From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jun 02 2003 - 01:46:11 MDT
--- "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
>
> Pls note, for the small amount of $4.5M, we can
> purchase an Ex-aircraft
> carrier (not so sure why it is "ex") and have the
> "Extro 1", the first
> Extropian "enclave".
Extropes,
This is an idea to which I've devoted many "sessions
of sweet silent thought".
Regarding the cost of maintenance/operation. If
you're cruisin the world, it's gonna cost more than if
you just park it and live on it. Also, if you just
park it, you can coat the hull with concrete,
whereupon rust and electrochemical corrosion of the
hull ceases to be an issue (remember the bad boy oil
tanker in "Waterworld"?)
If you want to cruise on the cheap, and don't need to
go fast, you could turn it into a sailboat. If you
don't need to land and launch airplanes, that big flat
open deck presents a world of possibilities.
In 1971 I worked for a ship breaker in the old Kaiser
shipyard in Richmond, Ca. We took apart a jeep
carrier that had been sold for scrap from the US
mothball fleet. I led a crew that went through the
interior taking out all things flammable. We stacked
mattresses from the crew quarters onto bomb dollies,
hauled them out to the hanger deck, and then threw
them down onto the dock below. This to certify the
ship fire safe for cutting apart with acetelyne
torches. Actually, the ship was too big to fit in the
drydock whole, so first it had to be cut in half, and
then dismantled by halves.
SJ Van Sickle rightly notes that used ships are
plentiful, and cruise ships are purposefully designed
more for human habitation than an aircraft carrier.
(But an aircraft carrier is without a doubt way cooler
than a lamo cruise ship.)
The $850K cruise ships he offers for our consideration
has 120 cabins. If you figure another 50 living
quarters for crew, that gives 170 separate living
spaces. That's $5K per, out the door fully paid off.
(Tax, title, and insurance extra, natch.) Whatta
deal!
While the aircraft carrier, at $4.5 mil, doesn't
submit so readily to the dollars-per-living-space
calculation, the bottom line is in the same ballpark,
ie, chickenfeed.
My recommendation: start with one aircraft carrier
and one cruise ship, park them in the southern part of
San Francisco Bay at the precise confluence of San
Mateo, Santa Clara, and Alameda counties. (So when
whichever county tax collector comes along, you simply
say, "We're not in 'your' county", or alternately,
"We're not in 'your' county for a sufficient fraction
of the year to sustain a tax liability", or
alternately, use your mobility to play the three
counties off against one another for the best tax
deal. Remember, are they really gonna provide you with
police, schools, roads, fire protection, utilities,
garbage pick-up, sewage treatment, or anything else to
justify their tax levy? Like I said, I've thought
about this a lot.)
If you can deal with the regulatory nightmare, you can
have an outrageous club/condo/commercial hotspot.
Otherwise go for private ownership coop. Where else
in the Bay Area--or for that matter any location
within shouting disance of civilization--can you get
your own private home in your own private floating
city for $5K-$10K.
Bay Area Extropians comprise only a fraction of the
larger Bay Area lifestyle adventurers who would love
this idea. Every tribe it's own boat in the
Extropian-initiated Geeklandia fleet. A Star Trek
boat: the Enterprise no doubt. A
OpenSource/coders/hackers boat. A Gay boat (it is San
Francisco after all.) A gamer boat. A SciFi boat. A
hippy boat. A heavily-armed Libertarian boat. etc.
Best, Jeff Davis
"We don't see things as they are,
we see them as we are."
Anais Nin
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