What’s a city to do when its airport runs out of room?
How about just floating one on the ocean?
That’s the visionary idea being considered by a number of cities whose airports are overcrowded and have nowhere to grow.
It’s the answer suggested by Dr. Walter Munk, arguably the most famous and insightful of all ocean scientists, to solve the airport congestion problem in San Diego.
The 95-year-old Munk has been offering practical advice since he helped guide the Allies’ amphibious landings during World War II.
Now he is suggesting that a floating airport would be the least-expensive option for this California city, and a tourist attraction to boot.
Munk says he came up with the idea in collaboration with two colleagues, Frieder Seible, the former dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, and marine explorer Fred Spiess, a former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who died in 2006.
Meanwhile, Adam Englund, head of Ocean Works Development, has spent the past 20 years planning a $20 billion "Very Large Floating Structure" (VLFS) that would include an airport and hotel, restaurant, and residential space.
His idea is to first build a three square-mile facility permanently moored about 10 miles off the shore of San Diego called O-Plex 2020. But his $20 billion tab has not yet attracted investors.
British officials, too, are considering the idea to ease airport congestion in London, and so are the Japanese.
The Tokyo Bay Megafloat project was terminated in 1998, but Megafloat Phase II is now being planned for Yokosuka City in Kanagawa Prefecture.
Kansai Internatinal Airport is built over the water in Osaka Bay.
