This is the weirdest thing to me. How do billionaires think a big boat is cooler than building nuclear fusion? If I was a billionaire, I'd build space ships and underground tunnels and nuclear micro reactors
Booking out a hotel for hundreds of aides, attachés and visitors is very difficult outside the largest cities. Securing it can be impossible. Particularly on short notice. A yacht solves those problems.
(I’d still pick the reactor.)
He also has a startup, LTA (Lighter Than Air), aiming to build blimps for humanitarian purposes.[2] According to this article he also wants to the blimp to be "luxuriously appointed" so it can be used as an air yacht.[3] LTA is based at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, and I know I've seen blimps take off and land there every once in a while. When I see one I always wonder if it's Sergey's blimp.
[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-...
[2] https://www.ltaresearch.com/
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-airship-c...
> Physicists trapped in indentured servitude aboard Elon Musk's converted droneship research station "Just Fucking Get It Done" as it sails the post-apocalytic seas.
> Just when they thought it couldn't get any worse, they dock at Peter Thiel's island bio-research facility and they have to take matters into their own nitrile-gloved hands before it's too late...
Fun fact, this was part of the setup for Tenet.
https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/editorial-features/...
If not for visions of space-faring billionaires, I could easily foresee sea-based billionaires with a small armada of support vessels to provide for them:
Old tankers could potentially be repurposed as massive hydroponic farms, or even fish farms. Why trust the local's mercury-and-parasite ridden fauna, when you can instead pull some fresh Tilapia 2 (genome will be slightly modified to prevent breeding with 'natties', probably will have different-colored skin) out of The Pond's hold?
A cruise ship would probably be the best host vessel for your employees, since it already has a lot of the features you'd need (sleeping, eating, refit some of the entertainment spaces into workspaces), and a smart move would have been to buy one during the Covid crash the operators had early on. Force your employees to register as residents in your port town of choice for optimal tax shelter status, and minimal legislative oversight.
Nuclear submarines could be used as top-secret skunkworks, since they could dive down in order to guarantee some amount of isolation from corporate spies. Once you have your roster for a project, you'd dive down a mile or so, and give the teams metrics to see who earns the most sunlight during the bimonthly surfacings. Lines up nicely with 2 week sprints, right?
But here's something I can't figure out: What would the flagship be? How many people would it need to support? Would it be one of the biggest of the armada (like the capital vessel), or would it be an incredibly-well-appointed cruiser?
Then I discovered that the $700 million superyacht Scheherazade can accommodate "40 guests in 22 cabins". I suppose you could fill the hallways with bunk beds as well for your "hundreds of aids, attaches, and visitors".
I don't think accommodating 40 guests is difficult "outside of the largest cities".
Even the biggest yachts can't host even close to these numbers of people. E.g. the gigantic Azzam superyacht, at a cost of $600M, and 180m in length, can host only 36 guests according to news reports.
I doubt when Buff Jezos goes to visit Gill Bates on his super yacht he shows up only with a couple suitcases.
You'd think a billionaire would have gotten one of those by now. Like China with the Liaoning... though, even the Liaoning isn't nuclear.
Actually, that's pretty amazing. The Americans have several nuclear carriers. The Soviets/Russians had/have several. And the French have one: the Charles de Gaulle. That's it. Nobody else has any. Not even China. Not even Britain (which does have nuclear submarines).
That's pretty amazing.
It really puts into perspective how powerful the United States is.
Granted, there's an argument that these are becoming floating targets, what with ASBMs, and as hypersonics come online. But still. They're pretty impressive things.
And even the Russians seem less capable than expected.
Which leaves basically just the US. Still.
Complacency would be a huge mistake -- and China is projected to start working on nuclear carriers pretty soon -- but, nevertheless, maybe reports of America's dethronement are premature.
Though that was long ago, I'm unaware of changes regarding that.
So no cruising to your bunker in NZ on your supernukular toy when the SHTF :-)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Ci...
“ It's worth acknowledging that while owners will ultimately spend a huge amount for the privilege of having their very own superyacht, they're able to recoup some of these costs by chartering them out. Connor estimates that around 12 weeks of charter represents the annual operating cost of most yachts, which means owners can break even if they hire their boats out for the same length of time they use them during the year.”
[1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/hidden-costs-of-owning-a-supe...
I guess you get some back if you sell it, and you probably never actually laid out for it as such rather than though some mad financial chicanery because simply paying for stuff is decidedly plebian.
[1] https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonlight-ii/
[2] https://www.fraseryachts.com/en/yacht-for-charter/moonlight-...
that's a big "if"
I'm surprised no authority has raided one just after an investment banker party cruise, looked for the forgotten baggies and seized the vessel for "drug smuggling".
1) You don’t buy something for $100+ million out-of-pocket. It’s easy to borrow money when you have money. The purchase would be financed at very close to market interest rates, and the repayments factored into the running costs.
2) The vessel would then be run as a business and chartered out for conventions, luxury cruises etc. Any profits would go to the owner.
3) The owner would then use the vessel as needed, maybe even paying like any other customer (albeit out of the profits generated by the boat itself, I’d imagine.)
4) Any remaining profits could be used to pay off capital, but probably aren’t. Instead, they’d be used to fund new ventures.
Your buddy sets up a special company just to build it and stiffs all his employees and suppliers. Then the quid pro quo gets you another 30% or so back.
Renting it out for another 12mo/year earns the remainder back in a decade or two.
You can also 'donate' the use of your yacht to have a big party (also known as a charity ball) from time to time if you feel you are paying too much tax. Make sure the 'charity' is one owned by one of your buddies and is primarily used for lobbying or undermining competitors.
I gotta ask, have you ever filed taxes? Cause that’s not how any of this works.
If you're a state level actor, you've got state level security concerns. I doubt, for instance, the American or Russian consulate gets rented out for parties where they turn over the whole kit to some other organization.
Yes, there is "your" staff on-site to protect much of the yacht / facility, but that doesn't stop a determined actor who's got a week of somewhat unsupervised access from infesting the whole ship with bugs bombs and poisons.
Being first to fusion would mean your name would be above even Einstein in history.
Chicks dig the long ball.
"Gamma ray tanning beds: illegal in 220 countries!"
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/24/superyachts-...
Integrating the curves is maybe $100 billion. And below a certain level of funding nothing can really be done (you can't build any reactor on $10 and a box of surplus paperclips the IRS donated from pity). The fact we actual got anywhere using the handful of "it's a start" research reactors like JET, which dates to 1984, that could get built is a testament to the scientists and engineers, not a indictment of the field.
Basically, if as much was spent on it as we spent on blowing up poor countries for no real reason (at least $2,000 billion, just for Afghanistan), we'd likely be onto the second or third generation. Or we'd have concluded decades ago that it really can't be done to a five-sigma certainty.
The cynic in me says there's a renewed push for it recently because China has 3 research reactors, the next one (CFETR) is designed to outperform ITER (which China is contributing to) and support research for DEMO (which is to say, it is or is very close to being designed for experimental power generation), and the US feels in danger of being beaten to it.
$500 worth of steroids may let me bench press 200lbs, but it doesn’t follow that with $50,000 I could lift my house.