I Can Make Floating Islands
Calsterra Project — Introduction
Although this sounds weird I assure you that this is not an exaggeration. Well to be exact. I am able to make artificial reef material in a vat, and in almost any size and shape I want.
This started off as a side project I was working on during the pandemic. Recently I finally got the intellectual property side of things sorted out. So I would like to share the implications of what this technology can do and what I am thinking of doing with it.
Let’s start with the material itself.
What you see in the above video is essentially artificial limestone. It is mostly composed out of oxidized crystal forms of Calcium and Aluminum with trace amounts of Iron, Copper and Magnesium. It has similar structural characteristics to lightweight cement with a few added benefits. It does not decay, it does not catch mold and under the right circumstances, it has self-healing capabilities. It is grown inside a proprietary solution that promotes the crystallization of the above-mentioned minerals with the help of synchronized electrical stimulation that greatly accelerates the process.
My work was inspired by the work of the late Wolf Hilbertz. In 1976 he invented a process with which he could extract minerals from seawater and deposit them on a metal frame. He aimed to create underwater structures that could grow to become coral reefs and help restore damaged ecosystems. He called the rock that was made with his method Biorock. Which was a very fitting name in my opinion. Since he grew it directly on the ocean floor he didn’t have any control over the minerals present in the water so the end result was a mixed bag of outcomes. I imagine the rock he produced would vary from location to location.
Unfortunately for him, the Biorock he produced grew at an extremely slow rate of roughly around 20 mm (or 4/5 of an Inch) per year. And although Mr. Wolf Hilbertz had grander ambitions for this technology he never managed to make anything with it before he passed away.
However, over the past few years, I managed to create my own method of going about it and I have managed to create a process that grows rock at a rate of 12 mm (about 1/2 an Inch)per day or well over 4000mm (or 157 Inches) per year. In other words, my method can grow artificial rock 219 times faster. Furthermore, I have greater control over the shape of the structures and the purity of the crystal produced using this method.
Here is a speed-up time-lapse video of me growing a stone bottle cap using a wireframe to direct the growth of the rock.
That growth speed opens up a lot of possibilities about what we can do now. It is certainly possible to make boats out of this and the self-healing properties of this material could make it a very attractive proposition. Plus since this material does not rust or decay you could leave it in the water all year around and it would be fine. However it is considerably heavier than fibreglass, wood and sheet metal so it would cost a lot more energy to move a vessel made out of that substance. It is a very friendly material for marine life that will inevitably get attached to it and call it home which would make the boat even heavier to move. Although something similar has been done before.
There have been ships made out of concrete multiple times. The U S government ordered the construction of over a dozen concrete ships during the steel shortage of the 1940s. Concrete was inexpensive and ships were in high demand throughout World War II. Some ships, like the SS Vitruvius, even participated in combat missions and were active during the D-Day invasion. After the war, it was almost universally agreed concrete ships weren’t the best idea. With steel production ramping back up, the ships were all decommissioned. The final mission for these concrete ships was to protect the coast from erosion. Today, nine concrete ships make up the Kiptopekee Breakwater off the coast of Kiptopekee State Park.
So what could you do with it?
Well, It is fairly similar to concrete so it can grow on steel reinforcement that can be weaved into larger structures. My simulations indicate that you could make objects of similar size and far more complex shapes than what you could make with concrete.
Although you can make more or less anything you want with this, where this technology shines is In the construction of really large objects. Sure you could make something small like a desk ornament, a vase or a planter using this technology. But that can be made out of any material you like, such as plastic, clay or wood. But trying to make something really big like a skyscraper out of plastic, clay or wood is easier said than done and you would be far more limited in the shapes you could make using those materials, while this rock is not limited by those restrictions.
That said, on that scale, there are only three things that come to mind that this technology can produce better than anything else out there. Large complex structures like large-scale statues and buildings can be produced easily. But the option that has by far the greatest potential for a positive impact on our lives and the environment is the creation of floating platforms on an unimaginable and unprecedented scale.
That alone offers a near-limitless potential for unexplored possibilities.
At this point, you may be wondering about how much this could cost. Well, surprisingly the cost of a floating platform is cheaper than you might think. If I scale up the cost based on what I can create now I can get an idea of how expensive this might be. And in my estimation, with the current cost of raw materials and labour. The cost comes out to about $20 USD per cubic foot (or $700 USD per cubic meter) for all the structural rock. Although there is a chance that there are unforeseen costs I have not accounted for, this gives us a great ballpark figure to go by.
