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http://www.usaweekend.com/08_issues/080406/080406abtn-money-family-size.html
Unrelatedly, a girl at swing told me "you're a very good dancer". *preens*
Unrelatedly, a girl at swing told me "you're a very good dancer". *preens*
2008-04-08
Urban climate control
2008-04-08 18:40Some guy on rasfs has an approach I hadn't thought of before (my two posts are 16 through 18 in the thread) to heating a city: just heat it, not worrying about the dome or roof. Running some numbers, it seems... maybe doable. A lot depends on how quickly heat is lost to the air, and how little we can get away with to get halfway comfortable; adding 100 W/m2 gets too expensive. OTOH, that was assuming continuous year-round heating. Just doing the worst days would cut cost a lot (though raise the proportion of the infrastructure). For purposes of not dying, simple de-icing might be sufficient -- bursts of heat to clear the ground, and people can wear coats like normal.
The thing prompted me to try to actually estimate costs of the roofs I like to go on about. I don't know enough for a good estimate, but comparison to greenhouses ($7.50/square foot) or the raw costs of transparent materials ($3/foot2 plexiglass, $4 Lexan or glass, all 1/8 inch thick) suggests a minimum of $100/m2 for $100 million per square kilometer. That would seem feasible. I don't know how this scales -- big building costs can look a lot higher, and we'd have to be building a lot higher than a greenhouse, but then we don't actually need a normal building, just a roof or umbrella. Unless we want smart roofs, which we might, for summer... $1 billion/km2 would be a lot even for Manhattanites. There's also a question of how thick the panels have to be to survive -- 1/8 inch, or 1/2 inch?
Domed cities link! Notes possibility of floating a dome on air pressure.
Buckminster Fuller's little essay
The thing prompted me to try to actually estimate costs of the roofs I like to go on about. I don't know enough for a good estimate, but comparison to greenhouses ($7.50/square foot) or the raw costs of transparent materials ($3/foot2 plexiglass, $4 Lexan or glass, all 1/8 inch thick) suggests a minimum of $100/m2 for $100 million per square kilometer. That would seem feasible. I don't know how this scales -- big building costs can look a lot higher, and we'd have to be building a lot higher than a greenhouse, but then we don't actually need a normal building, just a roof or umbrella. Unless we want smart roofs, which we might, for summer... $1 billion/km2 would be a lot even for Manhattanites. There's also a question of how thick the panels have to be to survive -- 1/8 inch, or 1/2 inch?
Domed cities link! Notes possibility of floating a dome on air pressure.
Buckminster Fuller's little essay
Our Mrs. Reynolds.
Because projecting the racial issues of today's United States (Australian author, BTW) onto off-planet people 500 years in the future makes so much sense... I wonder more about the "deep cover to make feminists look bad" possibility, frankly.
Because projecting the racial issues of today's United States (Australian author, BTW) onto off-planet people 500 years in the future makes so much sense... I wonder more about the "deep cover to make feminists look bad" possibility, frankly.
Self-replicating printer in development. Another article.
Not to overhype the things: they're made of a couple of plastics and a local melting point metal, plus chips, and the goal is to have it handle all three materials, and to be able to print all of its parts apart from the chips, and lubricating grease, and it won't be make its raw materials either. Or assembling the parts, a human will have to do that. So they're nowhere near being released into the desert. But it's a step.
“We know that people are going to use the printer to try to make weapons [and] sex toys and drug paraphernalia,” he says. “This is obviously not what we’re hoping they are going to build. We are hoping they are going to build more and better RepRaps.”
Oh no, people might make cheap plastic sex toys.
Not to overhype the things: they're made of a couple of plastics and a local melting point metal, plus chips, and the goal is to have it handle all three materials, and to be able to print all of its parts apart from the chips, and lubricating grease, and it won't be make its raw materials either. Or assembling the parts, a human will have to do that. So they're nowhere near being released into the desert. But it's a step.
“We know that people are going to use the printer to try to make weapons [and] sex toys and drug paraphernalia,” he says. “This is obviously not what we’re hoping they are going to build. We are hoping they are going to build more and better RepRaps.”
Oh no, people might make cheap plastic sex toys.