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Vermont City Almost Encased In a 1-Mile Dome
destinyland writes "A Vermont city once proposed a one-mile dome over its 7,000 residents. (They paid $4 million a year in heating bills, and HUD seriously considered funding their proposal.) The city's architectural concept included supporting the Dome with air pressure slightly above atmospheric pressure. (Buckminster Fuller warned their biggest challenge would be keeping it from floating away...) There would be no more heating bills, fly-fishing all year, and no more snow shoveling. And to this day, the former city planner insists that 'Economically it's a slam dunk.'"
But the answer comes from German city of Bremen, from a company dubbed Vector Foil. Vector Foil manufactures an innovative strong, lightweight, transparent polymer known as ethylene tetra fluoro ethylene (ETFE). At just one percent of glass, ETFE is described as 99 percent nothing. And considering that it can withstand winds of 180 miles per hour, it could be the breakthrough for the Houston Dome.
I'm not a mechanical engineer nor did any of my college coursework overlap with that but my gut feeling was pure skepticism and doubt. At least it's a long long way off if they follow through.
My work here is dung.
This is the most amazing thing I have ever read. God, I hate cold weather.
I'm not sure that going from heating a few thousand little boxes to heating one giant dome really qualifies as "no heating bills". Similarly, while shoveling snow off your driveway kind of sucks, it sure beats having snow build up on your habidome until the whole mess comes crashing down.
Sounds to me like they're trying to protect themselves from extremely high amounts of heavy metals present in the environment.
They'd better wait and read Stephen King's Under the Dome first...
What do they do about car exhaust? And the other source of fumes - cooking, etc.
And how much will it cost when ALL their water needs for lawns and parks and such need to be piped in? Not to mention that many plants need some of the water to fall on the leaves not just the roots.
What about insects and pollinators? Birds that fly south?
This is not very well thought out.
Didn't they try something like this in Springfield? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_Movie
Come on now, this was already done in the Simpsons movie... Nothing new here!
what about high winds?
-paul
From what I remember, this idea didn't go over too well in Springfield...
Seriously though, this sounds like a great setup for a huge disaster. Can you imagine a dome like this falling?
No rain though, that's a plus if you live in the city and don't have a lawn. I'm sure you can have birds and insects inside the dome.
How do you kill that which has no life?
The could have had the dome in place for the premier.
I almost feel like someone's pulling our leg here.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
This town is a dump. Putting it under a dome would be the equivalent of showcasing a field of horse shit.
A couple of years ago Burlington, VT received 25.7 inches (0.65 m) of snow in 24 hours. I don't know what the density of snow is (I imagine it varies wildly), but that seems like a lot of weight.
OK, maybe the warm air can support that... but if that were the case, then on days when there wasn't 89 grillion kg of snow on top, there would be some pretty huge upward forces on the tent-pegs.
OK, well, then, there are vents, to let our some of the hot air. But then you waste all that energy heating air that you're venting.
But maybe it all works out somehow.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
You can get rain in large enclosed spaces. it's condesate. You might not want that raining on you. everything from evaporated dog urine, to aerosol diesel exahust, to flu viruses coming back down. Of course that happens now, but it's dillluted and also purified by the UV.
Now that said. I don't see why a dome has to have an impermeable ceiling. You could arrange things so that natural rain could be let in.
You could make the roof like a salmon ladder on a dam. there is some exchange with the outside air. just not wide open.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Does this mean they get a reality show too?
Well, I had plans to do so, isn't that the same thing as almost doing it? No?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
EPA EPA EEPAAAAA!!!!!
I live in west central Minnesota, which is much colder than VT. In the winter here it is 90 Fahrenheit degrees co;der outside than it is inside.
and thats not counting the wind chill.
There are towns north of here that are even colder.
(north of the border the temperature difference is less because they have bigger degrees.
keep in mind that the heat of the warm air rising in the dome would be sufficient to maintain it well above freezing. therefore, snow would not collect. there would have to be some allowances made in the design for water runoff during winter, which would cause some ice buildup around it from even light snows.