The first thing that crossed my mind was that I could put a house on top of an artificial island. I don’t mean like those float homes you see in some areas. Although that application is also an option. What I had in mind takes this idea one step further. The math checks out and my preliminary simulations agree.
It is feasible to make a floating island using this technology. Were you have a floating artificial reef beneath it, adding value to the ecosystem and a work area above it that can be used for a variety of applications?
To be more specific. I could create a floating platform made out of this rock and I could add topsoil to it, along with whatever else you might want, like a conventional house, roads, a bunch of trees and even lakes, hills or rock formations. The carrying capacity of an artificial island made using this method can be tailored to whatever you wish to create. Similar to how you hire a civil engineer and an architect to design a building for you. But with the added option of being able to make your island larger at any point you wish.
I found the above 3D model that looks a lot like what I had in mind. It is a bit on the fantasy side but it will do. I am going to use it as a case study to do a few basic calculations.
Let’s say we manufacture the island you see in the above model in the same way as the little stone bottlecap you saw in the aforementioned video. And let’s say the floating island below the house is 50 meters long, 30 meters wide and 10 meters tall. Well, the potential water displacement will give us a carrying capacity of approximately 15000 metric tons. And taking into account that your average brick house weighs between 25 and 100 metric tons while a layer of topsoil a meter deep (or 3 feet) would weigh about 2000 metric tons. In other words, it is safe to say that you will be able to put more or less anything you want on your little private island. And if this island is made out of a rock a foot thick it would cost about $60k USD not including the cost of the house and topsoil.
As you can understand the implications of this technology are enormous and it has the potential to improve the standard of living of many people.
When I first realized what I had on my hands I needed to know more. For example, I needed to know what were the legal implications for something like that. Well through all of my research, hundreds of discussions and dozens of professional consultations, the best answer I got is “maybe”.
Legally speaking you can make whatever you want and if you put an engine on it you can register it as a boat. That’s how houseboat builders do it. And as long as there is no permanent anchor you are covered by the Freedom of navigation act. That said all registered boats need to have set dimensions in their registration and as far as I can tell those dimensions can’t change.
On the other hand, the rules around floating platforms are far more blurry. That said you could apply for a permit to install a permanent anchor in an area on the ocean that is not in use by someone else, does not pose a danger to protected regions and is not in the way of established trade routes.
In other words, in most cases, if you are 30 minutes away from a big city by boat it is possible for you to put an anchor there without ever needing to remove it.
So you can imagine that under the current laws, you could create something that is registered as a boat but functions much like a private island and is permanently anchored less than an hour away from downtown Vancouver, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York or even cities on the coasts of the North American great lakes like Toronto and Chicago.
But don’t get me wrong. Having a house floating on the sea is great but it is not the best use of this technology. The applications that are the most interesting to me are in the agricultural and industrial sectors. What I would like to explore is the potential of floating farms, greenhouses and perhaps entire tree farms and animal habitats.
If you could produce what you need very close to where you need it then you don’t need to transport it all that much. What if you could produce the lumber needed for construction 30 minutes away from the city? What if you could produce plankton-based fertilizer a couple of hours away from the farms that need it? Well then. You wouldn’t need to load those commodities onto large container ships now, would you? And more importantly, you would not need to spend all that fuel and energy to transport them. This alone could have a significant impact on our global consumption of fossil fuels.
All these sound perfectly good but, what comes next?
There is always friction when the tire hits the road. The simple answer would be to open a company and start offering this as a service. But the amount of capital that would be required for this lies outside of my ability to afford. I have tried alternative methods of financing this, like approaching angel investors and venture capitalist firms with little to show for it. This is an untested technology after all. It would take a madman to make an insane investment in something like this. Math and simulations are great but people want to see this working before anyone considers to risk their investments on something that is unproven.
So I have decided to self-finance this. It is going to be much slower than what I would like and I will need to adjust my approach accordingly but it will move this project along and I will have something to show for it eventually.
I decided to use my account here as a kind of journal of the ideas and concepts I will be exploring, but more importantly as an open communication with you. I am not going to hide that I am looking for feedback on this concept. I see this technology as a tool and I would like to see what people would like to do with it when it becomes available to them.
