That was exactly what I was wondering, would the school of light vs solid mass come to oppose each other. It seems to me idea one, solid mass would be very easy to achieve if your on the bottom floor with slab on grade or crawl space. I could see simply cutting out a portion of the floor, digging down a few feet and pouring concrete. I think this could be achieved in a very affordable fashion. This construction method of isolating a portion of a floor is used quite often in manufacturing. I would "being American and all" tend to see this as the proper direction, after all, everything eventually ends up sitting on the earth. The next step in this direction would be to incorporate the spring and isolation techniques used in earthquake design. In our case the spring size would be less than for a building. I would assume we could find someone who could determine the design of a spring isolation platform if anyone wanted to experiment.
I am however quite intrigued by Redkiwi line of thinking. What is the easiest way to create an extremely lightweight completely isolated system that has the most separation from the earth. Again, assuming a rack system is well spiked, what is the ultimate bearing to retain the benefits of the light weight system? Or is it adequate to simply have a rack sit anywhere as long as it's spiked? It seems to me that this is not the answer, so I'd love to hear ideas on this aproach.
I am however quite intrigued by Redkiwi line of thinking. What is the easiest way to create an extremely lightweight completely isolated system that has the most separation from the earth. Again, assuming a rack system is well spiked, what is the ultimate bearing to retain the benefits of the light weight system? Or is it adequate to simply have a rack sit anywhere as long as it's spiked? It seems to me that this is not the answer, so I'd love to hear ideas on this aproach.