The laser cannon for large-scale excavation was invented in 2019 by Isaac Helvitz and Aasim ibn al-Walid of MIT and it can't be used militarily unless you will attack someplace by boring a hole for a subway. The new invention was immediately put into the employ of the RCPC (Rock City Planning Commission) after multiple of the devices were acquired for construction of the Rock City prototype. The manufacturers, DD Harriman Enterprises, were advised to keep making more since the RCPC will need a lot of them.
Note: Aasim is a Muslim name which means 'one who avoids sin.'
The biggest problem with the laser cannon was the smoke produced required significant ventilation to eject from the Rock City but the effort was worthwhile since it was vastly easier to vaporize the rock than to try to haul it out of the site. The invention obviated two of the biggest impediments to the construction. In time, the inventors discovered a way to 'scrub' the smoke to prevent the atmospheric pollution which would have been engendered by such a massive project.
Estimates of construction time came down from decades to a couple of years but the first detail of the construction was to define how many floors should be bored out and how wide should the Rock City extend. With a ten square mile lateral spread multiplied by one hundred floors, the result is a thousand square miles of area in a single Rock City.
We need some lateral spread since humans like to walk and we also like to run, at least some of us. When you're living in a ten square mile area, if you can't get a workout running a lap around that then you're probably one of the legendary African distance runners who can go a hundred miles barefoot without breaking a sweat.
Fort Worth is not this large but if it were, say, fifty miles on a side, the surface area would be twenty-five hundred square miles. However, consider how much of that space is wasted with roads, lawns, and all manner of rubbish which is grossly insulting the environment. The RCPC won't support any of that type of space and they realize man needs green space but we don't need it on every street in front of every house in the country. The lost productivity in mowing lawns was one of the more absurd manifestations of the early 21st Century.
(Ed: I don't mow the lawn because I care about the grass. It gives me some peace from the wife.)
Well, it's not exactly peace from the wife but rather peace from anyone. When we have free time, humans usually like to share some of it but mostly we spend it alone doing whatever we want. Mowing a lawn isn't anything anyone wants but it's almost impossible to be bugged while doing it.
(Ed: the Rock City will have protections against being bugged?)
Yep, humans need that.
We can do better than lawn maintenance for our idle time and it's a prime factor in design for the Rock City. It's not our purpose to make every moment productive but it's definitely the intention to make each moment as fulfilling as possible. Anyone who ever found fulfillment in mowing a lawn probably has serious psychological damage and likely dreams of groundhogs and working on a golf course.
There is plenty of green space within the Rock City design since we have another Central Park like New York every few floors and the space is insignificant relative to how much is wasted on lawns on the ground-level.
Lotho was a bit reluctant to sound like a naysayer but bring it. I reserve the right to throw sci fi solutions but on the whole I want credibility or it's just a cartoon. "Glory Road" by Robert Heinlein was just a cartoon but it was a really, really great one. Even so, that's not the purpose since we want a solid foundation.
Note: Aasim is a Muslim name which means 'one who avoids sin.'
The biggest problem with the laser cannon was the smoke produced required significant ventilation to eject from the Rock City but the effort was worthwhile since it was vastly easier to vaporize the rock than to try to haul it out of the site. The invention obviated two of the biggest impediments to the construction. In time, the inventors discovered a way to 'scrub' the smoke to prevent the atmospheric pollution which would have been engendered by such a massive project.
Estimates of construction time came down from decades to a couple of years but the first detail of the construction was to define how many floors should be bored out and how wide should the Rock City extend. With a ten square mile lateral spread multiplied by one hundred floors, the result is a thousand square miles of area in a single Rock City.
We need some lateral spread since humans like to walk and we also like to run, at least some of us. When you're living in a ten square mile area, if you can't get a workout running a lap around that then you're probably one of the legendary African distance runners who can go a hundred miles barefoot without breaking a sweat.
Fort Worth is not this large but if it were, say, fifty miles on a side, the surface area would be twenty-five hundred square miles. However, consider how much of that space is wasted with roads, lawns, and all manner of rubbish which is grossly insulting the environment. The RCPC won't support any of that type of space and they realize man needs green space but we don't need it on every street in front of every house in the country. The lost productivity in mowing lawns was one of the more absurd manifestations of the early 21st Century.
(Ed: I don't mow the lawn because I care about the grass. It gives me some peace from the wife.)
Well, it's not exactly peace from the wife but rather peace from anyone. When we have free time, humans usually like to share some of it but mostly we spend it alone doing whatever we want. Mowing a lawn isn't anything anyone wants but it's almost impossible to be bugged while doing it.
(Ed: the Rock City will have protections against being bugged?)
Yep, humans need that.
We can do better than lawn maintenance for our idle time and it's a prime factor in design for the Rock City. It's not our purpose to make every moment productive but it's definitely the intention to make each moment as fulfilling as possible. Anyone who ever found fulfillment in mowing a lawn probably has serious psychological damage and likely dreams of groundhogs and working on a golf course.
There is plenty of green space within the Rock City design since we have another Central Park like New York every few floors and the space is insignificant relative to how much is wasted on lawns on the ground-level.
Lotho was a bit reluctant to sound like a naysayer but bring it. I reserve the right to throw sci fi solutions but on the whole I want credibility or it's just a cartoon. "Glory Road" by Robert Heinlein was just a cartoon but it was a really, really great one. Even so, that's not the purpose since we want a solid foundation.
2 comments:
First you will lose about 30% to infrastructure walls hallways floor thickness etc
You still have the issue of waste materials. This laser may melt the rock ie lava at about 1600 degrees it does not vaporize it. I assume you create huge ingots and use them somewhere else
The cleaning of the toxic chemicals would be a phenomenal project.
Not to mention the amount of power needed to power the laser.
I know of some powerful pulse lasers but cutting lasers are fairly small. Sidenote the Navy pulse laser shoots down a missile atva cost of about $1 instead of the $400000 for a SAM which means they will never buy them
Fair enough on melting versus vaporizing and, sure, that's great on using the lava to create ingots to make construction material to use elsewhere in the project. I'm figuring for power, we'll dedicate all the power from a nuke plant since it won't be used to power anything but the city over the long-term anyway.
Cleaning the filthy bits is a huge problem and we see how vigorously current manufacturers dodge the expense of it but there's no ignoring the atmospheric damage from all the pollution from a project of this size.
I've seen those ridiculous lasers they have mounted on ships and they can shoot down a drone so long as it holds steady for long enough. I doubt they would switch from missiles since a hit from one of those will kill it right now.
There's no chance I've got the physics to make a credible pitch for the extensions to laser technology to make a wide-focus beam given that's just about opposite to what lasers do. If I did have the physics for that then I could write the book and then tool over to Norway to pick up my Nobel Prize.
However, we can go with the computer approach in which if one isn't enough then we get a load of them. We mount these across a wide radius within a circular match and then we spin it. Hmmm ... that's almost credible enough to go with it.
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