Floating city

Floating city may refer to:

• In science fiction and studies of advanced engineering, settlements that use buoyancy to remain in the atmosphere. Buckminster Fuller first proposed the concept for Earth, by building a geodesic sphere that would be heated by sunlight, and float. A similar design would permit settlers to live on Venus, where at ground level the temperature is too hot and the atmospheric pressure too great. It would also permit settlement of the outer three gas giants which have no ground. The main industry of floating cities in gas giants might be to extract Helium-3 or other useful materials from their atmospheres. Jupiter is unacceptable for habitation due to its high gravity, escape velocity and radiation, but the solar system's other gas giants are more practical. The idea of cities floating in gas giants was publicized by the Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back in which a gas mine floats in the atmosphere of the planet Bespin. Another notable example is the City of Stratos, in the Star Trek episode The Cloud Minders. In Stargate Atlantis the title city floats on an ocean.

• An extremely large ocean-going vessel, similar to but larger than a cruise ship, in which communities would live indefinitely. Several concepts for such vessels have been proposed, including "Freedom Ship" and "America World City".

• A hypothetical floating city on water, see ocean colonization.

• The Floating City, a collection of poems by Melanie Kenny.

• The Floating City, a musical band based in St. Louis, Missouri.

• [1], a floating city in the Thames Estuary, UK.