Hmm. But I suspect you could bring the cost of that down since the ingredients are basically just ordinary rock. So maybe there is something to be said for UHPC concrete megastructures if you can scale up and vertically integrate the manufacturing.
But that’s a very expensive building! $5000 per square meter of floor area. And it’s not very efficient because lots of its volume is taken up with elevators.
Maybe we should take a step back and consider what your higher-level goals are here. I’m not sure what they are. The possibilities that come to mind are:
build large stuff out of pykrete because it’s novel
build large stuff out of ice because it’s large
establish a community separate from existing governments (seasteading)
What exactly is the difference that’s needed from current large cruise ships? Is it size per se? Independent production of food and fuel? Production of trade goods?
It’s physical size, permanence (lasts for 200+ years with extensions possible) and cost per unit area (cheap enough for middle class people), safety, no sea motion, pleasant land to live on, strong foundations for large buildings, robustness (not sensitive to one small mistake)
You don’t need to produce food, you don’t even need to produce physical goods. But you do need a population of 1 million people who are there permanently and call it home.
In general, things with a higher value per mass have less price variation across countries, because transport costs are less important, but less competition and price transparency, because they’re more specialized and lower-volume.
For 50 MPa concrete you basically need to add 1% of additives that are maybe $3500/ton.
For much higher strengths you start needing expensive stuff, eg silica fume.
Hmm. But I suspect you could bring the cost of that down since the ingredients are basically just ordinary rock. So maybe there is something to be said for UHPC concrete megastructures if you can scale up and vertically integrate the manufacturing.
it seems some people agreed with you about that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIQrGfV9oA8
But that’s a very expensive building! $5000 per square meter of floor area. And it’s not very efficient because lots of its volume is taken up with elevators.
Maybe we should take a step back and consider what your higher-level goals are here. I’m not sure what they are. The possibilities that come to mind are:
build large stuff out of pykrete because it’s novel
build large stuff out of ice because it’s large
establish a community separate from existing governments (seasteading)
make more land so there’s more land overall
Seasteading, which means making new land at scale
What exactly is the difference that’s needed from current large cruise ships? Is it size per se? Independent production of food and fuel? Production of trade goods?
It’s physical size, permanence (lasts for 200+ years with extensions possible) and cost per unit area (cheap enough for middle class people), safety, no sea motion, pleasant land to live on, strong foundations for large buildings, robustness (not sensitive to one small mistake)
You don’t need to produce food, you don’t even need to produce physical goods. But you do need a population of 1 million people who are there permanently and call it home.
Does this vary on market at large scale as it does for medium scale? USA vs Asia, for example was 2-3x difference in price in concrete 10 years ago.
In general, things with a higher value per mass have less price variation across countries, because transport costs are less important, but less competition and price transparency, because they’re more specialized and lower-volume.
Gold is high value per mass, but has a lot of price transparency and competition.