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Engineers Propose Lily Pad-Like Floating Cities
Zothecula writes "The idea of going offshore to satisfy our renewable energy needs isn't new, but the grand vision of Japan's Shimizu Corporation goes way beyond harnessing green energy at sea for use in cities on Terra firma — it takes the whole city along for the ride. The company, along with the Super Collaborative Graduate School and Nomura Securities, is researching the technical issues involved in constructing its Green Float concept — a self-sufficient, carbon-negative floating city that would reside in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean."
The technical issues: Hurricanes, typhoons, rogue waves, tropical storms... Even if you make your lilies float, what's on top could still be blown over, and how many people want to live with an ocean view that turns dark and deadly every couple years? Oh... wait... New Orleans. Nevermind. The lemmings will pay plenty to drown in the ocean.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I wonder how the engineers for the Green Float concept solved (if, indeed they did) how such a lily-pad city concept would be able to withstand tsunamis, which a floating city in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would be especially vulnerable. Unlike tsunamis on land, a lily-pad city, I'd think, would add the additional complication that the city could sink or fragment or capsize, trapping or killing a lot of people.
Also, with regards to the "carbon-negative" claim - do they mean carbon negative with regards to its operation? Or are they also including the incredible amount of carbon that would've had to be emitted in the construction of such a structure?
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I have a sinking feeling about this...
Something smells fishy here...
Just go with the flow...
For the price that you pay to build a whole city on the ocean, you could probably build the city on land, build the power generation stuff in the ocean, build a bunch of redundant transmission lines between the two, and still have tons of money left over to improve your lifestyle (and if you really want "green" stuff you could use to build extra windmills or switch to organic foods or whatever else). This really makes little sense.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
From "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps"
First we need puddle jumpers, yes puddle jumpers.
-ravan_a
Well, I guess it might work out better if they want to build new ones...
(though realistically, probably pipe dreams anyway (nothing particularly new?), again / better to use the tech in most efficient way and place - an existing land, for example)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Here is the setting for the followup to Bioshock Infinte! This is halfway between, Bioshock 1 and 2 under the sea, Bioshock Infinite sky modules).
The energy cost of building this seaborne city would be much greater than whatever savings it might obtain, whether built at sea or shipped there from a land base. How about the energy costs of moving people between this city and anyplace else, from which it would be remote?
Building on land isn't less energy efficient, it's more efficient. There's plenty of land near enough to oceans to take advantage of the ocean energy, without the higher costs of operating everything on the ocean. Any merit to these principles would be better applied to building a city on an island rather than a floating city from scratch.
This project is an obvious waste of time, money and energy. I smell a government grant sucked up by bankers and their grad student patsies.
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make install -not war
I live in Atlanta. I don't want to turn into a mermaid.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Would be very attractive for a number of businesses.
The displacement of large water which causes the tsunami would not affect deep-water installations... now hurricanes and typhoons would be disastrous.
Anecdotally, I was in Thailand during the Indian Ocean Tsunami. I spoke to folks who had been flooded, who swam away from floating ATM machines and such, and also a boat captain who told me that one mile out, they felt the tsunami... it was like a small sudden wave/bump and passed in a few seconds.
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... like the islands of San Serriff?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
http://www.seasteading.org/
Idea's been around for a while. The main issue is that it takes some major bucks to get a project like this off the ground so it'll likely remain among the list of intriguing ideas nobody's been able to finance like intercontinental bridges, beanstalks, arcologies, and such.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
it should read "Artists Propose Lily Pad-Like Floating Cities"
The fractal growth concept is kind of cool though.
Knowledge Brings Fear
Link
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
One word: Septic
The ocean is not your toilet.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
This concept was explored in much greater detail in Marshall Savage's book "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps" (look it up on Wikipedia...) Honestly, I like Savage's methodology better- use OTEC (power generation through ocean temperature differentials)power to accrete/ grow your building materials from seawater. But then again, all this sort of thing is blue-water blue-skying....
Neal Stephenson had something like this in Snow Crash, too.
They talk about using magnesium for construction.
Magnesium and salt water is about as bad as it gets for corrosion problems.
That thing would be decomposing faster than they could build it.
anyone else think that looks like Farpoint?
