"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?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @05:20AM (3 children)
Energy wise: solar panels, thorium fission, and fusion. Use situational resources where applicable, like geothermal.
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].
We need to apply that to landfills.
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)
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.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 10 2019, @06:36PM (1 child)
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
So that is what happened 65 million years ago! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.