Seasteading...

[jago25_98]

 Seeing as this is the Bitcoin forum let's talk about internet at sea first.
SatPhones are expensive. Making calls via SatPhone regularly is pretty much out of the question.
But is SatInternet different? I looked into this. A gyroscopic dome costs $20,000. With that you can hook up to 2 way internet. Now, true VSAT in use on commercial shipping is very expensive. Can that tech be coupled to the cheaper SatInternet designed for rural areas?
In order to cut out the cost of that $20,000 I wondered if I could use an ordinary $400 satphone and just accept way lower speeds... but I couldn't figure out if the simcards would fit etc... anyone know? Even $10/mb prepay internet from a satphone might be useful to get emails. (p.s. need to sort that blockchain!!)

There's also packet radio but that's a can of worms.

---

 Economics is the thing that stops this being bigger. Question: Might that change?

I work at sea and the basic answer to everything is carry a lot of diesel. With this you get aircon, heating, refridgeration, desalination and so on. Water is still a problem. Food isn't really an issue.

We are still more fish like than terrestrial animals. Our environment is the coastal environment. We should be able to survive at sea no problem. The fact that this doesn't already happen shows to me how little we know about the sea. It is easier to live in a quiet place instead.

I've looking into buying a boat to live on and the mooring fees along with all the new skills were what stop me doing it in normal situations. In order for it to work you are then paying for garbage disposal, electric and water. Unfortunately I found the market for these services was not big enough to generate low enough fees. All of these can be fixed but doing it well is harder than I wanted to risk life savings on.

edit:

Don't want to bump but you can watch this related film from a crypto guy who lived at sea. The DVD is available if you want to give it as a present:
http://www.blueanarchy.org/holdfast/download.html

[caveden]

Satellites are not the only option if you are not nomadic. By keeping a roughly fixed position you can also add options like infrared, submarine cables, floating wireless routers etc. I don't know what's the best, but the people behind Blueseed are doing some research on this topic since they'll need fast internet access.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Seeing as this is the Bitcoin forum let's talk about internet at sea first.
SatPhones are expensive. Making calls via SatPhone regularly is pretty much out of the question.
But is SatInternet different? I looked into this. A gyroscopic dome costs $20,000. With that you can hook up to 2 way internet. Now, true VSAT in use on commercial shipping is very expensive. Can that tech be coupled to the cheaper SatInternet designed for rural areas?
In order to cut out the cost of that $20,000 I wondered if I could use an ordinary $400 satphone and just accept way lower speeds... but I couldn't figure out if the simcards would fit etc... anyone know? Even $10/mb prepay internet from a satphone might be useful to get emails. (p.s. need to sort that blockchain!!)

VSAT equipment isn't that expensive.  Yeah gyroscopic dome mounts can go $5K to $20K but using crappy DirectWay terminal is still going to require a stable alignment.  Their terminals are pure garbage and only work w/ their birds.  Everyone else uses standardized components which can be programmed to work w/ a large variety of sats.  A standard terminal is going to run you about $2K.

When people say sat is expensive they mean compared to land based connectivity not impossibly expensive.

A C-band VSAT link runs about $2K to $3K per month for a 1 Mbps link (remember you pay both ways).  Ku band is about double that price (but does better in bad weather - less signal fade due to rain).  That gives you a rough idea of what a link is going to cost you.  That price may vary 30% or so depending on where you are, which sat you are connecting to, how large your dish is, how much bandwidth you are buying, preemption rights, etc.    With a dedicated link you are giving a timeslice, transponder frequency, and sat assignment and that time is yours.    Technically the sat is likely operating at 34Mbps so if you have a  1Mbps link then you are assigned ~3% of the timeslots.  So you are operating at 34Mbps 3% of the time = 1 Mbps effective.

To save money you can use contention.  Commercial sat is available in 5:1, 10:1, 20:1 or even 50:1 contention.  That just means multiple end points are sharing the same link. So with 10:1 contention if everyone is on at the same time well your 1Mbps link is going to feel like a 100kbps link.   A 20:1 contention link off NSS7 likely will run you $300 or so per month for 2Mbps down & 1Mbps up if you prepay a year.

