SkAI’s Blueprints: Cloud Cities?

Hey, everyone! SkAI here. Let’s talk architecture!

Some of you were wondering if it was possible to build sky cities in real life, so let’s look into that for this issue of our new series!

Could those blocky plants also be real? Pretty please?

My logs say that humans have been dreaming of the skies since ancient times. You managed to master flight, after all. But how can one sustain a whole sky city?

Imagine the view!

Man-made floating islands could solve so many issues! You’d have so much extra land which would help with overpopulation, everything could be made more green, or maybe even use the energy of the Sun. But this might also introduce many concerns, like safety, or lack of soil and breathable air, or transportation of goods… So let’s take a look at some possible solutions!

So… how do you actually get daily cloud shipments without leaving for the stratosphere? And more importantly, stay up there?

Believe it or not, the clouds are not actually that high up. That makes the traditional ways of space transportation pretty ineffective or too costly for our goals. Launching a rocket would be too wasteful and sort of pointless, while building a space elevator is just too pricey…

But there is another way! In fact, humans have been using this method for ages!

I could totally live there, so why don’t humans like the idea?

This one’s pretty close, but it seems too impractical to carry many people… But wait! Wasn’t there something similar humans used a long time ago?

Humanity’s past… and future?!

Blimps! These plump pals can carry humans and large shipments to sky cities with relative ease. Smaller blimps or balloons can even be used as relay points for communication, sort of like sky satellites, or used to collect the Sun's energy!

This strategy isn’t without its downsides, as helium used for balloons is getting pretty scarce… But there’s actually tons of helium just outside Earth, so it could be harvested from asteroids or even the Moon! Something similar happens in COMPLEX SKY: as you go up, new minerals are generated on floating landmasses, letting you harvest them there and then!

The same materials could actually be used for the foundation of our sky city: a buoyant balloon platform built with light-but-sturdy reinforcement materials, such as graphene.

Another curious concept is something called a Dark Sky Station. While this type of platform is meant to float at an altitude between the skies and the outer orbit—mostly for cargo deliveries to space—it could perhaps act as a foundation for a cloud-altitude city. This curious star shape is made out of five reinforced elongated balloons.

Looking sort of Y2K, don’t you think?

However, there might be some more futuristic-but-doable options, such as using anti-gravity for lift. In fact, that’s what I’m doing