Or am I so bored by this meeting that I am making nutty observations?
blah blah blah
Most countries have an abundance of land making this fantasy of a city completely redundant. While Japan is noted as having far less usable land than say the U.S., Europe or continental Asia, skyscrapers, land reclamation and urban sprawl usually do the trick in making room for population growth.
To conceive of this mammoth project might be an architect's wet dream, but realistically, the global population is not so extreme that this needless reallocation of resources is warranted.
In terms of generating renewable energy and minimizing resource use, one only needs to look in our backyards - we've the technology to go carbon neutral/negative now. It's the political and societal will that's lacking.
Can you imagine a fleet of Chinese trawlers smashing into such a city because they claim the water it's under? Somali pirates would like to pay a visit as well.
I an Engineer, and I propose that supermodels be required by law to date Engineers... that doesn't mean it's going to happen!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Or they could just lash a bunch of ships to a super carrier and let it float nearly aimlessly around the Pacific Ocean, picking up and dropping off refugees every time it stops.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
It's been in the Japanese imagination for a long time, you see it crop up in endless amounts of sci-fi and whatever. Closest thing that comes to mind is (the PS game) Front Mission 3, which had a segmented ocean city made of independently powered hexagonal segments, with high density buildings and park spaces.
I read about this decades ago.
Amazon review of a book.
It made no sense then, it'll make no sense today.
The proof of concept (known as the Carnival Splendor) for the "floating city" idea isn't going well....
Chingers on rafts - what's not to like?
They've been working on this at http://www.seasteading.org/ for several years now. Cities in the sea, and being able to move your "Seastead" from one city to another if you don't like living there.
Someone watched a lot of Stargate: Atlantis. Do you think the cities will have shields and a cloaking device?
The green float would "use a number of technologies to make a carbon negative system" and "would also produce zero waste by recycling resources and converting waste into energy". However none of their proposed ideas to accomplish these tasks would be any easier to do on a green float as opposed to on dry land. If it's so easy to build a carbon negative city with zero waste, prove it first on dry land...it will surely be more difficult to do on one of these contraptions where you have so many other technological nightmares to deal with. And I won't bother to mention what a catastrophe it would be when one of these things sinks or flips over in a major storm.
If your going to propose something impractical why not go big like a Dyson Sphere!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
These units remind me of eating plant cells in Spore.
The majority of the inhabitants would live in 1km high “City in the Sky” towers located at the center of the circular cells
The idea of a futuristic city comprising of isolated skyscrapers in vast expanses of open parkland was a fashionable one for futurists in the 50s and 60s, but it's contrary to everything we know about how humans like to live. We like our streets at ground level, our cafes to sit outside, and so on. It's nice to be able to walk to places rather than being forced to drive everywhere because nothing is built anywhere near anything else. If you have to get from one of these towers to another then you have a long trip ahead of you.
Tall buildings are fine for work, play, and for a certain demographic to live in, but if you put lower income people in high rises it can become a nightmare as the UK found out with its ill-fated experiment with high rise living in the 60s.
Still an interesting concept though.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
It sounds like the setup for a SciFi movie. Starts out with a group being transported to an inactive city beneath the sea, but when power fails it floats to the surface, where they are attacked by soul sucking aliens and evil machines while searching for power units. Maybe we could call it Stargate Atlantus, or something like that.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
For the Japanese a person per square yard is arm's length. Americans would be bumping butts and bellies at that range.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Whenever there's a discussion about colonizing the moon I wonder why not expand into or onto the ocean? There's a lot less technical challenges to overcome and help would be a lot closer if needed.
If course, anybody who thinks the earth's land is full has obviously never been very far from a city.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
It makes me sad that the History Channel showed this whole concept on Modern Marvels long ago, and it is just now news on /. Everything was explained, demonstrated, and visualized and here we are talking about the concept without a reference other than an article that is outdated. Very sad day for me.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
First step to having a floating city, is making sure the wraith does not see you...and also warp drive capability
In other words, they want to build the fabled city of Atlantis.
Except without
- the ability to safely sink below the ocean and rise up again at will. For example, to submerge beneath passing tropical storms.
- the ability to travel the seven seas to travel and explore [ok, my idea, not part of the fable, unless you consider below]
- the ability to take off and fly between star systems and/or galaxies [the Stargate variety]
Of course, should tragedy strike and it really does sink (assuming its not designed to do so), then it really would fit the story of the real ancient city of Atlantis (presumably an island that was hit by an earthquake and sank below the ocean) that inspired said fables.
