When I was a kid in the 1970's I was fascinated with off-shore oil rigs. I was living in the UK and there was much news about developing the North Sea oil reservers. I would see short snippets on the TV of rigs on maiden voyages, and exciting photographs in magazines highlighting their intricacies. By today's availability of information these few images were as ephemeral as smoke on the wind. So off-shore rigs had a mystery and a fantasy around them. Earthbound space colonies. Nevertheless, I was, and continue to be, inspired by their engineering and the unmitigated confidence needed to build them.Now, of course, an internet search finds enough information to become an armchair expert in the off-shore oil industry. There are models to build. There is even, it seems, a sub-culture of 3D renders of them and other industrial sites (eg).
Photograph is of Norway's Draugen Oil Platform (src).
