> I think you'd be better off building something like that above the ocean with the whole thing supported by piers anchored very deep. That's the idea, but ins

> I think you'd be better off building something like that above the ocean with the whole thing supported by piers anchored very deep. That's the idea, but instead of piers you have a grid of floats or buoys. The octet truss structure is light enough and strong enough to float on just the tops of the waves. > Otherwise sooner or later your structure will meet that one wave that it can't deal with and then it's game over. The largest wave so far recorded (not counting tsunami) was an 84-foot (25.6m) rogue wave off Norway. I figure you would need some sort of dissipative structure rather than a flat wall. Something akin to Tesla's valvular conduit with flexible baffles and fins to turn the water's kinetic energy back onto itself. Probably 300m thick or more so you have plenty of room/time in which to work. > What you are talking about is many, many orders of magnitude more complex, both from a materials science perspective as well as the engineering itself. Oh, I hope not! The structure is conceptually simple, at least, and the materials should be mostly off-the-shelf. I have no real idea, of course. > The sea is a formidable enemy for anything that you intended to float on top of it Oh, yes. I've lived next to the ocean for the vast bulk of my life so far. Although I'm not nautical, I can't imagine living far from it for long. Our Pacific ocean here is much sweeter and kinder than your stern North Sea, of course ("pacific" eh?) But it is still a god. I don not worship the ocean but my respect for it falls not far short. When I watch video footage of big storms out on the deep water I think I'm crazy, but then I think about just how big of a structure I could make, and I'm enthused again. > Then there is the problem of anchoring your structure. All of the air on the Western side of a floating structure would impinge on the height that the whole thing extends above the sea, turning it into a gigantic sail. That is easy, in theory: windmills instead of sails, driving propellers to keep on station. - - - - I'm more or less going to actually try this. The initial prototype will be very small, probably around 200m in diameter, and it will look more like a spider or water-strider bug than a platform.