{"id":25988,"date":"2025-04-15T09:01:23","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T09:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25988"},"modified":"2025-04-15T09:26:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T09:26:27","slug":"the-techno-utopian-seasteaders-who-want-to-colonize-the-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=25988","title":{"rendered":"The Techno-Utopian Seasteaders Who Want to Colonize the Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Forty-six hours before R\u00fcdiger Koch officially seized the Guinness World Record for the longest time spent living in an underwater fixed habitat, I took a 15-minute motorboat ride from Linton Bay Marina, in north-central Panama, to visit him. It was a warm afternoon in January, and Koch was approaching a full 120 days spent working, eating, sleeping, drinking and smoking cigars in a room 36 feet below the surface of the Caribbean.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen to this article, read by James Patrick Cronin<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption>
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His 304-square-foot habitat was inside the underwater buoyancy chamber that helps stabilize a floating home called SeaPod Alpha Deep. An armed security guard was in the above-water part of the structure, monitoring Koch and ensuring that the pod did not have \u201cany visitors that we don\u2019t want.\u201d When my boat arrived, he threw down a cable and winched me up. Then I made my way down a 63-step spiral staircase to the circular lower chamber \u2014 a dizzying process, as the SeaPod rocked in the loudly sloshing sea. I was greeted by a beaming Koch, a bald 59-year-old German engineer with a whitened beard and a Buddha belly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He gave me a tour, pointing to a school of sardines outside a porthole. The quarters came equipped with a bed, an exercise bike, Starlink internet and a dry toilet. A digital clock on the wall was counting down toward his 120-day goal. (The previous record was 100 days, set in 2023 by Joseph Dituri at Jules\u2019 Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Key Largo, Fla.) \u201cI\u2019ve enjoyed the time, actually,\u201d Koch said in his heavy German accent, his face greenish-blue from the light pouring in. \u201cThis is what people get completely wrong. They think that I feel like a prisoner, and I\u2019m putting marks on the wall. My food is excellent, my booze is excellent.\u201d A person came by to clean daily.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The upper portion of Koch\u2019s SeaPod, Alpha Deep.<\/span>Alec Soth\/Magnum, for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Koch arrived here, in small part, via a San Francisco-based nonprofit called the Seasteading Institute, <\/strong>which promotes \u201cliving on environmentally restorative floating islands with some degree of political autonomy.\u201d The vision, as the Institute\u2019s president, the \u201cseavangelist\u201d Joe Quirk, once told Guernica, is \u201cstartup societies where people could form whatever kind of community they wanted\u201d \u2014 a libertarian-inflected world where, it is said, you could \u201cvote with your boat,\u201d relocating to a community in line with your views.<\/p>\n

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Forty-six hours before R\u00fcdiger Koch officially seized the Guinness World Record for the longest time spent living in an underwater fixed habitat, I took a 15-minute motorboat ride from Linton Bay Marina, in north-central Panama, to visit him. It was a warm afternoon in January, and Koch was approaching a full 120 days spent working, eating, sleeping, drinking and smoking cigars in a room 36 feet below the surface of the Caribbean.Listen to this article, read by James Patrick CroninHis 304-square-foot habitat was inside the underwater buoyancy chamber that helps stabilize a floating home called SeaPod Alpha Deep. An armed security guard was in the above-water part of the structure, monitoring Koch and ensuring that the pod did not have \u201cany visitors that we don\u2019t want.\u201d When my boat arrived, he threw down a cable and winched me up. Then I made my way down a 63-step spiral staircase to the circular lower chamber \u2014 a dizzying process, as the SeaPod rocked in the loudly sloshing sea. I was greeted by a beaming Koch, a bald 59-year-old German engineer with a whitened beard and a Buddha belly.He gave me a tour, pointing to a school of sardines outside a porthole. The quarters came equipped with a bed, an exercise bike, Starlink internet and a dry toilet. A digital clock on the wall was counting down toward his 120-day goal. (The previous record was 100 days, set in 2023 by Joseph Dituri at Jules\u2019 Undersea Lodge, off the coast of Key Largo, Fla.) \u201cI\u2019ve enjoyed the time, actually,\u201d Koch said in his heavy German accent, his face greenish-blue from the light pouring in. \u201cThis is what people get completely wrong. They think that I feel like a prisoner, and I\u2019m putting marks on the wall. My food is excellent, my booze is excellent.\u201d A person came by to clean daily.The upper portion of Koch\u2019s SeaPod, Alpha Deep.Alec Soth\/Magnum, for The New York TimesKoch arrived here, in small part, via a San Francisco-based nonprofit called the Seasteading Institute, which promotes \u201cliving on environmentally restorative floating islands with some degree of political autonomy.\u201d The vision, as the Institute\u2019s president, the \u201cseavangelist\u201d Joe Quirk, once told Guernica, is \u201cstartup societies where people could form whatever kind of community they wanted\u201d \u2014 a libertarian-inflected world where, it is said, you could \u201cvote with your boat,\u201d relocating to a community in line with your views.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25990,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25991,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25988\/revisions\/25991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}