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Reclaiming Oil Rigs As Oceanic Eco-Resorts
Mike writes "Here's an innovative reuse for those old abandoned oil rigs littering the ocean — convert them into eco resorts. Morris Architects' Oil Rig Platform Resort and Spa makes use of one of 4,000 oil rigs out in the Gulf of Mexico and transforms it into a beacon of sustainability, re-imagining an iconic source of dirty energy as an eco-haven that generates all of its power from renewable sources."
It's common knowledge to anyone who pays attention that the only reason east and west coasters are so against oil drilling in their backyards is because they don't want it to affect beachfront property values. Oil rigs are largely a huge boon to the local fish populations, because they are essentially giant man-made reefs.
Abandoned oil rigs need to remain abandoned, at least during hurricane season. Last thing emergency officials need are a bunch of earth-firsters not following protocol and being stranded in the middle of a storm. It makes a lot more sense to topple the rigs.
They'll probably need to employ a pretty good sized security force if they want to ward off pirates--and yes, I'm being serious.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Can the resorts withstand category 5 hurricane force winds? Seems to me that with only 1 helipad you may have a huge and dangerous bottleneck to evacuating quickly.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Clean and sink 'em.
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If you'd seen all of the work it took to clean San Francisco Bay up from one oil ship that just bumped a bridge pier, you'd not be writing that. Months of intensive work, then about a year of oil turning up in nooks and crannies that had to be scrubbed out.
Bruce Perens.
The UK never bothered to deal with Sealand; it apparently didn't warrant the attention, bad publicity from a raid gone bad, or the time and money necessary to do anything about it. Harboring a wmd on a small rig just 6 miles off the shore of a major power like UK is just asking for trouble. The Royal Marines could take that thing over without even getting out of breath. It's essentially too small and too close to be defendable. As a former US Marine and senior intelligence analyst, that's my opinion anyway. YMMV.
If you just wanted to say you're the Supreme Dictator for Life of a small island nation, then go for it. But it's kind of pointless to make and sell passports that no one else recognizes. Pretty useless, really.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Sorry, no. Getting Scuba certified at an oil platform isn't going to happen, because (unless I'm mistaken), these are generally located in fairly deep water. Scuba diving beginners get started at the beach, and later use boats to go out a bit, to where it's perhaps 40-50 feet deep. Most generally don't go deeper than 100-150 feet. If you go any deeper than 100 feet, you're probably getting into technical diving, which is where you start messing around with other mixes of gases, and the risk is higher, and of course the water's a lot colder too.
Additionally, there's the problem of what do you plan to look at while you're down there? If you want to look at pretty fish and coral and stuff like that, you're best off going no deeper than 40 feet, and sticking to beaches, because that's where all the interesting wildlife is. Like life on the surface, most life underwater relies on sunlight, so it's all close to the surface. Of course, there's plenty of life much deeper too, but 1) there's a lot less density of it than, say, a coral reef, and 2) it's generally not as pretty or colorful. It's also so cold down there that if you're diving in a wetsuit, you can't stay down there that long to look at stuff. Now, if you're diving for wrecks, that's a little different, and these can be much deeper. But deep diving requires a lot of skill and experience. And wrecks aren't likely to be located conveniently right next to an oil rig.
So if you ask me, this oil platform idea is utter idiocy. As you said, there's absolutely nothing to do out there. You're a lot better off just getting on a cruise ship, from where you can see the open ocean for a few days before your next port-of-call where you can get off and go scuba diving on a nice beach with a beautiful coral reef just offshore.
As for helicopters, large helicopters run on jet fuel (Jet A), which is basically kerosene, not diesel. They also cost $600/hour to fly, at the minimum. It might be possible to make an aircraft turbine engine that runs on diesel (and by extension, biodiesel), since they already have very large turbines that run on diesel, but I seriously don't see any aircraft engine companies going to the effort of engineering a biodiesel turbine for this tiny market. No airport in America has diesel on hand for refueling anyway; they typically have 100LL avgas, for piston engines, and Jet A for turbine engines, and that's about it. So your point about the helicopters is a very good one: these stupid oil platforms will not be "eco-havens" as long as they rely on expensive jet-fuel-guzzling helicopters to fly visitors and supplies in, and that really is the only convenient way to get stuff and people to and from these locations.