Anyone Else Fascinated by "Mega Engineering" Projects?

[Knight Templar]

For some reason, I've found myself intrigued by mega engineering projects.

A Bering Straits bridge and a bridge over the Strait of Gibraltar being just two that I find endlessly interesting.

I even liked the writing and the Discovery Channel program about the "Alantropa" proposal by that pre World War Two German engineer.

And of course the idea of a space elevator and a high speed train tube across the Atlantic as well.

I guess I have a bit of architect or engineer in me.

 

[Data Holmes]

The Mediterranean hydroelectric dam, and lowering of sea levels, project. Always thought that was really cool.

 

[Knight Templar]

The Mediterranean hydroelectric dam, and lowering of sea levels, project. Always thought that was really cool.

IIRC that was the "Alantropa" concept by the German engineer. He basically suggested it as a worthy "big idea" for the restless German people prior to World War Two rather than blundering into another World War.

One wonders what would've happened if the Nazis had taken his ideas seriously.

 

[Amaris]

I love massive engineering projects. I've been fascinated my whole life by the building of the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge, it's amazing to see what humanity can achieve.

 

[Data Holmes]

I love massive engineering projects. I've been fascinated my whole life by the building of the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge, it's amazing to see what humanity can achieve.

I've always included the Apollo program in with those mega engineering projects myself as well.

 

[gturner]

One I thought of was building an artificial island on the Atlantis Massif, which sits halfway between Southern Florida and Portugal or halfway between Venezuela and the UK, and rises to within 700 meters of the ocean surface. It's about 10 miles across and might make an ideal spot for a major airport and seaport running on a for-profit basis. Since it's near the latitude of Georgia and Morocco, it would also make a much warmer mid-Atlantic naval base or airbase than Iceland or Greenland.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I totally love the idea of "Personal Pods" - true, universal, Personal Rapid Transit.

That (a Mega Engineering ep) and the Transatlantic Tunnel (Extreme Engineering) are my favorites, and I think both are achievable.

 

[Amaris]

I love massive engineering projects. I've been fascinated my whole life by the building of the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge, it's amazing to see what humanity can achieve.

I've always included the Apollo program in with those mega engineering projects myself as well.

Oh, definitely. It was nothing short of a massive undertaking, to take human beings from the earth to the Moon, and to return them home safely, which we did repeatedly.

 

[Data Holmes]

I love massive engineering projects. I've been fascinated my whole life by the building of the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge, it's amazing to see what humanity can achieve.

I've always included the Apollo program in with those mega engineering projects myself as well.

Oh, definitely. It was nothing short of a massive undertaking, to take human beings from the earth to the Moon, and to return them home safely, which we did repeatedly.

We really don't do the whole "mega engineering" thing in this country anymore. Sad.

 

[gturner]

We really don't do the whole "mega engineering" thing in this country anymore. Sad.

We can't. The EPA, the Endangered Species Act, and wetlands protection makes it hard to dig an irrigation ditch, much less build an inland sea.

Nevertheless, one easy project would be digging under New Orleans with long wall miners with continuous roof construction, then lifting the whole city 20 or 30 feet and filling the void with sediment barged down the Mississippi or dredged from the surrounding areas. Aside from a few bridges leading in an out, nothing would even have to be adjusted for the new height.

If you used a similar mining technique, adding a reinforced permanent concrete roof for structural integrity and backfilling with syntactic foam (hollow glass beads in a plastic matrix) instead of dirt, you could float a city, or even a country, using 2 or 3 vertical feet of foam for every foot of rock and soil. Perhaps you could use the technique to steal hunks off uninhabited coasts like Antarctica or Alaska, and then move them to cities like Tokyo, New York, LA, or Dubai.

 

[Amaris]

I've always included the Apollo program in with those mega engineering projects myself as well.

Oh, definitely. It was nothing short of a massive undertaking, to take human beings from the earth to the Moon, and to return them home safely, which we did repeatedly.

We really don't do the whole "mega engineering" thing in this country anymore. Sad.

Sure we do! I was reading this article the other day:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/tec...astructure/top-5-engineering-projects-in-2010

It's from 2010, but it does show that we're still working on megascale projects.

 

[gturner]

^ Those are all pretty lame. A new water treatment system for Louisville that uses riverbank sand as the filter? The world's highest ceiling mounted TV?

