The [tunnel’s] accelerants cure the grout that seals the tunnel’s concrete supports, helping the grout set properly and protecting the work against cracks and other deterioration. They also seriously burn exposed human skin. At the Encore dig site, such burns became almost routine, workers there told Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs. According to the investigation, at least one employee took a direct hit to the face. In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”
I still don’t understand why this was a better idea than a train.
technofetishism–if there’s anything local politicians love it’s sounding hip and getting Cool Headlines over boring but practical technology that actually works
Some of our politicians in Germany love the idea of flying taxis and monorails but “luckily” they don’t like actually spending money on infrastructure so instead they opt to do nothing at all.
Buzzwords sell. It’s the same shit in corporate America when they went bonkers for blockchain a few years ago, only to have all that money thrown into “research” flushed down the toilet. Like gee that money should have gone into a higher corporate tax payout versus a fancy headline for shareholders.
Same thing here, but with politicians wanting something buzzy for their next election.
Trains wouldn’t work on Mars (surface), too dusty.
I thought Las Vegas was on Earth, but I could be wrong as I haven’t been there (to Las Vegas I mean, I’ve been to Earth).
Anyway, if you’re already building a tunnel, you might as well put a train in it, even on Mars.
I think that’s where the Hyperloop fits in: on Earth, it isn’t practical to keep the required level of vacuum, but it would be quite easy on Mars. At the same time, they need to perfect the tunnel digging process, and cars are the excuse to do it on Earth.
No one is colonizing anything.
https://youtu.be/U9YdnzOf4NQ?si=QxA_La0J6UVEiMZv
Kind of ironic that video has an ad for a “mental hygiene” app… when a good first step would be not watching that sort of videos… but let’s go point by point:
Terraforming: red herring. Musk doesn’t have plans for that, so less BS.Mars One: red herring. Not a Musk project, scammy from the beginning. That’s two totally BS points.It’s a risky plan, but still a plan.
Wow! You really believe all the lies Musk says? This is the same guy who has been promising ‘full software driving’ next year for nearly a decade, fantasizing about downloading human memory engrams, insisting that hyperloop is ‘not so hard’ and says things like ‘I know more about manufacturing than anyone else alive’.
How much knowledge does it take to realize that 100 people per starship is simply impossible? There simply isn’t enough room. And read your statement about underground dwellings and sunlight times together to see how they’re incompatible. Musk isn’t saying all these because he’s a dreaming visionary. He’s saying these to trick other rich people into giving him more money. It has the same vibes as the monorail song.
What absurd opening logic. The first person is a rocket engineer. He doesn’t just play Kerbel Space, he designs rockets.
The schematics for Starship allows for at best 15-20 people. Supplies are a thing. The ability for humans to travel & survive for this distance is not established at all, nor is the ability to build structures, grow food, supply air & water, etc
This confident nonsense is like discussing reality with an Iraq War Cheerleader Circa 2004-2007 .
There’s no plan. To get to the Moon, Starship itself requires ~-15 refueling launches using a method that doesn’t exist, despite the taxpayers giving the company 300+ million dollars to develop it.