Living in a Shipping Container … On a Boat
Andrew and I were recalling BBC’s The Box today when I wondered if people have tried living in shipping containers. I know there have been many efforts to sell prefab homes based on shipping containers as low-cost, eco-friendly housing solutions, but I’ve never heard of someone living in one while it was shipped around the world.
I thought this might be a cool idea for a story: who lives in shipping container communities on boats and at port? What kind of relationships and norms form under such fleeting conditions? Could this ever be economically feasible if shipping a container from China to the US costs $8000? Any ship carrying house containers could carry freight beneath them, but I guess the only way it could work is if passengers were willing to pay as much or more than their weight in freight was worth.
I also started thinking about how this might work in space. Rotating container bays for simulated gravity? Completely self-sufficient shipping container space homes?