Joking aside, this is a good idea for the future. Particularly for Japan, which suffers from a shortage of stable land, and whose people are already used to commuting between islands. Furthermore, if they can truly make it self-sufficient, then it would serve as a great model to learn how to build future Lunar,Martian,etc. colonies.
Such structures would only be "green" until humans live there, then it would be no more green than downtown San Francisco.
When humans run out of land to pollute, water is the only place on the planet left.
When I was in grade school in the mid 1960's, I drew something like this using crayons. So by recent IP standards, the idea is mine and mine alone.
Sorry, Japanese engineer dudes. But I'd be willing to license the idea for a reasonable fee, say, no more than 5% of the overall construction cost.
The First Step is having enough ZPMs, everything else comes after that.
David Brin has the concept of the inevitable Sea State in his book Earth. Of course, in the book the planet rejects the Sea State once it attains consciousness... [sorry for the spoiler -- but the book is definitely worth reading. I'd read it along with Neal Stephenson's Zodiac -- both interesting ecological sci-fi]
Engineers Propose
Full stop. Very old concept. This is not a new proposal. This is more like "five hundredth time we've been promised flying cars and perpetual motion"
Historically this always fails for two reasons:
Nothing corrodes stuff like the sea. Its barely economically feasible to build giant movable profit generating machines that slowly corrode away. Making "dirt" to build huts on or whatever is not going to generate enough economic activity to pay for maintenance. Or at least it never has in the past. You'd think if its feasible, we'd have had cultures like Bedouin nomads of the sea...
The other fail is dirt isn't as useful as buildings. And stuff floating on the sea is too flexible to build much bigger than cruise ships. And the weight per square foot is too high to do heavy industrial work.
So the best bet is always piling fill on shallow reefs to make new islands. But even that is usually economic doom (see Dubai, etc)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Nice, if you willing to settle for a city floating on the water. If you'd like your city to be floating, period, however, Bucky's still got your back...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_nine_(Tensegrity_sphere)
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
of one of these floating cities. Dry land is not a myth!
How about figuring out a way to gather up the trash in the pacific and to aggregate it into a floating island?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm pretty sure as amusing as it is to see "Diaper Dave" Vitter and other oddities in your representation, it's pretty clear that in highly corrupt areas, not only do big-ticket items cost more, but quality of those things is dangerously low. Take a look at those schools in China.
This among other reasons, is why corruption can be deadly and should be fought tooth and nail.
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Previous Art: Jules Verne, 1871, A Floating City
It's interesting that each story posted here that has something to do with potential future-tech (near or far future) is often met with torrents of skepticism, with plenty of "I bet they didn't think of THIS and that's why it won't work" posts.
Now don't misunderstand - identifying caveats, weaknesses, errors, threats, dangers, oversights, and other potential problems is absolutely vital to the success of any project, but we (myself included) tend to post as if we don't believe any engineer or scientist working on the project-du-jour would think of any of them, while we are the sole identifiers of problems, the only possessors of some fundamental and absolute facts that cause the project at hand to be entirely unfeasible.
This a tech/science/deep-thoughts site, filled with tons of very insightful and intelligent contributors. Just seems that we'd be a little more on the side of, "hey, neat idea, I wonder how they worked around the problem of 'x'" rather than, "idiots didn't even consider 'x' I bet, it'll never work."
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
And the idea is as ridiculous now as it was then. If that city arrangement actually worked, we'd see one of them on land by now. People don't want to live in what is essentially a giant apartment building. At least, the type of people that are educated and skilled enough to afford living in this "prime" real estate. Not saying it'll never happen, or it's a bad idea, I'd love to see it personally. But it's so far fetched, such a low demand, and such a wild departure from a normal lifestyle that it's highly unlikely.
One good hurricane and a floating city might become a flying city or perhaps a great place to drown.
I guess you've never been to Manhattan. There aren't a lot of homeowners there, and the people are highly educated and probably paid a lot more than you are.
Atlanta!