I'd prefer something a bit more creative, so here's a really odd one.

Drop a couple of giant pipelines into the deep ocean and run them into inland Los Angeles, where they'll feed into a line of 10 or 20 story "buildings", stretching perhaps for several miles from north to south, that are just huge radiators filled with pipes and fins. When you start pumping the 40 degree ocean water through them they'll cool the air dramatically and let you in part regulate the city's inland climate, maintaining cooler temperatures far away from the ocean and drastically cutting everyone's air conditioning bills, and thus California's power usage.

 

[Data Holmes]

How about every coastal city, and all of southern California farm country, being shifted to getting their water from desalinization plants.

How about a high speed, nation wide, subterranean transit and utility system?

How about rapid deployment of high rise inner city vertical farming?

How about reducing urban sprawl, and environmental impact by constructing some Arcologies.

How about an orbital solar power station?

How about deep sea colonies?

 

[Roger Wilco]

^^
Most of those things are completely pointless and/or vastly more expensive and less efficient than the alternatives. There's no lack of farming space or space for cities in the USA, so what's the sue for "inner city vertical farming".
And who the fuck would want to voluntarily live in an "arcology"? Just move to Manhattan if that's the style of living you like.

"Nationwide subterranean transit"? Do you have any ideas what the cost of tunnels is? There is absolutely no reason for transit to go underground when you can just build on the surface, even if it wasn't cost-prohibitive.

"Deep-sea colony"? Just, why?

Same with most of the other brilliant ideas in this thread - a bridge over the strait of Gibraltar, a transatlantic tunnel? What's the use for that and how is it superior to what already exists? And that's without asking who ould pay for it...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

a transatlantic tunnel? What's the use for that and how is it superior to what already exists?

You don't see the value in being able to take a train - a train - from New York to London? In ONE HOUR?

And personal rapid transit is so bleeding obvious. Many people (too many, IMHO) do love to drive, but a lot don't. If you could take a personal pod anywhere you wanted, without having to drive, wouldn't that come in handy? No car insurance, no gasoline, no accidents, none of that crap.

 

[Roger Wilco]

You don't see the value in being able to take a train - a train - from New York to London? In ONE HOUR?

No, not when plane travel is easily affordable.

 

[Knight Templar]

You don't see the value in being able to take a train - a train - from New York to London? In ONE HOUR?

No, not when plane travel is easily affordable.

In the long run, large scale surface travel is cheaper than air travel from what I've heard.

Of course "long run" might be a century but there it is.

 

[MacLeod]

Well in terms of a transatlantic tunnel, sure it could work, but it would be a mammoth engineering feet and no doubt take many decades to complete. It might be more practical to build a series of tunnels from say Scotland to Iceland, Iceland to Newfoundland and so on.

 

[DimesDan]

a transatlantic tunnel? What's the use for that and how is it superior to what already exists?

You don't see the value in being able to take a train - a train - from New York to London? In ONE HOUR?

Even with HS1 leading from St Pancreas to the Euro-tunnel now connecting up with the continental HS network, you can't even get from London to Paris in an hour.

Hell, I can't even get to London within an hour by train and I'm less than 100 miles from the capital.

 

[SmoothieX]

I too am fascinated by large engineering projects, then again I'm also fascinated by small ones. This may explain why I majored in engineering in college.

The mega-engineering project in my neck of the woods getting going right now is the new Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson. They're talking $5B-$6B.

We can't. The EPA, the Endangered Species Act, and wetlands protection makes it hard to dig an irrigation ditch, much less build an inland sea.

You forgot the state level DEP, Town regs, state historic preservation offices, the DOT, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, NIMBYs...

If an jurisdictional agency is in favor of a project, they will rubber stamp it. If not, they will drag their heels and prolong the approval process for years.

Case in point - I had two projects going on a couple years ago. One was the renovation and expansion of a private school. The old one was an eyesore and the new space would bring more money into the town. When I went in front of the planning board to discuss the project, they had some minor comments. We addressed them and they approved it the next month.

I was also working on a small sewer to connect an existing building to the town system. It was being converted from a farm building into a halfway house. The town fought me tooth and nail because the police department didn't want the potential headache of one of these folks falling off the wagon and wrapping their car around a tree.