I wonder about many things when I see this, but to pick out one detail: won't those mirror walls soon get damaged by the wind carrying sand? And, when you stand in front of them and the sun is up, won't that get quite hot? And, wouldn't it be better to somehow use the walls to collect solar power (thermal or electrical) from them instead of letting them just reflect the light? And won't birds in great numbers crash into the façade like people in a house of mirrors? And isn't it ugly?
Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
251–260 of 264 posts
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [...] and after talking about Neom in all enthusiasm for a bit the interviewer asked each a simple question: would you live in Neom? I wonder what the architect of this building [0] would have answered the same question. However, many people live there. [0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/0c/1f/070c1f5ab8a54d907cca...
Those are different things. The promise of Neom is to be this amazing tech city that will attract people to live there. The building you posted is most likely a public housing or some kind of government trying to build housing for the poor.
Well it's actually more likely a block of condos (by which I mean apartments all individually sold to owners who then move in or rent out) in China, and judging from this zoomable version https://www.flickr.com/photos/photocapy/252736005 it's actually not even vacant. So, not housing for the poor paid for by taxes but rather housing for the above-the-medians who can afford a flat of their own (not cheap even in China I hear).
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at the winter map - over half of the coast is Saudi by week 3.
> over half of the coast is Saudi by week 3 So the proposed strategy involves taking out the main rebel-controlled ports as well as their fisheries while doing aesthetic damage to Saudi Arabia? (Yanbu won’t be disrupted by an oil spill that far away.) This is nonsense. Hell, I see more sense in Riyadh busting the tanker.
Nonsense? As you state the Houthis have been inhibiting the safekeeping attempts, which amounts to sabotage; kind of dismissive to call affecting at least 3 Saudi desalination plants and Jizan "aesthetic" damage in addition to the effects on the Houthi like the blockage of shipments including food aid to Houthi controlled ports https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8682806/bin/NIH... Tactically, given the odds of a more advantageous outcome now during the summer it might make sense for the Saudi's to destroy it as this winter will likely be its last one fueled and the target June 1 UN defueling start date has long past, but the assured strategic international response seems more concerning. What would be nonsense would be to try and connive VC amounts of money off of this like making a deal with the Houthis to let a group of hired "Somali" pirates siphon off the oil and blame any "slow leak" scenario on the thieves.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because the Star Trek universe had WWIII doesn’t mean we have to. I would like to live in Star Trek via the path of least suffering, but whatever path, it is the future I wish for generations to come regardless the struggle I personally have to endure. To wish the current system upon children and children’s children is selfish and cruel beyond imagination. If people wanted, we could all wake up tomorrow and begi…
That's easy to say if the bombs are not falling on your head. And I'm also not so sure that the current system can save itself from within. Evolution has navigated us into a dead by favouring immediate benefits over long term ones, now that our influence on the planet transcends our own lifetime. Getting out of that will require something pretty radical.
I served in war time in Iraq and live a very different life than most. A hot world war would not change my quality of life by much; it may even improve it (less rules in the wild).
I understand the weight of what I say. The trillions of thriving future lives spread throughout our solar system and galaxy are easily worth our suffering.
I agree that the current system has little hope of saving anyone from anything, save a small minority from discomfort for the short term future at the cost of oblivion for everything else in the long term.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine works on the NEOM project, and it really is like winning the lottery. Remote work with an occasional field trip to look at the place. But Google level salary to tell them how to save some data. The scale of the feeding trough is unimaginable. I saw an advert for NEOM on Piccadilly Circus, the whole entire e-wall, and the place isn't even built yet, so I'm not sure if they're using it to recruit. It's…
"It's like winning the lottery" "Guy in charge is a bully" I certainly don't want to defend the saudis, but let's face it, everyone views the Saudis as semi-gullible fools to be parted with their money, it wouldn't surprise me if they are a bit gruff. Look, Saudi Arabia should be the ... Saudi Arabia of solar energy, they have a huge amount of capital from oil, and Saudi Arabia is at the juncture of 1) the richest co…
Nitpick:
> 1) the richest continent
North America is the richest continent, as I say this as a European.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#256Bloomberg has a good running series on this 'city of the future'. As you will expect consultants are making good money on this. I personally can't get enough of this foolish mega-project, I love the dry reporting on it. Here's one of the latest: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-mbs-neom-saudi-arabi... There was also a very telling interview with architects, builders, concept people etc... and after talking abo…
> [...] and after talking about Neom in all enthusiasm for a bit the interviewer asked each a simple question: would you live in Neom? I wonder what the architect of this building [0] would have answered the same question. However, many people live there. [0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/07/0c/1f/070c1f5ab8a54d907cca...
As someone who's lived in a commie building, smaller than the one you show, though, I can tell you something.
It's better housing that what you find in many parts of the rich West, at least Western Europe.