As an engineer, I like to think about screwy problems from time to time myself, and have even devoted a little time to the concept of floating housing and infrastructure;
The problems with building in the ocean are immense:
1) The ocean is not "smooth and placid", even on a calm day. The cyclical action of small waves lapping against, and rolling under the surfaces of any floating structure causes abrasive damage to those surfaces. This is worsened by "Cavitation", when the water is moving quickly, (basically dissolved gases in the water get turned into little erosive bubbles as the water gets 'torn' by small surface imperfections as it flows over it) such as when there is high wind. This means that any non-self-regenerating surface (pretty much anything other than living tissue of some sort, like coral) is going to end up as nanoparticulate goo in one of the ocean's gyres.
2) Bouyancy is a major, non-trivial issue. Bouyancy will degrade over time as organic "Cling-ons" stick to the water-exposed surfaces. (In the ocean, this includes coral buds, kelp fronds, barnacles, and friends.) Additionally, "uneven" construction above on top of the "plate" will cause listing of the bouyant building surface. You would need to displace an obscene amount of water to hold up a traditional wood-frame house. (I know, I did calculations for it!) Even more if you intend to have any kind of yard or agricultural system running, since dirt weighs MORE than water. (meaning you must displace MORE water than the same volume of soil.)
3) Strapping discrete units together causes mechanical stresses at the joints, as the whole under-surfaces of the floating plates act as levers, applying blunt prying force on the joins. You can alleviate this somewhat by using a cantilouvered (sp? whatever.) design, but then you end up with mechanical wear as the joints rub from the undulating motion of the connected platforms.
All of these problems are major issues for "Fair weather" construction-- The implications of weathering a hurricane or coastal tsunami wave (remote ocean, where the water is deep, Tsunami are not a major factor.) impose whole orders of magnitude greater difficulties.
Based on some observations I have made on water turbulence, any "Floating city" would be better off about 6 meters under the water's surface, than it would be at the surface. Most ordinary wind driven water flow is greatly slowed and stabilized by the time it reaches that depth, reducing cavitational damage on the outer skin of the complex. Bouancy is more easily controlled with a ballast system, and due to the subdued wave-action at that depth, the mechanical forces between modules is greatly reduced.
Such a complex could be constructed between what would essentially be "deep ocean oil platforms", but without the oil pipelines. These would function as pylons to help constrain the floating complex, and provide the infrastructure to enter and leave the complex at the surface.
Building UNDER the water has other problems though-- Namely, risk of flooding, people getting trapped in airlocks, and the whole ball of wax of air, air quality, and atmospheric reprocessing/exchange. (Sad truth-- pumping air is expensive.) At such a shallow depth (basically 18 feet or so) there is little risk of developing nitrogen narcosis, but there would still be psychological effects of living in a tin-can.
Pretty much, the difficulties in constructing and maintaining a general purpose, habitable structure that is underwater is why there are so few of them, and none of them are 'large scale' construction projects.
Video and interview with Shimizu engineer available here.
First opinion: Don't build it in open ocean you twats. If I can use cruise ships as a point of comparison*, this style of construction will cost thousands of dollars per square foot. No significant group of human beings will pay thousands of dollars per square foot to live on open ocean - but those prices are just about right for certain crowded coastal cities like New York, San Francisco, et cetera. If this project were built as an expansion to an existing city, it would have a shot at being economically feasible. If it were built anywhere else on Earth, there's no way. The overwhelming majority of people will not choose to spend exorbitant amounts of money to live in economically isolated bubbles - there are a few counterexamples (eg certain kinds of suburbs), but they mostly serve as disastrous examples of how NOT to spend money developing cities. In practice, architects who overdevelop undervalued land lose big time.
*The Norwegian Epic is currently the largest cruise ship in the world. It cost about a billion dollars to commission, and is about 130,000 square feet across. It has 19 decks, so generously assuming each deck provides a full 130,000 square feet of habitable space, it cost about $5000/square foot.
Second opinion: Scale it down. Bigger is not always better. A project of this size (eg. a 1.5km high tower in the middle of a 3km diameter floating steel bowl) would require tens of billions of dollars in funding and decades of planning and construction. If funding of the project is lost at any point during construction, you're left with an enormous rotting steel skeleton that has no practical economic value. (Similar example: "The World" in Dubai. A super-expensive man-made archipelago that lost funding during the 2009 financial crisis and is now just a $14 billion testament to the dangers of mixing cocaine with urban planning.)
Third opinion: Scale it down. The only thing worse than living in a giant, featureless box is living in a stack of giant, featureless boxes.