Wouldn't the heated dome just melt it all off? I mean a hemispherical dome of heated air should be able to combat some snow right? Of course the Pontiac Silverdome used a very similar design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Silverdome It's now abandoned but only because the Lion suck and they received a new stadium.
I think this is one of those things that look good on paper, but...
There are so many ways this could go wrong. It might be a way to breed viruses into an entire city, or keep carcinogens trapped for all to breathe. The Biosphere II was a fairly disastrous small scale experiment along these lines. Just imagine having an "oops" moment for a city of 5.7 million.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Alongside other problems (air exchange, summer disassembly, wind loads) Bucky's problem is real -- think hot air balloons.
Back of the envelope, if there's a 20'F difference on a 1 mi dia hemisphere, there's 16,000 lb lift per peripheral foot. That's not easy to anchor (10 x 10 ft foundation cross section.) And you definitely will need lots of steel or kevlar if you want the bottom wall be be under 1/4 inch.
The warm air should melt the snow as it touchs the dome, but this could leave some serious flooding or glaciers at the base of the dome...
Build Underground Cities.
More constant temperature, heaps of extra space. If you begin deep enough you might be able to commence construction with the existing city above.
Although a dome might be easier at first, when they're not prepared to rebuild everything below. Still, I think we'll get there eventually.
This has all happened before, and it will happen again.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
you'd probably use off-site mechanical systems to transmit power to the dome for air exchanging and de-icing. when big storms overwhelm the systems (and they would) you'd need a soft failure mode to reduce catastrophic collapses. doable perhaps but i have no idea what that would be. i'm just not sure it would be cost effective in vermont. alsaka maybe.
airhouses or air-inflated tents are quite useful as a quick and cheap hall to cover a tennis court or a swimming pool. So the basic idea works, but I wonder what the effects of upscaling will be. If the thing is just supported by internal overpressure, this could be varied to cover snow loads or the lifting power of the warm air inside. But I severely doubt that the 90% savings in the heating bill can be achieved, and the heat loss due to the necessary ventilation (come on - did anyone expect all the residents to get electric cars just for this? And electric heating?) will be noticeable.
I guess the best is to try out the idea in incremental steps. Please don't start with Houston - even a 7000 soul village will be too big for the first test.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
This was planned in 1979.
The Simpsons didn't exist in 1979.
Get some life experience that doesn't involve you presuming a well worn and currently unfunny show was the originator of everything, you'll look ridiculous.
The simple fact is, that a dome may not only be cheaper, but provide the large mall atmosphere that so many ppl want. Personally, I wish that several areas would dome up and then perhaps we would see larger population density in these locations. In addition, ppl will work towards keeping their area clean.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Simpsons didn't exist in 1979 when this wasoriginally planned.
The best you could say is that the Simpsons stole it, which would require you to ignore all the other interesting points of the story and focus on the fact that a shitty TV show mimicked real life.
HOLY SHIT, A TV SHOW MIMICKED REAL LIFE!!!
Yeah, no one else cares either.
If they hate the cold so much, wouldn't it be easier to just move to a warmer climate?
Given that I actually live about 5 miles from where the whole Winooski Dome was planned to go this is all pretty well trodden territory here in this part of Vermont. The real killer problems are twofold. One is just that nobody has ever done it before and who wants to be first? In theory its a great idea, but its always the problem you didn't consider that bites you in the end. The second and more practical problem was always snow load. As anyone that has lived in Vermont can tell you, we get plenty of snow. Now pile it up a few feet deep on top of that dome, it adds up real fast. Nobody was ever sure exactly what would happen with all that snow or how long it would stay up there, etc. Roofs regularly collapse around here from snow load. You REALLY don't want to have that happen to your dome. That brings up what was the real final issue. What happens if something goes wrong? Its not just like you wasted a bunch of money. Having that dome come down on top of a whole town? That would be a big mess indeed...
Basically if the concept is ever going anywhere someone needs to build one way out in the middle of nowhere and figure out the basic problems first. Winooski residents wisely decided that being guinea pigs maybe isn't such a great idea.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
"Reality copies the Simpsons (Movie)"
This was planned in 1979.
Don't worry, you're not the only one so socially and intellectually stunted that they reference the Simpsons instead of an intelligent, historically relevant example.
