Re: Pykrete

2006-1-30 11:07:00

Ren Carter writes:

Hi everybody,

Ren here! Sending one of my rare e-mails. We've all heard JJ talk about the idea of building a big city out in the middle of the ocean using some sort of material that can float as a foundation. I remember Rick talking about piecing together geometric inflatable of some kind that could float on water,

Has anyone ever heard of Geoffrey Pyke and an icy substance called Pykrete? It's just a fourteen percent to eighty-six percent mixture of wood pulp made from sawdust and water. The stuff was introduced to Winston Churchill while he was taking a bath by a guy by the name of Mountbatten during the early part of WWII. He tossed a chunk of it into Winston's bath water showing him its buoyancy and later demonstrated its durability by shooting it with his pistol in front of a bunch of military big wigs. In the future, they were gong to build battle ships with the stuff, but didn't because the war came to an end before a prototype could be finished.

Anyway, for the isolationist at heart, one could build himself a little island of sorts and go floating away into the ocean sunset never to be bothered again, Fun huh?

You're getting ahead of us Ren. That's just the material I had in mind. The possibilities are endless. With it we could even build a city on the ocean floor and the main ingredient is water, which is certainly plentiful on the sea.