Also remember your contract is w/ a single bird.  If you can't see it then you got no internet.  For example say you contracted for a link on NSS-7 North America spot beam (possibly useful for seasteading because it is used by caribbean nations for internet).  This is your roaming range

http://www.satsig.net/global-teleports/NSS-7-north-america-ku-spot-beam.jpg

If you want to sail around the world either that is going to require multiple contracts w/ multiple birds or some company to sell your contention across multiple birds.  You could use a sat phone but you are still going to pay $50 per month and about $10 per MB.  Good for emergencies though.

If you wonder where I learned all this ... got deployed to Iraq and our FOB ("base") had no general use internet connectivity.  If we wanted internet we needed to find our own.   We did.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Satellites are not the only option if you are not nomadic. By keeping a roughly fixed position you can also add options like infrared, submarine cables, floating wireless routers etc. I don't know what's the best, but the people behind Blueseed are doing some research on this topic since they'll need fast internet access.

Interesting.  It shows how having a "base station" opens up the options for seasteading.  Take a end of life semi-submersible drilling platform.  Retrofit it to have the essentials:
* electrical generation
* laser connectivity w/ mainland
* hospital facilities
* desalination & water storage
* food stores, cold storage, etc.

That becomes the nucleus for a larger community.

[MoonShadow]

Satellites are not the only option if you are not nomadic. By keeping a roughly fixed position you can also add options like infrared, submarine cables, floating wireless routers etc. I don't know what's the best, but the people behind Blueseed are doing some research on this topic since they'll need fast internet access.

Interesting.  It shows how having a "base station" opens up the options for seasteading.  Take a end of life semi-submersible drilling platform.  Retrofit it to have the essentials:
* electrical generation
* laser connectivity w/ mainland
* hospital facilities
* desalination & water storage
* food stores, cold storage, etc.

That becomes the nucleus for a larger community.

Yes, but the point I was making in the OP was that trying to build a foating city-state is going about it the wrong way.  The concept can only work if it starts with smaller communities and builds up to the point that a mostly stationary floating city-state is economicly sound, and then those that want such a thing will make it happen.  We already have the smallest of such communities, they just consist mostly of couples or families that tend to cluster around a particular marina.  They cluster because they need access to infrastruture that is expensive to provide for individual boats, as Interent service is one such example.  The central 'escort' boat can provide many of these infrastrucure resources while at sea, further reducing the individual family unit's dependency on shore provided resources, but cannot realisticly eliminate that dependency.  But the more time that you spend at sea, the cheaper the lifesype can be overall, because marina fees are no small part of your budget.  Interent costs can be shared by such a community by using marine quality wifi gear to connect to a sat uplink on the communty's escort ship, and save on bandwidth costs by using a squid server to cache those pretty pictures that everyone sees from facebook and the like.  The problem is only slightly more complicated at sea than for a remote African village trying to get connectivity for their schools.  A system similar to sailmail could also help to maintain a minimum level of connectivity while at sea too far from shore to reach a cell tower.  Although, with the right equipment mounted on the peak of the escort ship's mast, it's not unrealistic for a community to be beyond the international line and still get a bar; for cell towers are always mounted well high on the horizon and are designed to work to some considerable distance with tiny devices using low power outputs and terrible antennas.  I'd be willing to wager that the line of sight possible between an atenna mounted on a 70' tower and a high gain sector antenna mounted on the peak of a 40' mast is considerable.

[MoonShadow]

http://www.calculatoredge.com/electronics/lineofsight.htm

According to that, line of sight is 21 miles.  If either the cell tower or the mast is higher, the los is farther.

[SistaS0uljah]

If you want to sail around the world either that is going to require multiple contracts w/ multiple birds or some company to sell your contention across multiple birds.  You could use a sat phone but you are still going to pay $50 per month and about $10 per MB.  Good for emergencies though.

Most people sailing around the world don't bother communicating with satellite phones.  Ham radio is much cheaper and easier to use.  The technology is decades old and yet still works great.  I have sent and received email from sailors over HF links using the WinLink2000 software (see http://www.winlink.org), and it really works quite well.  Granted, this is only for email, not full internet access, so it isn't really a complete solution for BlueSeed, but is an inexpensive step in the right direction.

If you want to see how many vessels are connected via Winlink worldwide, you can see a position map at http://www.winlink.org/userPositions.

Winlink (and ham radio) were also used extensively last May after a tornado destroyed a huge portion of Joplin, Missouri, and telephone communications were disrupted for the better part of a week.  Ham operators took the lead in establishing emergency communications systems to coordinate the relief effort.

We don't necessarily need state-of-the-art technology when the good old stuff still works pretty damned well.