We can send a man to the Moon and back successfully but we shutter to think of a floating airport? Engineers love technological challenges and the consumer appreciates success! Imagine how my great-great grandfather faced the pessimists when he built the Eddystone Lighthouse? Other lighthouses caught on fire or were destroyed by the ocean's tumultuous torrents. Yet, John Smeaton, "The Father of Civil Engineering" re-discovered cement which was used during the Roman Empire. People of Greater San Diego: The benefactors are our children and grandchildren. Give him your greatest gift: Faith in the future and the engineers who build it. As a pilot, I am concerned with safety, too, and there's no doubt in my mind that this "floating airport" is the best solution in Greater San Diego.

A "Floating Airport" off San Diego is a great idea and the only option we have. Look at all the negativ comments for land based sites : "not in my backyard", "the noise", "the traffic", "the pollution", "relocation of people", "hours of travel", etc.etc. The "Floating Airport" off San Diego will alleviate all the aforementioned problems. This "Floating Marvel" will propel San Diego well into the third millenium with oohs and aahs from cities and countries around the world. People will land on our "SAN DIEGO AQUARIUS AIRPORT" and tell the world, they have landed on the most magnificent airport in the world. Congratulation to the Floating Airport organizers. You are doing a great service to this community. To quote Tennyson: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." Thank You and Good Luck!

I was excited to hear the plan for a floating airport to serve greater San Diego. I think it will help everyone's concern about where in the county to build a new airport and be able to expand our airport into a truly "international" airport, growing business in greater San Diego. I'm also hopeful that in pursuing a "floating" airport, we can incorporate related business opportunities by being on the water. For example, we could add extra moorage for boats at the parameter of the floating airport. Possibly, we could even grow our cruise line business by having a mooring for the cruise lines right at the floating airport. There are so many ways to expand on revenue associated with a "floating" airport, I'm very excited. Let's make this fly!

As an offshore engineer qualified in naval architecture and marine engineering, I was excited about the column I read in Voice of San Diego regarding building a floating airport as an extension of Lindbergh Field.

As a professional engineer and Fellow of the Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland, I agree entirely that a floating airport is not only feasible, say, off an extension of Interstate 8, but the technology has already been proven to create one.

Floating production units are already operating in the North Sea. The design for the units by Seaways Engineering Ltd., in which I am a partner, was nominated by Professor Douglas Faulkner of the University of Glasgow for the Scottish Achievements Award that year for demonstrating their safety and economic feasibility.

Most of my experience has been building ships and those platforms that can withstand the high waves of storm-swept seas. These platforms, virtually floating cities, use semi-submersible vessels, which are not stabilized by pounding them into the seabed, but are moored by chains attached to anchors that are sunk about 30 feet into the bottom of the sea.

From this technology came my idea for a floating airport.

The major part of my design, the runway, is a semi-submersible, 12,000-feet long and 1,000-feet wide. A runway would need more than one semi-submersible platform -- 48, in my view -- taken to sea and locked together. It would create a runway about two-and-a-half miles long.

Think of it as a square-legged table supporting several decks. The semi-submersible pontoons for legs would be so huge that the response to wave action would be zero. To an onboard observer, it would appear that he is on terra firma.

Maybe you have read or watched on TV the story about the young couple who had been deep sea diving when the Thailand tsunami hit. They said that when they came up to the surface they saw destruction and mayhem and had no idea what had happened.

They were diving below the length of the wave, which is where the pontoons that hold the columns will be stationed.  They will be so far below the depth of a wave or the pounding of a storm they will feel nothing that's happening on the surface. The deck, or runway, will be just the opposite. It will be high enough for the tallest wave to pass through.

Clearly the San Diego Port Authority could use this high value real estate for multiple uses -- decks for maintenance buildings, railway connection to docks for cargo and passenger ships, hotels. It would be built on a half-million tons of steel.

The cost of the basic structure without any outfitting would be in the ballpark of one-and-a-half-billion dollars.

If San Diego's local shipyard, National Steel Corporation (NASSCO), built the platforms, pontoons and columns this would not only speed up the construction but would also employ local labor and create an export trade because these can be built in San Diego and delivered around the world.

Keep Lindbergh at its present location, move the runways offshore and connect them to the terminal by undersea high-speed rail.

We believe this option deserves to be evaluated, vis-à-vis the other options now under consideration by the San Diego Regional Airport Authority. There are three basic questions: (1) Is it attractive? (2) Is it technically feasible? (3) Is it too expensive?

Our recommendation is to transform Lindbergh into a transportation hub, including air, rail, trolley, bus and cruise ship service. These are all within a few blocks and near an existing freeway. Not many cities have the option of a centrally accessible general transportation terminal. Further, with the landing and takeoff noise and air pollution removed to an offshore site, the most significant environmental objections are eliminated.

The engineering capability to design a floating airfield has existed at least since the Armstrong Seadrome of the late 1940s. The U.S. Department of Defense has repeatedly carried out design and model tests for aircraft-capable ocean bases that were not built when strategic requirements changed. Japan has come close to building two, one at Osaka where they opted for landfill and another at Haneda for which funding did not materialize. San Francisco has considered among other options the construction of a floating structure as part of its runway extension program. San Diego has the possibility of being the first to bring this concept to reality.

Framing the cost would be one purpose of the evaluation study we advocate. However, a rough estimate is that it would be reasonable in relation to other alternatives. The required floating area would be two airstrips, including taxiways, each about 12,000 feet long and 1,000 feet wide plus a central structure for aircraft loading and unloading. Extrapolating from two studies in which we have been involved leads to a rough estimate of $6 billion-plus the undersea connection and passenger and freight-handling facilities ashore and afloat.

There are indeed challenging issues: mooring in high winds, the wave "shadow" cast on the coast line and other environmental considerations. There are difficult engineering choices, such as the type of flotation structure and its connection to the access tube, etc. We do not say that the offshore option is the best solution, but we assert that it deserves evaluation by some qualified group.

Floating landing strips, as proposed here, are not the only offshore structures under consideration. Liquid natural gas, or LNG, terminals are now being designed for locations offshore from Ensenada and the Coronado Islands. Future tankers with 100-foot draft are too deep for existing harbors and will have to be berthed offshore. A rising global sea level will call for reconstructions for many of the world's harbors. We end this letter with a challenge. In the pioneering spirit of Charles Lindbergh, would it not be wonderful if San Diego would take a leadership role in meeting these global changes?