The chief engineer shook her head. "There's just no way that can be true. This city is bigger than a Tigress. Bigger than three of them, actually. Our keel goes down so far deeprays get tangled in it. It's sculpted to ride the currents, ocean and atmosphere. A damned typhoon isn't going to mean a thing to us."

The tech shook her head, too. "Chief, this isn't a normal typhoon. I don't know how the survey missed this, but we're seeing surface winds beyond anything in our models. I'm talking half a mach, and that's a thick atmosphere out there. And the waves...well, there's no land on Ulma to stop them, you know that. So they just keep building. They're breaking across the landing aprons on deck 74. That's two hundred meters above the waterline. Or where the waterline is supposed to be, anyway."

"So let 'em break," replied the chief. "It would take a nuclear strike to do any real damage to the superstructure. We'll repair some bent railings when this is over, and..." She trailed off.

"What?" the tech began to ask, then she felt it, too. Without a word, the chief reached into her desk and pulled out a ball bearing, placing it on the center of her desk. It slowly began to roll toward her.

Just then, the first lights began flickering from green to red on the wall status display.


On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 12:30 AM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

The big problem with most futuristic ocean-based designs is that the designers often go for spectacular architecture but impractical infrastructure. And, just as on ships, the greatest problem is power, I.e. energy generation.

One reason we don't have any on Earth now is that such urbanities would require massive amounts of energy, well beyond the capabilities of nuclear power plant tech.

One design consideration I was looking at a few years ago was to generate power via Massive Local Current Array generators which work just like standard turbines, but are much larger.

The real-world problem of constructing in international waters is a legal one. I suppose on a water world this isn't an issue.

Greg C

On 30/12/2015 8:47 AM, "Timothy Collinson" <xxxxxx@port.ac.uk> wrote:
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