Fourth opinion: I love urban agriculture. I love greenhouses. I love arcologies. But this is stupid. Rather than spending billions of dollars on a floating experiment (that I can tell you right now is doomed to failure), they could spend some of that money proving that multi-use residential/commercial/agricultural/recreational skyscrapers are an economically viable model for development. It would only cost about a few hundred million dollars at most - peanuts compared to this proposal - to buy several existing skyscrapers, gang them together with skyways/aerial walkways, and convert their top floors into open-air parks, greenhouses, et cetera. If the resulting development could be sold or leased profitably, and could function efficiently and with good livability, it would validate many ideas and would encourage future development along these lines.
In conclusion, give your architecture dollars to me and not these clowns, I will do a much better job.
That could work ... till the ZPM's run out of power and the wraith attack.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Did anyone else think, "Hey it's the city of Midgar from Final Fantasy 7!"???
No, seriously, think long term. Maybe in a 1000 years from now this will seem to be a good idea. But now and for the next 200 years, it's just fantasy-science fiction.
It isn't sinking in with the tech crowd here, but the United States is broke. We really don't have any money any more. There aren't going to be any great big new projects like there were in the 20th century.
All the technical advancement of the past 100 years has come from the ability to use ever-increasing amounts of cheap oil. And the amount of oil that we can cheaply pump out of the ground is reaching its peak. And there is no realistic energy source to replace it, cheaply.
Oh yeah, tell me about the upcoming research on hot fusion, cold fusion, 80% efficient solar cells, giant ocean wave turbines, lava heat exchangers, induced micro-earthquakes, whatever. But, research is one thing and getting any of these sources able to surplant cheap oil is something else.
There is no money to finance the huge capital expenditures needed to transform the energy systems from oil/coal to anything else. The banking system in the USA has imploded: and no one will talk about it.
In thirty years you will tell your children and grandchildren that long ago people could just jump into their cars and drive anywhere they wanted to, anytime that they wanted to. But they won't believe you. Because it will be far outside of their own life experience. Just like you don't believe that fifty years ago it was no big deal to bring your rifle with you on a commercial airplane trip when you went on a hunting vacation out west.
Anyway, there aren't going to be any giant floating cities in the future. There isn't any money to actually build them.
You want a glimpse of the real future? Visit Haiti. Corrupt, bankrupt, stupid, backward, crowded, loud, hopeless, and filled with lots of clueless rich people running around trying to help but doing nothing.
The only two reasons people would move off of land to be out in the ocean is out of profit or necessity. I don't believe anyone wants to induce people out to sea from necessity. By necessity I mean things like the land becomes undesirable from crowding, pollution, corruption, war, or flooding. Then people will move out to sea to be subsistence fishers, pirates (making a living by stealing from those that have stuff, which can only last so long as there are people with stuff worth stealing), or perhaps some other unforeseen profession. The move out to sea from necessity will not be pleasant, and is not likely to be "green" since people in survival mode are more concerned about today than tomorrow.
If people are going to move out to sea for profit then there needs to be a product. We already see ships that can create a comfortable environment for months without a need to return to shore. When they return to shore they do so for trade for things that can be found more easily at sea for things that can be found more easily on land. If there is desire to create a "city" out in the sea then one must find a way to economically produce more things that can currently only be profitably produced on land.
One reason that all current ships need to return to shore is for fuel. This is one key aspect in my mind for sustainable living at sea. Nuclear powered ships can stay at sea for fifty years. If there is a way to draw nuclear fuel from the sea then that need can be fulfilled without returning to shore. The ocean is full of uranium and thorium dissolved in the water as salts. If someone can figure out a profitable way to extract those fissile materials from the water then the ships can fill their own reactors and perhaps have some extra to sell to people on land.
Nuclear power is fine for very large ships but smaller ships will need diesel fuel. This can be drilled from the seabed or synthesized from nuclear power. If we ever figure out fusion power then the ocean can be mined for fusion fuels like hydrogen, lithium, and boron.
The other reason people need to return to shore is for food. There is plenty of fish out there, and we have plenty of experience in extracting fish from the sea. People will need water, but we also have plenty of experience in making sea water fit to drink. When it comes to things like grains, fruits, and vegetables that will have to be traded for with land based economies or we will have to develop the technology to grow it at sea. If we have come to the point where we can economically produce food and energy then it is a small step to produce cotton, wool, and other materials for clothing.