It would be much cheaper to just move everyone south.
Got Code?
You have a dome with a bunch of air in it, right? It has to be exchanged with fresh air, right? Now the city can tax the air their citizens people breath.
It is brilliant, really. They've finally found a way to tax the air we breathe!!
Even if it failed, we'd have gained a whole lot of practical know-how about undertaking a project like that. Even if it ended up way over-budget and required tons of maintenance and so-on, I'd bet that the tourism revenues would have offset that in time.
Is that was caused by spider pig ?
Dome sweet dome...
Actually, the problem is probably better analyzed as a dynamic system. The limbic system is highly efficient at preserving energy in the face of stress. Just thinking about restricting your food intake will slow your metabolism by as much as 40%. Exercise stresses the body, and trying to move the body from a homeostatic state of sedentary activity requires a lot of adaptation. Twelve weeks is probably not enough. A high-carbohydrate diet overloads the cellular sensitivity to insulin control which essentially "gives up" allowing high concentrations of insulin to exist in the bloodstream, and insulin causes fat accumulation in the presence of excess calories from carbohydrates. The use of high-fructose corn syrup in so many different foods stimulates the production of insulin in a manner that is not controlled by oxycalcitrin (a hormone produced in the bones), further aggravating fat accumulation. And, the onset of a life-changing activity without going through the seven steps outlined in James Prochaska's transtheoretical model of change creates mental and physical reactions that are inimical to the reduction of obesity. (And I'm just hitting the high points of the system here.)
Any more questions? (Go on, ask me a HARD one!)
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
When town resident Ethyl Silane was asked her opinion of the dome, she inexplicably ran from her porch screaming "Eee-pah ee-pah eeepaahh!"
-One punk with a gun decides to piss on everybody's day.
-Even if you manage to deal with the weight of snow issue, how does everybody feel about living under artificial lighting for a couple of months each year?
-The expenses of building such a thing would be astronomical. Before even taking into account the dome itself, just building an air-tight wall around the city would pose ridiculously complex (and expensive) engineering challenges. Just managing water, waste and air control for an entire square mile contained environment would require exotic technologies, or billions of dollars worth of scaled up existing technologies. I've seen cities fly billions of dollars over budget trying to do relatively simple things like bury an ugly highway running through the city, or prepare to host the Olympic games. (Or *cough* build domed stadiums.) And then you've got your yearly maintenance costs. Parts wear out and you'd need a dedicated staff whose job it is to manage this thing. I wonder if that would be comparable to a heating bill?
-And in the Summer time. . . Well, guess what? That nice greenhouse effect (if you solved the snow cover problem) which kept you warm all Winter doesn't go away. How did the inventors plan on keeping all the residents from baking?
No doubt, it's a super-awesome idea and every single one of these problems could be cleverly solved and even turned to advantage with brilliant engineering. But it wouldn't be cheap, and frankly, unless the exterior environment was downright toxic or otherwise horrible, it doesn't seem like a particularly necessary idea. If all you're worried about is the cold, then that can be dealt with by spending a fraction of the same budget on the admittedly un-sexy idea of retrofitting buildings with improved insulation and more efficient heating solutions.
And don't forget. . . With the state of corruption in the country, if the energy companies felt that a source of revenue was threatened, domed cities would be, if not outlawed, killed with red tape and bought-off votes. You know it's true.
But I have to admit, the child sci-fi geek in me would certainly love to see at least one domed city of Utopian wonder constructed in my lifetime!
-FL
I'm not a mechanical engineer nor did any of my college coursework overlap with that but my gut feeling was pure skepticism and doubt. At least it's a long long way off if they follow through.
Thats what people thought about powered flight. Maybe you should leave this sort of thing to the engineers.
If they were planning to keep the inside air warmer than the outside air, then they'd find themselves covered by the top half of a hot-air balloon.
