World’s first floating pod homes launched in Panama starting at $295,000 | Hacker News Reader

World’s first floating pod homes launched in Panama starting at $295,000

thenationalnews.com

It's a bit of a snark, but we have floating homes - they're called boats. Admittedly, they don't have sweet curved glass, panoramic views, multiple stories, and a smart watch.

Reading up on these folks, it seems like the principle idea is that the homes would be placed in shallowish water, outside of major cities (those that are on the coast already). Given the design company is apparently in Panama, I would have thought that stability would be a key consideration, given things like hurricanes. A good hurricane (is there such a thing?) already makes an absolute mess of boats on moorings; I've seen writeups on pushing your boat as far as possible into a mangrove to ride out a hurricane, but mangroves are not exactly as common as they used to be.

The fact that the prototype required an active bilge pumping solution to work is .. yeah, about that. Nice basis for a new reef you've got there.

Unfortunately the launch event did not go as expected: https://allthatsinteresting.com/seapod-floating-home

Oh wow. Epic fail.

> Ocean Builders determined that the toppling was caused by a bilge pump malfunction that threw off the balance of a steel spar in the prototype and caused it to flood.

Wait, you need a bilge pump to maintain stability? Please don't tell me that this is 100% dependent on sensors and software controlling a highly complex underwater system. In a seawater environment.

I now feel like I should have posted the follow-up article instead of the one that I posted. :/

The sensors are likely pretty reliable, solved and proven technology unless they try something magic like balancing those. I would be really worried about power supply... If someone for example decides to anchor anywhere near these...

Don't get me wrong here - An active balancing system is almost certainly required.

These pods are positioned on top of a "mast" floating in the ocean. Climb the mast of a large sailboat that is anchored in a calm harbor and you'll instantly understand why people try to avoid doing so in the open ocean.

The steady state of this thing needs to be very very stable. The more I think about it, the less I believe that this can be made to be comfortable at the prices they are quoting.

Balancing your home on some pumps and sensors, no matter how reliable, sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea. It needs to have passive stability. If everything breaks down, it still needs to be stable enough to stay upright in a storm.

There is no such thing as a "reliable" sensor in the marine environment. Everything is constantly corroding and requires frequent skilled maintenance. This is only solved in the sense that skilled workers know how to do the necessary maintenance, but it's never going to be cheap and I wouldn't want to rely on the average homeowner to do it properly.

> A wearable smart ring would enable residents to summon drones or automotive vehicles to deliver food.

Maybe someone waved the wrong way.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33131885

Designed for the "Eco-conscious" consumer who's cool with dumping their waste directly into the ocean and massively increasing their carbon footprint by having literally every necessity of life delivered to them via dudes in fishing boats using 2-stroke outboards.

The ocean is quite efficient at composting organic waste and deliveries are via electric drone, not fishing boat.

Then what was the problem with cities piping their sewage directly into the ocean?

Many coastal cities still do this when it rains a lot due to 'overflow' sewer/storm systems. It generally doesn't cause major issues.

It has directly caused hepatitis infections in swimmers.

I think you should start by dumping your sewage directly in the street and argue with your neighbors that the impact isn't major. Report back on how it goes.

Drones!

Very SciFi-looking, but the version that actually launched (and toppled) looks very different from their computer generated images.

It sounds like the eco-restorative aspect of these things is not so much the pods themselves, but the fleet of drone-ships supporting them that turn to cleaning the ocean when they're not needed for something else.

Still, how about just regular floating homes? That's proven technology, and they can do everything these things do with less risk and more stability. Except they don't look quite as SciFi.

This is just a con right? Like, there's just too many red flags for this not to be a con. Firstly, they're going to be selling these for significantly less than the cost of a decent sized yacht. Secondly, they're pushing this WeWork style "We'll upgrade your smart home remotely with our amazing technology". ANd finally, they're putting this absurd eco-spin on this, but let's face it, the decision to build a floating house that can only be resupplied via boat immediately puts a massive ongoing burden on the design in terms of harming the environment. Everything you eat needs to be delivered (Oh don't worry we're going to single handedly invent drone technology), and there's no sewage system (let's face it, they probably just end up pumping it in to the sea).

I wonder how this relates to the traditional sea-steading crowd - who have always traditionally ended up boiling the entire thing down to "Look man, I just want a home outside of any tax jurisdiction".

Definitely a scam or an ecological disaster. These things look far less stable than a boat and likely will sink easily. They require massive energy to maintain and have their drone delivered supplies. Sounds like they will be pinging active sonar to look for marine life nearby. This must be a joke posting?

I saw the video of the unveiling the other day and the thing sank into the water. It was the same one in Panama. Pretty weird not to mention that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BVwoZaOXhQc

i watched the video, i read the article. but i am still struggling to figure out how you are supposed to enter the pod! is there a door in the vertical tube? there appears to be no horizontal platform/step?

ahh never mind. in a different article there are indeed horizontal platforms[1]. spotted in this article[2].

[1] https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads...

[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/seapod-floating-home

The architect definitely played Subnautica.

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