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Believe it or not, a number of enterprising individuals have theorized ways of erecting self-sustaining artificial islands in the middle of the ocean.

While organizations like the United Nations sit around and attempt to gerrymander the political autonomy of individuals across the globe – through the Law of Seas (e.g. boundaries extending 200 nautical miles) – some innovative engineers have conjured up a workable plan for colonizing the ocean.

One proposal was written by Marshall Savage entitled, “The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps” and subsequently published in 1992. The author methodically attempted to synthesize numerous disparate disciplines, ranging from biochemistry to civil engineering and managed to cite 722 references along the way; a fact that Arthur C. Clarke notes in the books preface.

And while the last several steps in his paradigm are arguably implausible due to scientific uncertainty (although, experience with the ISS has helped shed some light on living-in-space), the first several steps are based upon technology and engineering methods currently in use.

For instance, his step 2 (affectionately called Aquarius), calls for constructing cities in the tropics:

• Power is fundamental, and would be provided by ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC). Power storage would be as hydrogen.
• Colony structures would be hexagonal lilypads anchored within one degree of the equator, a region without violent storms. The lilypads would start as magnesium mesh, a metal obtainable from seawater extraction. Thick salt crusts would be grown and maintained on the mesh with electrical salt deposition. The result is a material somewhat resembling a shell of reinforced concrete.
• Water would be produced abundantly as a side-effect of the open-cycle ocean thermal energy conversion.
• Food would be obtained by aquaculture, and intensive hydroponics, including fresh-water aquaculture performed in plastic pools. The needed water would be from the open-cycle OTEC plants.
• Exports would be fresh food, light manufactured goods, power in the form of hydrogen and intellectual property.

While some of his motivation can be tossed aside as granola crunching, tree-hugging paranoia (e.g. Malthusian rah-rah), its engineering underpinnings seem to be well grounded.

Here is a detailed overview of each section.  Be sure to read up on the Bifrost Bridge section, as it deals with the rail-gun orbital launch system I mentioned earlier (Gerald Bull).

More on micronations. See also floating cities.