The outside air can change temperature very quickly. In winter it can shift by more than 20C between day and night here in Finland, and New England could be similar. Balancing the thermal buoyancy of the air with the mass of the dome would need some skill and unreasonably fast temperature controls to prevent lift-off or collapse. It's feasible for smaller domes, but at the kilometer scale it would be a real challenge. Buckminster Fuller was right - it would need good tethering to keep it down at times. The membrane tensions might also be quite large in places, with interesting dynamics, so that the mechanical design near tethers would also be interesting.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
In much of New England, "city" versus "town" is a matter of the type of colonial charter that was used to found the place. In New Hampshire and Vermont (I grew up on the border) which term is used is largely a matter of historical happenstance.
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Monorail!
Maxwell Smart used something similar to the dome described in TFA almost half a century ago.
"these tomatoes are reproduced synthetically, with only the memories of the sweet flavor from the original. If we keep repeating the process, this fruit will eventually become the real thing."
Covering your city in domes sounds like a good idea, until everybody loses their memory and you get attacked by giant robots.
Who is going to keep the panels clean? Who is going to monitor O2 & CO2 levels? How much damage would a falling panel do? How many people could it kill? Just a few questions since no on can read TFA.
My inner geek is salivating about this! I'd really love to see something like this happen, it would just be so awesomely exciting! Perhaps they should get in touch with the people @ http://www.dubli.com. They're pretty good at making things come true.
"it shrinks in close proximity of severe heat, like fires, so it'll retreat itself away from a flame, so it doesn't light up in a fire"
and when it burns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETFE
awesome: nothing like the smell of hot HF to really get your day started
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
No the african swallow is non-migratory.
they did this in the Simpsons movie. This would be awesome. Not having to deal with weather. Although I live in southern california and weather is not really a problem.
You let the warm air and polluted air out the top through turbines that generate electricity. One way valves at the base let fresh air in. This will work great in the summer as the air in the dome gets hotter more electricity is generated for air conditioning.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
And to this day, the former city planner insists that 'Economically it's a slam dunk.
But the article fails to mention that the former city planner is Pauly Shore.
This would just lead to big arguments between the men and women of the town.
Subject says it all.
Absolutely not true. Here in Quebec, the roof of the Olympic Stadium is a similar deal, and huge hot-air guns are needed to try to melt the snow - and when it's not fast enough, it has to be removed mechanically, or the roof fails (and then they have to get out these huge mechanical "clothespins" to hold the edges together until it can be fixed.
Go by any ice rink in the summer and look at the pile of snow outside from the Zamboni ... snow just doesn't melt as fast as you think, even in 80 degree heat. Also, snow's a half-decent insulator (trapped air), so good luck melting a foot of snow.
If you live long enough you get to see lots of old scifi ideas come to life! This dome thing reminds me of that SimCity 2000 pc game. It was a brilliant and well thought out society/city planning/management game and one of the features you'd get in the advanced stages was the "Dome City," an all-encompassing living and breathing dome habitat. It makes perfect economic, environmental and health sense. It's a shame that it's come to that and on planet Earth!
The general rule of thumb is 10" of snow = 1" of rain. It can vary widely from this, as powder is far different than heavy wet snow, but you can use it for a general estimate.
Our other domes in the world suggest this is possible. However, as you've pointed...around....balancing the forces on this would be tough. In VT (born and raised there) It's not unheard of to have a 40 degree shift in temperature over 24 hrs. 20-30 degrees F is very common. That alone would put significant strain on a structure buoyed by warm air. The buoyant force on a parcel of air is proportional to the difference in temperature with its surroundings. [(T-T')/T', in K] A quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that a change in buoyant force of 8% wouldn't be uncommon within 24 hrs. That's a huge change for a structure to withstand.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
So they say they'll save money on snow removal... *inside* the dome, sure. But what about the first big snowstorm that dumps a foot of snow *on top of* the dome? It will crush flat. Bad news for anyone who's inside.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Just cover all the streets with linear roofs
I live in southern California and we have these really long freeways. I would love to see a dome placed over them - well more like a tunnel... I'd like it to be composed of low cost, low efficiency solar panels (being budget minded), have air scrubbers / exhaust vents and fans for each mile with an air intake system at the level of the roadway itself bringing fresh air from outside in.