You can live a pretty solid middle class life in those buildings and you're not losing much, if anything, you learn a lot, being so close to other people.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
I should have added unsurmountable reason. With that, everything you've listed was overcome 53 years ago when we set foot on the Moon, aside from food. But within those 53 years we've grown food in space - a far less hospitable environment than the Moon and especially Mars, and even achieved a few other useful things along the way as well. It won't be easy of course, but it's entirely possible. And has been for decad…
> With that, everything you've listed was overcome 53 years ago when we set foot on the Moon, aside from food.
Overcome for what? 20 days? Have we overcome any of those items for say, a 1 year old stay? I doubt it.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
The amount of material resources in space are breathtaking. Asteroid mining has the potential of delivering multiples of the amount of elements we've mined for our entire history in single asteroids. That alone could sustain a space economy. There also isn't our massive gravity well. If you have materials (see point 1) it is easier to build large installations. We should be able to build GIGANTIC underground habitats…
> The amount of material resources in space are breathtaking. Asteroid mining has the potential of delivering multiples of the amount of elements we've mined for our entire history in single asteroids. That alone could sustain a space economy.
At immense, non-economical cost. This idea is great in sci fi but we have nothing close to the technology to pull it of cheaper than mining things on earth
>There also isn't our massive gravity well. If you have materials (see point 1) it is easier to build large installations.
Point 1 is still sci fi
> We should be able to build GIGANTIC underground habitats in the moon.
Immense cost for no benefit
> There was also the powers-of-ten energy use as we climb Kardashev levels. That only happens with space settlement.
... and significant advancements in energy generation / capture
> Space will come more easily with cybernetics.
More sci fi non existing tech
> In a hundred years humans may be very very very different.
Sci fi
> But ultimately your comment harkens to the lack of vision of humanity, mostly I view it as a sign of increased control by the leisure elite over the world. They control the money and politics, and all they want are status and enjoyment, and the rest of the world to support them.
Ok and your vision of what we need to be doing now seems to consist of liking science fiction and ignoring realistic constraints.
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
I should have added unsurmountable reason. With that, everything you've listed was overcome 53 years ago when we set foot on the Moon, aside from food. But within those 53 years we've grown food in space - a far less hospitable environment than the Moon and especially Mars, and even achieved a few other useful things along the way as well. It won't be easy of course, but it's entirely possible. And has been for decad…
> I should have added unsurmountable reason. With that, everything you've listed was overcome 53 years ago when we set foot on the Moon, aside from food.
Food is the easiest of everything mentioned. You just send them with enough food to last a while, and then send more
> But within those 53 years we've grown food in space
No, we've grown it in small controlled environments that are in space. We do not regularly grow crops in space to feed astronauts. The spatial requirements are too large to do it on the ISS.
> a far less hospitable environment than the Moon and especially Mars, and even achieved a few other useful things along the way as well.
They're pretty much equally hostile. On the moon the ground is super toxic dust. Mars doesn't really have soil like The Martian suggests. You might be able to make it work but again, not without a huge controlled environment.
> It won't be easy of course, but it's entirely possible. And has been for decades. Wernher von Braun, architect of the Apollo program, was the first individual to lay out technical plans for the colonization of Mars.
The only way we 'colonize' mars is by shipping them an absurd amount of crap and commit to the fact that they will do nothing productive aside from not dying there. They won't be able to farm. They won't be able to build domes or underground lairs. They'll sit in their starship heavies to hide from radioactive death beams and eat prepackaged food while a solar panel outside keeps the lights on.
Let's look at von Braun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mars_Project
> In his introduction to The Mars Project, von Braun stated that his study was not yet complete. He said that he had omitted the details of some topics that would need to be addressed further, including the eccentric orbit of Mars, interplanetary astronavigation, meteor showers, and the long-term effects of spaceflight on humans.[2]
> There are other shortcomings in The Mars Project that von Braun could not have anticipated in 1948. He had not planned on any uncrewed exploratory missions to Mars taking place before the first human expedition, and he had not foreseen the technological advances that would take place, or the development of robot spacecraft.[4] It was not until 1965 that the uncrewed Mariner 4 spacecraft found that the density of the Martian atmosphere was only one tenth of what had been estimated, making it clear that the huge winged gliders planned by von Braun would not have had enough lift to be able to descend safely onto the surface of Mars.[1] The danger of high energy solar and cosmic radiation beyond low Earth orbit was not known in 1948. The Van Allen radiation belts were not discovered until 1958, and von Braun did not plan for the protection of the crews from such radiation, whether in space or on the Martian surface.[1]
Re: Saudi Crown Prince unveils plans for $500bn structure to house 9M people
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Population density is really the most important factor when considering building in a desert.
I had the same thought but at the same time, population density can be desirable in itself and not just out of necessity. I'd definitely rather live in a dense city rather than in the desert country side.
I think that is very over-rated. Really nice cities with very urban environment don't actually have to be very dense, even if they feel like that.
And places that are very dense can still be worse then a US subburb in terms of feeling like a city.
One concept from a city planner said basically urbanism is not about density. Connectivity and access is what makes a good city, not density.
You can have a city with anywhere between 50k and 5M feel very livable and nice. And you can have a city with between 50k and 5M feel like a lonely place. Its all about the city design.