Abstract
SeaBasing is one of three core operational concepts of the 21st century U.S. Navy. Because there were no precedents to build from regarding safe operations between large floating vessels in the open ocean, the Office of Naval Research tasked EXWC to advance technology as well as bound the upper threshold of practical platform sizes. For example, the most capable conceptual SeaBase, labeled the Mobile Offshore Base (MOB), would need to be an unprecedented 2-kilometers in length to accommodate conventional take-off and landing long-range cargo aircraft. Government, industry, and academia made significant advancements in: hydrodynamics, the large (km) scale structure of ocean waves, drafting of the first probabilistic- (and performance-) based design methodology for U.S. marine structures, and feasibility studies and physical demonstrations of multiple module dynamic positioning. Taken together, these advancements lead the participants to conclude that a 2-kilometer MOB platform could be economically built and safely operated.
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References
The following references are recommended for the interested reader. The second reference is the most comprehensive description of the S&T project and is available at www.dtic.mil
Clark, A. V. (2003). Sea power 21: Projecting decisive joint capabilities, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.
Mobile Offshore Base Science and Technology Program Final Report, Technical Report TR-2125-OCN, Naval Facilities Engineering and Expeditionary Warfare Center, Port Hueneme CA, December 2000.
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Remmers, G., Zueck, R., Palo, P., & Taylor, R. (1998). Mobile offshore base. In Proceedings of the International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference (ISOPE’98), (Vol. I, pp. 1–5). Montreal, Canada.
Remmers, G., Taylor, R., Palo, P., & Brackett, R. (1999). Mobile offshore base: A Seabasing option. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Very Large Floating Structures (VLFS ’99), Honolulu, Hawaii, September 22–24, 1999.
Acknowledgments
The MOB team of 53 commercial, academic, and government organizations spans too many performers to individually acknowledge. Mr. Gene Remmers at the Office of Naval Research administratively managed the project. At NFESC, Mr. Robert Taylor was the project manager, Mr. Ron Brackett was responsible for the financial and contracting, and the author technically managed the S&T. Other Navy technical team members included Dr. Ray Chiou, Dr. Robert Zueck, Dr. Theodore Shugar, and Ms. Michele Murdoch.
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© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore
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Palo, P. (2015). Mobile Offshore Base. In: Wang, C., Wang, B. (eds) Large Floating Structures. Ocean Engineering & Oceanography, vol 3. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-137-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-137-4_11
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