The purpose is a combination of:
1) improved driving conditions - ie: less environmental wear on the surface
2) less exhaust pollution in the air via the scrubbers - at the source of a major contributing factor
3) self-sustaining energy use - the solar panels on top would for the most part provide enough power to light the tunnel at night and run the air systems. Any surplus would be a bonus (as solar panels get cheaper this could become significant) and could be used to offset the cost of the construction and future maintenance.
4) reduce noise pollution in surrounding areas immensely
All of this without disturbing any new environments or taking up additional valuable land.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
It is not just the weight of the snow I would worry about. Most northern blizzards average around 20 - 30 inches of snow. Combine that with the high winds and barometric pressure drops. Now you are looking at the possibility of the snow fall coming to rest on 1 large part of the dome with a smaller part (possibly half? ) being left relatively clear. What are the chances that the internal pressure increase causes the dome to be "off balance" of sorts. Could you get a blow out on the side opposite the snow? Could the higher wind and weight combination cause a deformation of the dome?
Personally, I have seen snowfall over 50 inches in a single night. I would much prefer mother nature handle it then rely on some man made, air filled bubble over my head. Give it some sturdy supports and I might consider it.
I think domes are a good idea.
The size of a single dome should be maxed. In order to cover a big city, you MUST use several domes, covering it like a net/bee hive. This reduces the risk of people dying when a dome fails.
The size of the domes must be small enough, to limit the chance of failure to an acceptable percentage. Small domes will also be able to withstand more damage and allow for faster repairs.
I am a huge Paulie Shore fan! How did I miss this?!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
OK, well, then, there are vents, to let our some of the hot air. But then you waste all that energy heating air that you're venting.
But maybe it all works out somehow.
Yes it works out pretty well, by using a technique already used in houses. Use 2 tubes, one inside the other. Let the hot air be expelled through the inner tube, and cold air taken in through the outer tube. If the tube is long enough, the cold air will have taken most of the heat of the hot air before it reaches the inside of the dome/house.
There will be other ecological ramifications to such a dome. Birds and insects inside will be unable to migrate. They will die off. Without insects, a lot of flowers and trees will not be able to pollenate themselves. Parks and gardens will die out. Without bird predation some insect species will start to over populate. Mould and fungus may become an issue, as you would not be getting direct sunlight and the airflows will be different.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I tried reading the article, but the place is apparently slashdotted. What I first thought of is not carbon emissions, or air circulation, but snow. When I shovel snow A scoop weighs around 10 pounds (4.5 Kilograms). Spread that over a mile dome. A foot of snow would be around 27.9 million cubic feet of snow on top of that dome. Now we are looking at 280 million pounds (126 million Kilograms) sitting on top of something that "the biggest challenge would be keeping it from floating away." I wouldn't want 140,000 tons collapsing on top of my bicycle or monorail car.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
I can just see it, late one night in the middle of winter before a snow storm comes through. Pull the plugs on all of the generators keeping the pressure inside the dome. In the morning, everyone wakes up, comes out their door and realizes that they are stuck under the "tarp" loaded with snow.
Build the dome on an empty lot first. See how it fares for a few winters and summers.
That'd give you some better ideas of how to ventilate the whole thing and how the environment would fare inside the dome. Maybe you could build it in such a way that you can open some of the faces in the dome to vent the air.
It could possibly end up as a pretty big tourist attraction. Come see the worlds largest building, and wonder in amazement as you can see trees living inside it.
So let's say we get past funding, the cost overruns of the contractors and unions...I have a few questions on after it's in place.
What happens to the rain? Are they going to irrigate everything?
What about as one person above stated....what happens with snow loading? Last I checked, VT is known for snow (look up ski resorts - VT).
What about hail? Microbursts?
What about the lack of ingress and egress for birds, bees and other wildlife?
What about when the summer temps reach 90+ degrees with 90% humidity....can you say Sauna? How do you ventilate that?
And these are only the things off the top of my head. Give me a few hours to think it through, and I'm sure i could come up with a dozen more.
WTF? Over?
Vermont actually had a city.
