For four decades the Earthship has been evolving. We spent a couple of decades evolving the various aspects of the Earthship and trying to learn how to make them work in a reliable user friendly way. This involved…

the structure built from largely recycled materials

the heating cooling aspects

the electrical system

the water harvest system

the contained on site sewage treatment system

the food production system

At least two decades were spent just learning enough to make these systems work… period. Then a certain amount of time was spent trying to make these systems reliable and user friendly. We achieved this eventually although they are still evolving and will continue to do so. We then took notice that even though we had learned how to make the various independent systems of the Earthship work reliably and in a user friendly way; they were more expensive than a conventional home. We realized that, since economy rules the earth, not many people would take the Earthship direction unless Earthships were the same price or cheaper than conventional housing. Some would choose this direction because of the security of independent utilities no matter what it costs. Some would choose it because it is environmentally friendly… but most people would be forced by economics to take the less secure, environmentally hazardous conventional direction simply because they have to take the least expensive direction toward shelter for their family. We saw that we needed to address this situation.

So… right after we learned enough to make these “earth machines” work for people and the Earth, which was quite a challenge, we had to simplify and streamline them into something that could compete price wise with conventional approaches to housing.

No matter how significant it appeared to us that these buildings put people and their relationship to the earth in a very secure situation for the future, most of them would still choose a conventional home because it was easier to obtain in terms of costs.

We spent another decade or so on this simplification and streamlining until finally, in the early “2000s”, we arrived. We had developed a fully independent home that provided shelter and utilities and food, that could be built with a variety of recycled materials found all over the world and it cost very much the same as a conventional home. We then could present our advantage… the Earthship costs next to nothing to operate while the conventional home for the same price costs significant money to operate, not to mention the questionable future availability and viability of the systems required to operate it. We had arrived!

The satisfaction was short lived. The economic crisis of circa 2007 hit and we realized a very significant fact… conventional housing itself was far too expensive all over the developed world for the majority of people to afford. Many people in many countries lost their conventional homes and they were in crisis.

During our developmental period we presented many models of Earthships for the various different financial strata but we observed that the majority of the people of the Earth could not afford any kind of available housing. We had arrived only to find out that we needed to keep on going.

The place we had strived to arrive to – an Earthship priced the same as a conventional house – was now invalid because conventional housing itself now had become invalid in terms of cost. We needed to simplify even more and develop a sustainable home that was more affordable than conventional homes. We were faced with a new challenge… that monster called economy. We have to find secure sustenance for people that is not subject to this “creature”. We have to make this sustainable vessel – the Earthship – render the existing monstrous economy insignificant.