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Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

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Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been living under a rock? The sheer amount of vitriol Elon gets rivals that Trump gets!

We must measure the amount of unearned or undeserved vitriol. Trump’s is 110% deserved. Musk is at about 83%.

Only because he didn’t declare himself candidate. Actually the vitriol seems very much oriented, in French newspapers, it’s unnatural.

He doesn’t do a tenth of Jeff Bezos’ evils and journalists are not talking about Jeff Bezos’ actions on national TV.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#192

City of the future built by a government stuck in the dark ages.

Building something like this in a democratic society is probably impossible. The reason is that there would be massive opposition to this and rhetorically powerful claims that the trillions of dollars this would cost in a Western society could be put to better use. Even if, by some Deus ex machina, one administration managed to get this project going, the next to come into power would likely can it. Space is a perfec…

> There's no technical reason we haven't established footholds on Mars and even the Moon

Lack of atmosphere, dangerous voyage, radiation, lack of easily available nutrients, dangerous weather, different gravity, likely one way voyages

and of course the everpresent lack of any particular economic incentive to do so

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A circle is harder to build and has more issues regarding sunlight. The sun hitting the building(s) is both a benefit (solar cells) and a problem (heat generation) at the same time. A linear structure will get a much more even energy distribution than a circle. Also one of the goals of the project is to reduce the energy needs of the population by making ways shorter. If you spread a city out on a circle, you got a m…

I think transport would be infinitely worse in a linear city. In a traditional street network, there are many ways to get from A to B and one link being unavailable is not the end of the world. Forcing everyone onto essentially the same street is guaranteed to cause both high fragility and high congestion, since everyone has to squeeze into the same line.

Remember, this is still a 2D project. The second dimension is up! Instead of XZ axes, it's XY.

There are still multi layer travel options available. And some previously unthinkable possibilities (e.g. moving walkways like the kind you see in airports, for short distances within a block – or different colored trains on different levels like ground/underground) are still possible.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#194
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to have only one line to connect everything, even in a linear structure. It's still about the topology. At the simplest there would be one line connecting from end to end, which should be the fastest and the one with the fewest stops. But then you have smaller lines, travelling in their own tubes, connecting local areas. That way you can travel between any two points relatively fast and avoid congesti…

In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. In 1D, you can build a linear railway. Cost scales proportionally to length (and hence population) if you assu…

Remember, this is still a 2D project. The second dimension is up! Instead of XZ axes, it's XY.

Your point about length is true, but about population scale might not, because it's still in 2D. There are still ways to segregate tracks.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#195
post #155
post #125

I doubt it will get built, but they really have people who understand the fundamental concepts behind Arcology. Honestly I'm surprised at how many parts of the design are well thought-out and well adapted to the desert environment. Sunlight from the sides, but not so much that it overheats the city. Heat escapes up. 5-minute walkable neighborhoods. The proximity to services of cities combined with the roominess of su…

>5-minute walkable neighborhoods. The proximity to services of cities combined with the roominess of suburbs. At least in theory it's the perfect place to live. The problem with 175 km of continuous "subway" is that you probably don't want to walk more than 2.5 km to the train (if that, it's Arabian hot) so you have 35 stops (5 km apart) along the line at a minimum — with a blistering acceleration of g = 10 m/s^2 you…

The video says it's 20 minutes end to end, somehow.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#196
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no need to have only one line to connect everything, even in a linear structure. It's still about the topology. At the simplest there would be one line connecting from end to end, which should be the fastest and the one with the fewest stops. But then you have smaller lines, travelling in their own tubes, connecting local areas. That way you can travel between any two points relatively fast and avoid congesti…

In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable. In 1D, you can build a linear railway. Cost scales proportionally to length (and hence population) if you assu…

> In 2D, you can build a grid of straight line railways. Riders transfer zero or one times. Cost scales proportionally to area (and hence population) assuming constant density. Time between two random points scales as sqrt(size). Ridership on a given rail segment scales like sqrt(size), which may be tolerable.

I doubt this would work. Cities don't do this for a reason.

Transit lines get built according to transportation needs, not mathematical coverage of the space. You have pockets of housing that need to get to pockets of commerce. You can't practically run transit cars connecting [0,0] and [end, 0].

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#197
post #56
post #11

Make it a circle, get rid of the mirror, fill in the center. Bam! You got yourself a city.

Nah, keep the mirror. Then you can focus the light into the middle and you have a built-in incinerator for any dissidents / journalists who might pop up.

[deleted]

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mainly a European pandemic. During the 14th century CE when the Black Death occurred, China and India were the two biggest and richest empires with the most literacy in the world. The probability that such significant event was not properly recorded is very low. Most of the Asian countries' history that we know today including Japan are known from the ancient and later Chinese writings [1]. [1]Japanese History D…

"This episode of bubonic plague spread to all inhabited continents, and ultimately led to more than 12 million deaths in India and China" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_plague_pandemic

I'm refering specifically to the Black Death that is mainly European pandemic during the dark ages period not the later multiple derivatives of it.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#199
Has nobody considered the possibility of such vast, shiny external reflector walls absolutely, very literally roasting the surrounding landscape when struck by the already ferocious Arabian sun? How would a person even survive openly coming close to this fascinating monstrosity from either side at certain times of the day? I remember a story about sunlight reflections bouncing from the "Walkie Talkie" Building in London to then scorch some poor fellow's car in the streets below at certain times of day in the summer. NEOM strikes me as a would-be case of this on a truly infernal scale.

Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must measure the amount of unearned or undeserved vitriol. Trump’s is 110% deserved. Musk is at about 83%.

Only because he didn’t declare himself candidate. Actually the vitriol seems very much oriented, in French newspapers, it’s unnatural. He doesn’t do a tenth of Jeff Bezos’ evils and journalists are not talking about Jeff Bezos’ actions on national TV.

He's much louder than Bezos. The upside (EV's going mainstream, reusable rockets, full-globe high-speed low-latency internet connectivity) of Musk also seems bigger.
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