Sounds like a wildly expensive boondoggle. I'm surprised they didn't get stimulus funds for it.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I love the artists rendition in the full article. I grew up in Essex Jct, bordering village next to Winooski. There is not a flat piece of land anywhere in Winooski. So it is very interesting to me that the artists rendition seems to somewhat flat ground.
snow melts better from the bottom than from the top. when melting from the top the insulating properties keep the heat away altogether, heated from the bottom, the insulating effect can help because the heat under the snow is trapped by the snow so almost all of it is expended on the snow rather than dispersing into the environment, also water from melting snow does not fall away from the heat source, but rather sits on it and gets warmer as it flows down the surface of the dome, melting even more snow.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
In a situation like this, one must consider security to ensure that people don't come steal your air. I was thinking a combination lock would suffice, perhaps make the combination "1...2...3...4".
It takes a lot of heat to melt snow. A lot.
A tell-tale sign of a poorly-insulated house is that the roof melts the snow off. That's bad. (Expensive)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You don't want your house melting the snow off, and you shouldn't want a dome doing it either. Not well insulated = expensive to heat.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Could you use the upward lift to generate power for the city?
That's nothing. Fuller proposed a dome over Manhattan. Now that would have been something.
Domes have a bad reputation, for the wrong reasons. Domes with factory-manufactured parts protected big radar antennas in the Arctic for decades. Those worked fine. "Hippie domes" made of "natural materials" didn't. The bad rep comes from the Domebook 1 and 2 people. Their idea of a dome was a frame covered with shingles on the outside and wallboard on the inside, like a wood-framed house. Trying to make flat components to fit a dome on site was a disaster. Fuller had the right idea; you make all the parts in a factory, where you can hold tolerances, and assemble on site.
The way small domes should have worked is with triangular standardized inserts - windows, solid walls, vents, wall sections with utility ducts, etc. The sections would be several inches thick, with proper insulation and gaskets. Once the frame was up (the easy part) assembly would consist of putting the inserts into the dome's triangles. You need enough volume to support the manufacturing needed to do this. That's the problem the amateurs ran into.
Domes still have the problem that much of the volume is unusable, but there's no reason they can't be constructed reliably.
... if they would just install a heated driveway. Like on http://landscaping.about.com/cs/winterlandscaping/f/upfront_cost.htm
farting. Along with combustion. Think about it, could get so thick in the dome some days that one can taste it. Might have to just outlaw chili cook-offs.
rather simple solution, first off the railings could carry the melt-off and provide some basic structure heat, nothing extreme, all you need is +3 above freezing. then to do some real heating, use a microwave, that should be ample enough to get the water melting.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
If it would actually save energy cost, it should be investigated. Obama has been pushing some energy conservation initiatives as part of a stimulus package. Start with a small farm. Cover the house and out-buildings. You get experience dealing with the snow, air handling involving noxious odors, and some farmer gets a nicer winter.
Use the lessons learned to cover a suburb. I realize they have home-owner's associations, so the noxious fume problem will be much greater, but it is a learning experience, after all.
Use the lessons learned to cover a town.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I am fairly sure a hurricane would make short work of that dome long before the residents of Houston would gas (or murder) each other.
Ike did a pretty good number on their baseball stadium: http://www.chron.com/sports/photogallery/TEXANS_RELIANT_STADIUM_AFTER_IKE.html
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Drift
1. Snow and ice float on top of water. The water will flow partway down the dome, then re-freeze, forming an ice dam. Look at any poorly insulated roof. Yu can even see this effect in miniature on car roofs in the winter.
2. Most of the problem with melting snow is the energy required for phase change, from crystalline to liquid. It's going to stay at the freezing point for a LONG time.
3. What heat? The snow is blocking the sun, so the dome doesn't warm up. Also, sun falling on the snow is mostly reflected back into space. Cities absorb more insolation in the winter because of pavements, buildings, etc. - they're islands of comparative warmth compared to the snow-covered country around them. The dome, by allowing a blanket of snow to cover the city, chills the city.
Not the lift itself, but venting hot air from the top of the dome through a turbine could work...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Screw domes -- too much snow on the roof and your brains will be in terrible danger. Enlist the aid of Pauly Shore and choose the stately tetrahedron. That'll make sure you don't have too much snow on your dome.
