12mo/year earns the remainder back in a decade or two.

You can also 'donate' the use of your yacht to have a big party (also known as a charity ball) from time to time if you feel you are paying too much tax. Make sure the 'charity' is one owned by one of your buddies and is primarily used for lobbying or undermining competitors.

> now an 'investment' so you get to claim it on taxes and get an instant 30% refund

I gotta ask, have you ever filed taxes? Cause that’s not how any of this works.

How do I claim things on my taxes as "investments" for a 30% refund?

Boats are fantastically expensive to maintain. You can surely recover some costs by renting them out, but I’d imagine it’s still mostly a net negative “investment”.

If it floats, flies, or fucks, it's cheaper to pay by the hour.

It depends on why you've got a mega yacht.

If you're a state level actor, you've got state level security concerns. I doubt, for instance, the American or Russian consulate gets rented out for parties where they turn over the whole kit to some other organization.

Yes, there is "your" staff on-site to protect much of the yacht / facility, but that doesn't stop a determined actor who's got a week of somewhat unsupervised access from infesting the whole ship with bugs bombs and poisons.

Right? Big boats aren't even that big a brag, someone will always have a bigger one, and if yours is longest for now, then theirs has three helipads, and next year some tryhard will build a longer one anyway.

Being first to fusion would mean your name would be above even Einstein in history.

Einstein didn’t fund theorists and researchers, he came up with the ideas.

Such a practical application that solves world energy needs forever?

It is all fun and games until someone orders a cruise ship as yacht... Which might happen, as it is only like 1,5-2 billion...

The natural one-up then must be an aircraft carrier.

I am reasonably sure trying to commission building one would bring the attention of the United States and ah, the situation would develop not necessarily to your advantage...

The big boat is about status, which means attracting mates and increasing the odds of breeding before a lion eats you. Our brain stems don’t know what geological epoch we are in.

That a big useless boat is a vastly bigger panty-dropper then a working fusion reactor says everything about our species, doesn't it?

And just about every species on the planet.

Chicks dig the long ball.

Girls in bikinis don't want to sun themselves on a fusion reactor.

you just don't know the right girls.

Sun is a fusion reactor, and they choose, quite rationally, that getting tanned on a big boat under a big reactor is way better than getting tanned on on a cheap bench with that microscopic reactor.

I sense a future for the combination fusion reactor-tanning salon market.

Could be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_lightbulb

I can see the tagline.

"Gamma ray tanning beds: illegal in 220 countries!"

To be fair, you do get a better tan with a fission reactor.

How exactly does "funding a cool research project" gets you laid and / or allows for money laundering [1] ?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/24/superyachts-...

Well, Putin in particular has a pretty serious interest in not funding fusion, but that's just one example.

The fusion reactor just uses a very inefficient process to turn energy into less energy. At least the big boat goes places.

IMO, spending 15TJ running a research reactor like JET at full whack for 6 hours (which is actually a lot of test fires) is of greater benefit than burning the better part of half a million litres of diesel moving a single billionaire and his lampreys around a bit.

You taught me a new word today. Props for creative use in context too, I might add.

Is it? We’ve been doing this for what, 30 years and all we really have to show for it is 30 years of hoping that the big breakthrough is 5-10 years away.

Fusion reactor can be thought of in terms of "billions of dollars" away and progress is much clearer.

https://imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png

Integrating the curves is maybe $100 billion. And below a certain level of funding nothing can really be done (you can't build any reactor on $10 and a box of surplus paperclips the IRS donated from pity). The fact we actual got anywhere using the handful of "it's a start" research reactors like JET, which dates to 1984, that could get built is a testament to the scientists and engineers, not a indictment of the field.

Basically, if as much was spent on it as we spent on blowing up poor countries for no real reason (at least $2,000 billion, just for Afghanistan), we'd likely be onto the second or third generation. Or we'd have concluded decades ago that it really can't be done to a five-sigma certainty.

The cynic in me says there's a renewed push for it recently because China has 3 research reactors, the next one (CFETR) is designed to outperform ITER (which China is contributing to) and support research for DEMO (which is to say, it is or is very close to being designed for experimental power generation), and the US feels in danger of being beaten to it.

That’s a big assumption that diminishing marginal returns don’t set in at $2B a year or $5 a year.

$500 worth of steroids may let me bench press 200lbs, but it doesn’t follow that with $50,000 I could lift my house.

We have a lot more than blind hope, if you care to learn about the state of fusion research today.

30 years is less than a fraction of an eyeblink in human history.

A lot of billionaires have organized businesses but never tinkered with anything constructive in their lives. They don’t even own a black and decker power tool.

It is enough to own black and decker... Scnr

They do, for example: "Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, founded by Gates, Bezos and other philanthropists"

In particular they backed "Commonwealth Fusion Systems".