Thanks for feedback: I’m not sure that steel (or carbon fibre) really works if you’re trying to assemble a large ring in deep water. The advantage of having no rigid elements in that situation would seem fairly compelling - ie. you’d only need to transport fabric, flexible pipe and pumps. I appreciate the safety issue they raise - I think this was in the context of having a large canopy collapsing on people’s heads. The life expectancy of MDPE pipe looks like it would far exceed that of other components (though not sure how this would be affected by the degree of flexural movement encountered in a tensairity structure as the 50 - 100 yr + figures quoted are for fixed/buried pipes). Anyway, the same pumping system used to fill and pressurise the structure should also be deal with minor leaks, at least pending repair or to allow a controlled collapse.
By the way…in case we’re talking at cross purposes…I’m thinking in terms of how a Daisy (or other AWE) could scale up to the MW range - (and be situated 10s of km off-shore) - clearly a complicated internal ring structure doesn’t make sense otherwise.