Wikipedia states:
"Compared to glass, ETFE film is 1% the weight, transmits more light and costs 24% to 70% less to install. It's also resilient (able to bear 400 times its own weight, self-cleaning (due to its nonstick surface) and recyclable. On the other hand it is prone to punctures by sharp edges, therefore it is mostly used for roofs.[1] In sheet form as commonly employed for architecture, it is able to stretch to three times its length without loss of elasticity. Employing heat welding, tears can be repaired with a patch or multiple sheets assembled into larger panels.
ETFE has an approximate tensile strength of 42 N/mm (6100 psi), with a working temperature range of 89 K to 423 K (-185 C to 150 C or -300 F to 300 F)"
So far so good... but, what's this...:
"Combustion of ETFE occurs in the same way as a number of other fluoropolymers, in terms of releasing hydrofluoric acid (HF). HF is extremely corrosive, and so appropriate caution must be exercised."
Hmm....
In Liberty, Rene
The thing I thought of is what about things like cockroaches/termites/bees/ants/etc ... things we sometimes consider to be vermin. In a northern climate, winter is good at keeping these populations under control, but if you take away winter...
As a Canadian, I'm glad that I don't have to worry about roaches/termites like people further south do. Bring on the snow!
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
But, really more credit should go to the guy who came up with bread. Slicing it was probably pretty obvious after the fact....
Git off of my property, you Vermint.
Hey, that has a cool ring to it.
Many here don't seem to be looking at the Solution, instead squarely focusing on problems.
What benefits could rest of the country and the world have from stupid ideas like these safely contained inside an all-tight container? Also consider the containment of gene pool contamination.
I say the benefits are so great that all discussion on this topic be stopped at once, lest they realize their foolhardy.
Ice dams form, as in the link you provided, at the point where there is no heat, where the roof extends past the house exterior walls. This dome would be a very good example of a poorly insulated roof. The ice dam would thus form at ground level along the edge of the dome. Hence, my original comment about water runoff management (to prevent ice dams).
This would be a good deal larger dome than a sporting event dome, with active households and vehicles under it. There could be more heat trapped within it than a sports dome would trap. A sports dome has occasional occupation, versus the continuous occupation a city dome would have.
Plus, cities have politicians. This is a wonderful source of hot air.
The town is going to be generating a fair bit of heat (electrical appliances, people etc) and snow is a good insulator. Maybe with the right design the dome could turn into an igloo in the winter. Just ask the Canadians, they all live in igloos and they seem to get on just fine :)
The ice dam can actually form at any point on the roof - for example, on an area in the shade on even a well-insulated roof without much of a slope, or an accumulation of snow or ice.
There's also this from the article:
I'll have to ask my neighbours when the sun comes back and the spring thaw melts the snow next July. That's if they survive the winter and haven't ended up like the Donners.
I think the view in Winooski was pretty much "This is pretty newfangled". Its really a pretty blue collar kind of place. I don't recall exactly what they claimed it would cost, but its safe to say in Winooski terms its "a really huge amount of money" (it isn't exactly a rich town). Maybe somebody like the Feds aught to do the big experiment. People around here thought it was an interesting idea, just a little high risk.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Sure. I think Winooski was just not quite the place with the means to do all of that. Its not a rich town. It just happens to be a very geographically small area with a reasonably high density (well, for Vermont anyway, plenty of suburbs in the US that are probably at least as good a place to start).
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Read up on Biosphere 2. And a lot did go wrong - the thing was designed to have several different ecosystems within it, and as time went by, they became pretty seriously deranged, with many of the higher animal species dying out. Also, there were massive fluctuations in CO2/O2 levels in the atmosphere, some driven by daily cycles - during the day, the plants sucked up too much CO2, and at night, the animals breathed out too much CO2 - and some by other things. They ended up having to import atmosphere from outside. They were also only able to achieve a starvation diet from cultivating stuff within the dome - without some stored food, they occupants would have starved (or had to leave). In practice, they lost significant weight.
