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posted by martyb on Friday May 10 2019, @12:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the Mars/Moon-Ho!-Can-you-dig-it? dept.

Phys.org:

"We are coming to a point in our history in which we need to start looking for more space," Han Admiraal, a civil engineer with over two decades of experience in underground space, told AFP on the sidelines of this year's World Tunnel Congress.
...
"Underground spaces could easily be used for growing crops," he said, as he toured the cavernous Bourbon Tunnel, dug deep under the Italian city of Naples as a potential escape route for King Ferdinand II of Bourbon after the 1848 riots.

Scientific developments in areas like aquaponics—where vegetables and fish are farmed together—could help relieve the pressure on the food supply chain, and dramatically cut transport costs if such new farms were situated under cities.

Isn't excavation expensive?


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 10 2019, @04:49AM (6 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 10 2019, @04:49AM (#841715) Journal

    I think you are overly optimistic. The resources required by the giant cities you are proposing are not trivial, and not known to be available. Food may be doable, but other components are less likely. Have you tracked the price of Copper recently? Indium? (Well, it's been a few years since I did. It was too depressing.)

    The only way I can conceive your giant cities surviving is if sea-water mining for uranium (known to be slightly profitable) made, as a side effect, a rich ore for other needed materials. But most materials are too expensive to extract from sea water. Or possibly as a side effect of controlled fusion we could create a torch to vaporize rock and run the vapors through a mass spectrometer. Whee!! (I'm going to just skip over all the problems inherent in THAT scenario.)

    Not to mention that we already seem to be killing off the plankton, which make about 2/3 of our atmosphere's oxygen. And the forests that make another large fraction. So expect the oxygen level of the planet to take a sharp dip fairly soon.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @05:20AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 10 2019, @05:20AM (#841725) Journal

    Energy wise: solar panels, thorium fission, and fusion. Use situational resources where applicable, like geothermal.

    Have you tracked the price of Copper recently? Indium? (Well, it's been a few years since I did. It was too depressing.)

    Maybe in a few decades we'll have a credible attempt to do asteroid mining, including getting resources to the Earth's surface [soylentnews.org].

    Or possibly as a side effect of controlled fusion we could create a torch to vaporize rock and run the vapors through a mass spectrometer.

    We need to apply that to landfills.

    Not to mention that we already seem to be killing off the plankton, which make about 2/3 of our atmosphere's oxygen. And the forests that make another large fraction. So expect the oxygen level of the planet to take a sharp dip fairly soon.

    That will probably balance out. Or we're just screwed.

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    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 10 2019, @04:32PM (2 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 10 2019, @04:32PM (#841908) Journal

      Asteroid mining will be, at best, marginal economically until we have permanent residence in space. I suppose it could be run by a good enough AI, though.

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      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @06:36PM (1 child)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 10 2019, @06:36PM (#841977) Journal

        Asteroid mining would be best for making things in situ. But there are seemingly credible proposals for bringing asteroids down to the surface of Earth. I think it boils down to getting the asteroid to orbit Earth, wrapping the asteroid in a heat shield, and then sending it down to hit a desert. Most of the velocity will be lost without the mass being burned off, and it will be far too slow to cause a catastrophic megaton explosion.

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        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 10 2019, @09:29PM

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday May 10 2019, @09:29PM (#842071) Journal

          Asteroid mining would be best for making things in situ. But there are seemingly credible proposals for bringing asteroids down to the surface of Earth.

          So that is what happened 65 million years ago! :-)

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  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday May 10 2019, @07:58AM (1 child)

    by isostatic (365) on Friday May 10 2019, @07:58AM (#841750) Journal

    So expect the oxygen level of the planet to take a sharp dip fairly soon.

    That's OK, we'll just build megamaid

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 10 2019, @02:06PM (#841827)

      We first have to find Druidia.