Massive Ships 12-Miles Offshore to Provide Floating City for Entrepreneurial Start-Ups;

Townhall.com ^ | March 16, 2013 | Mike Shedlock

[Kaslin]

A company named Blueseed is a year away from offering entrepreneurs an inexpensive place, near Silicon Valley, in which to develop their products.

"Blueseed will station a ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters. The location will allow startup entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to start or grow their company near Silicon Valley, without the need for a U.S. work visa. The ship will be converted into a coworking and co-living space, and will have high-speed Internet access and daily transportation to the mainland via ferry boat. So far, over 1000 entrepreneurs from 60+ countries expressed interest in living on the ship."

Here is a sampling of images from their page of Concept Vessels.







Who's Going to Blueseed?

Blueseed will be welcoming 1171 entrepreneurs from 368 startups in 66 countries.



Motivation Factor

Motivation for Coming to Blueseed	Not important	Somewhat important	Important	Very important	Critical
An alternative to having to get US work visas for myself or other company founders	25.80%	14.60%	16.80%	19.20%	23.60%
An alternative to having to get US work visas for my employees	27.70%	20.30%	21.20%	18.10%	12.60%
Streamlined legal and regulatory environment made with low overhead in mind	7.10%	11.00%	27.50%	29.10%	25.30%
Ease of finding talent	6.30%	14.30%	22.80%	29.70%	26.90%
Proximity to Silicon Valley's investors	3.30%	9.10%	19.80%	31.00%	36.80%
Living and working in an awesome startup- and technology- oriented space	0.30%	2.70%	10.40%	31.60%	54.90%
Coolness factor / fame / getting press	12.60%	15.40%	23.90%	22.30%	25.8

This is exceptionally cool stuff. Floating offshore hospitals and schools cannot be far off. I wish Blueseed well.

[logician2u]

Mish appears to be a little late in getting on board, so to speak.

Blueseed on the Stossel Show

The linked Stossel segment was run December 22, 2011.

[Kevmo]

for the silicon valley & tech ping lists

[PastorBooks]

“How about floating off the coast of Mexico?”

Good idea. That might just work.

[liberateUS]

I can’t wait to see what 35 foot seas do their grande redneck yacht club.

[Elsie]

I’m sure it would cost a lot less than the entrenched bureaucracy and overhead of the US medical-industrial complex...

Both of us are guessing; since there has been NO data indicating what the cost for this ambitious project would be.

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There is, however, cost data on what operating a complex mechanical entity offshore would come to.

An offshore oil platform meets a lot of the requirements that this proposed endevour would have included in it.

---

Radio "piracy" began with the advent of regulations of the public airwaves ....  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

 

 

[Elsie]

..., the world's largest cruise ship Oasis of the Seas cost per berth is merely $222,000 ...

 

The world's largest cruise ship passenger capacity is over 8,500 guests-crew-officers, and she's nothing short of a floating city. The biggest passenger ships in the world are actually two identical twins. They are sister vessels of the Oasis-class, belong to the second largest cruise company in the world - Royal Caribbean International, and bare the "modest" (and quite proper, for that matter) names of "Allure" and "Oasis". And, naturally, like all the Royal Caribbean cruise ships names - with the "unpretentious" suffix "of the Seas". 

 

 (however, if it sinks, it has 18 lifeboats with 370 capacity each. Ooops!  looks like some {around 1,840} will have to swim!)

 

 

 

http://www.shipcruise.org/cruise-articles/489-cruise-ship-cost

[fnord]

seems like a necessary step in developing a mad-scientist supervillain

[bert]

Orlin Grabbe would be proud. He visualized a similar situation in Costa Rica. His group even developed their own cyber currency and banks.

Lisbet and Janes will be taken off homicide to stakeout millionaires that permanently reside on quake proof Blue and commute as necessary

California is really doomed now

[bert]

I was a vendor for a Korean contractor with offices in Ft Lee New Jersey. They were cheap, cheap, cheap!!!

They had a visa problem for all the people. I don’t think they had any Americans at all. Many of them lived together crammed into small apartments. They all caught the flu and practically shut the place down.

[bert]

It has been done and here is what is left of the effort. Orlin J Grabbe died but his vision survives

http://orlingrabbe.com/

[PieterCasparzen]

Those are good points. You'd think it would make sense to start on a smaller scale, and build up.

But as someone else said, the ocean 12 miles out isn't exactly a stable platform. If someone can invent a way to dampen the wave oscillations, they'll really have something. Maybe even harness the energy to power the place.

What have we come to ? Not only is it not the answer to our problems, it's really pathetic. We're abandoning our towns and cities. We need more small business owners and to build personal wealth. And then to get up off our collective duff and start using that wealth to tell politicians what to do instead of them telling us what to do. By participating in society - and then coming to lead society. Not by running for the hills, stockpiling food, turning out the militia, etc., but by getting rich and then LEADING.

[Tallguy]

Didn't work-out too well in that movie, either.

[Sola Veritas]

Who will provide them with security from “pirates” and natural/manmade disasters....will our Navy or Coast Guard?

Sounds not too well thought out to me. What is to keep this from becoming a security threat to the United States?

[uncommonsense]

"The 12 NM limit will evade a whole lot of US paperwork and regulation, but it is still within the 200 NM limit of regulation regarding the environment, which means full authority of the Coastal Commission and US environmental, health and safety regulations. Beyond, in making a stationary structure (which is what a permanently moored ship would be under international law), at any moment the US government has full authority to nationalize the structure."

Excellent analysis. I know very little about maritime laws and you gave a nice dose of reality and balance to the topic.