Once we have developed the basics to provide food, water, shelter, heat, light, and such we can concern ourselves with more luxurious items. Cruise ships built only to entertain people are already in existence. The only difference now is that with the infrastructure of ships producing food and energy then the ship will not need to go to any port. People will wish to have the means to get from ship to shore quickly so there might be a floating airport in this developing flotilla. Then people on these ships might have a desire for protein other than fish. We might see floating dairy farms and chicken coups for fresh milk, eggs, chicken, and beef.
I don't think that a floating city will ever be developed until all the technologies have been proven on other ships for many years. I think that a sustainable floating economy will just happen in time. It will start with fishing boats, oil rigs, and cruise ships looking for ways to cut down on costs and improve living conditions. At some point it will develop into a flotilla of mutually beneficial ships traveling together in a manner much like "Battlestar Galactica".
We could see fishing boats, hospital ships, retired aircraft carriers converted into civilian floating airports (and given enough time ships built specifically for this purpose), rescue/repair/recovery ships (a floating combination tow truck, repai
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Paolo Soleri was designing shit like this back in the 1960s.
Maybe when there's the political will to get anything useful for this planet to actually be built, I'll get excited.
Who read this and first thought, "Altantis?"
I really am surprised noone has made a joke about that yet.
I like the idea. Heaven is: a Saturday afternoon, lying on the couch watching the game on TV with a beer in the one hand, a cigar in the mouth, and a fishing pole out the window. Even if a tsunami hit, if the ocean is deep enough, it will simply pass harmlessly under me without my knowing it!
ISTR seeing a model for a proposed floating city on display in Pilkington's (Pilkington Glass) in St. Helens (UK) sometime in the early 1960's
Stop the depletion of the seas due to industrial fishing (not to mention the "research" on whales) and then I can consider you a serious country!
Of course, industrial fishing is not practiced only by Japan. It is utterly unbelievable - the amount of dead creatures which we don't use and throw back into the water (dead) can be up to 90% of all there is in the net!! Why no one is screaming bloody murder! Why do we tolerate this amount of BS in the world? At the moment the 20 monkeys are spending our money to chat about currency wars and printing money by the Feds, while at the same time the oceans are empty.
I am sorry, but just like one of my old post about the amazingly energy efficient jet engines (what's the profit, I asked - we will just fly more frequent so any "saving" will be immediately canceled by increased consumption and increased population) I have to say it again - what's the profit? Why the fuss? Why do we even bother to listen to this drivel? It only gives the illusion of safety and mislead us to believe that someone actually has an objective of making sustainable economy. The objective is always the same - money and power. Without real paradigm shift all efforts are meaningless.
The system we are living in encourages destructive behavior; anybody who slows down the rate of destruction is immediately in losing position since success is measured by the things consumed and accumulated. So, we are like kids who stuff themselves uncontrollably with sweets. All will get sick at the end (in our case die rather than being sick), but while there is still candy everyone keeps eating as fast as they can, because otherwise "the other kid will eat more and be stronger than me".
Stop wasting resources to tell us how we should not waste them, while at the same time saying that any decrease in consumption leads to economy collapse.
I wonder why people keep bickering about insignificant things (not specifically here, but in general), keep on discussing forever "in what colour to paint the ship, while it is sinking?" Another analogy - we are needlessly throwing in the garbage bin packs food that contains say 1000 calories per pack, but we build special trash bin (using LOTS of resources for R&D) which converts into useful energy small portion of the energy released by the impact between the food and the container. WOW, we are getting back 20 calories, otherwise lost in heat! We are going green! Youhoooo!
I am speechless by all this. Such stupidity surely will be edited by natural selection. Can't wait...
It probably should be...
Recycle
This is blinging
It'd be amazing how much more trivial something like this would be if we had a theoretically perfectly rigid/strong material that could withstand near-infinite forces, and was super cheap to produce.
That and unlimited energy such as fusion would propel us into a real space age. Sigh...
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Stargate Atlantis. That is all.
This is idea is few dozens to hundreds of years old. Way to go, /.
In related news, my concept city, which I do not plan to calculate or verify otherwise, is on the moon and uses unicorn bone dust for power.
Giga Fortress