So, yes, I'm definitely in agreement that we would have to figure this kind of thing out before trying any space colonies, borrowing some outside atmosphere is not going to be an option on Mars. But all that said, I doubt this is really a practical solution to any real world problem on earth, so I'd be pretty surprised if the Vermont town actually did this. Also: who the hell wants to live their whole life inside a dome? I want to be able to go outside and have it be, you know, outside.
Another thing to worry about. What about farts? I don't think I would like smelling the air inside the dome after a while.
I feel like many of these combined savings have already been achieved without the associated problems of living in a dome. What are those things called? Oh yes, high rise buildings.
If you combined them with something like Houston's tunnel system and New York's subway you could have a very easy to climate control system while still providing for traditional means of transportation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome
The new Stephen King novel out tomorrow about a small town suddenly encased by an invisible, indestructable dome.
I don't know; that whole rotary thing was quite of a big mess too!
I disagree with Fuller. It seems to me that keeping it from flying away would just be a matter of building in sufficient venting--like a hot air balloon that wants to come down. I think preventing a collapse would be a much bigger problem since it tends to be easier to design systems that safely release pressure quickly, than systems that safely create pressure quickly.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Venting is not that hard to design.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This doesn't have to open and close at the top like most domed stadiums. What about heating coils built into the support framework? It would also seem to help the snow problem if the shape were closer to a snow globe than a stadium roof.
if the heating bill is the problem, why not centralize it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating
I live in a 200k people town in italy.
we have a power plant close to the town center.
we have built pipes under most of the central part of town
hot water coming out of the plant as a byproduct get
piped to the individual homes and is used for heating during the winter.
the bill for the people is cheaper and it seem to work quite well.
the only problem is what gets burned in the plant, but that is a typical italian political problem that would probably not exist in other parts of the world
Not only lack of oxygen, but cars + carbon minoxide emissions... yea I see 7000 people dead in months.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
At present a greenhouse on a sunny day needs an air exchange every 90 seconds. I have a home made rather leaky 8x8 foot (2.4 x 2.4 m for the imperially challenged) greenhouse. With the doors and windows closed it regularly gets 20 C (36 F for the metrically impaired) warmer than outside. This despite having 200 gallons of water in pails.
Vermont winters can be daunting, and keeping the place 20 or 30 degrees warmer may be looked on with some favour. A similarly raised Vermont summer would make Mississippi seem cool and refreshing.
Now one of the advantages of taller greenhouses is that convection is more effective at venting them. Perhaps a suitable controlled iris at the dome peak will be sufficient.
Of course if you have enough venting to keep from cooking people, keeping it inflated may be a challenge.
You also will have a temperature differential across that membrane. 20-40 degrees worth. This will result in constant condensation on the inside of the surface, which will slide sideways to find some irregularity and drip off. This is a problem in greenhouses. It results in some poor plant getting 5-6 times as much water as it's neighbors. I've seen it erode a 2" deep hole in potting soil. And that's from only 3 feet up. Nice fat drips from 500 feet up. New form of Chinese Water Torture.
Let the surface of the dome get too cold, and snow may not melt off the top. Now it's really dark inside.
In winter you may get frost forming on the either the membrane or the support system. Now you have the potential of sheets of ice falling from the roof.
Of course one of the options is to make the dome covering partially silvered. The human eye is logrithmic in it's sensitivity to light. You could block 95% of the sunlight and still have a brightly lit town. Plants would not be
happy.
Such a dome probably wouldn't get cold enough for temperate trees to change colour in the fall, nor would they get cold
enough to fulfill the chilling requirement for the buds to open. (Sugar Maple require 1000 hours of temperatures below -35 F to break bud the next spring. Other trees have more complicated timing. Evolved to meet the problems of January thaws, and late spring freezes.)
NASA has 'weather' in the vehicular assembly building. And it isn't even transparent.
Were I evil emperor in this Vermont town, I'd start smaller. Park. Golf course. School yard. Shopping mall.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I live in Winooski, VT, the city in which the dome was presented. It never held water. It was entertained briefly but shut down quickly. Interestingly enough, the story made news world-wide, and I've heard of history books in other countries mentioning it as something that actually happened.
Yes, the dam can form at any point where the roof is not warm enough. Intuitively obvious?
To long, did not read.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?