Many of these projects might have made sense in theory, but they never accounted for the harsh reality of ocean life. At sea, there is plenty of wind, wave, and solar energy to provide power, but building renewable-energy systems that could survive the weather and the corrosive seawater was difficult and costly. Communication options remain limited: satellite-based connections were prohibitively expensive, as was laying a fiber-optic cable or relying on point-to-point lasers or microwaves that tethered the offshore installation to land. Traveling to and from seasteads was challenging. Waves
...more
