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"Nothing like this will be built again"

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61–70 of 97 posts

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#61

Post by mikeash »

cstross wrote: post #21
jdale27 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like whoever posted this got around the repost limit by appending a '?' to the end of the url. Someone should fix that. Yeah, because we should never, ever be subjected to the same content twice. After all, this is Hacker News , not Hacker Olds , amirite? (Sorry for the snark. I have been reading Hacker News for several years, and I don't recollect having read this article before. I enjoyed it, I upvoted it, an…

Y'know, if I'd known it was an evergreen I'd have posted it myself, for the link karma. Humph.

Come on, surely you already have far more internet points than any one man needs. Share the wealth a little!

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#62

Post by quattrofan »

msandford wrote: post #59
quattrofan wrote: post #52

Can someone explain this? "generators spin in a sealed atmosphere of hydrogen gas", hydrogen, really?

If they're sealed and there's no oxygen in there, then there's no boom. Since hydrogen is so light it makes for less aerodynamic drag on the moving parts.

Ah ok makes sense, thanks!

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#63

Post by arethuza »

cstross wrote: post #43
jfb wrote: post #32

"Anti-rabbit defenses"?

Think radiation leaks. In event of a major incident, you do not want rabbits on site burrowing around and then spreading cesium-137 and other pernicious decay products.

So protection from radioactive rabbits? :-)

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#64

Post by at-fates-hands »

_delirium wrote: post #45

One often gets the "nothing like this will be built again" feeling around these kinds of engineering projects from the 20th century, since modern constructions tend to have a very different feel, more sleek and less massive. Also true with things like transit infrastructure: even though a modern subway or elevated train line, like the Copenhagen metro (which has both), is better in just about every way from the old s…

Agreed.

It just feels like these structures were built to last a lifetime and then some. Most of the stuff being built nowadays appears as though it already has a due date of "the not to distant future" to be torn down and replaced.

At least here in the US, the architecture just feels like everything else around me - it's disposable.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#65

Post by shardling »

joezydeco wrote: post #55
shardling wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, or maybe it's just a sensible precaution, because relying on a single defense against failure is a bad idea?

In 1997, someone taking a picture of an embedded controller board at the Haddam Neck nuclear plant set off the fire protection systems in the control room, causing everyone to evacuate the control room for an hour. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/info-... And the conclusion? "They also confirmed that the light from the Canon flash and the Polaroid flashbulb could be effectively blocked by "blac…

No shit, now read my post again with the knowledge that I already knew that! :)

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#66

Post by DCoder »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #36
gjm11 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Change one byte. Most resubmissions are submitted by people other than their authors, who are typically not in a position to change any bytes of the content. In the present case, speaking as the last person to submit this one (more than two years ago), I don't see that there's any harm in it at all. If this is still interesting two years since it was last discussed on HN -- which clearly it is -- then good for the…

The slightest spec of dynamic content makes this approach brittle at best, author or not.

You probably meant "speck", not "spec".

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#67

Post by tomkarlo »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #64
_delirium wrote: post #45

One often gets the "nothing like this will be built again" feeling around these kinds of engineering projects from the 20th century, since modern constructions tend to have a very different feel, more sleek and less massive. Also true with things like transit infrastructure: even though a modern subway or elevated train line, like the Copenhagen metro (which has both), is better in just about every way from the old s…

Agreed. It just feels like these structures were built to last a lifetime and then some. Most of the stuff being built nowadays appears as though it already has a due date of "the not to distant future" to be torn down and replaced. At least here in the US, the architecture just feels like everything else around me - it's disposable.

For a lot of infrastructure, the ability to more accurately model and calculate the performance of structures has meant that they don't need to be overbuilt so much. The less you overbuild a structure, the less it weighs, and the less structure you need to build - a virtuous cycle.

If you look at the last 400 years of bridge design you can see the transition from overbuilt compression structures to gossamer suspension bridges. This is a good thing, but it's easy to mistake old, overbuilt structures as being more "robust" when what they really are is an inefficient design meant to avoid failures due to a weak understanding of how the materials and structure will perform under use.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#68

Post by arethuza »

_delirium wrote: post #45

One often gets the "nothing like this will be built again" feeling around these kinds of engineering projects from the 20th century, since modern constructions tend to have a very different feel, more sleek and less massive. Also true with things like transit infrastructure: even though a modern subway or elevated train line, like the Copenhagen metro (which has both), is better in just about every way from the old s…

"with their massive steel columns and hundreds of thousands of rivets"

We have a fantastic example of that near Edinburgh:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#69

Post by joezydeco »

shardling wrote: post #65
joezydeco wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1997, someone taking a picture of an embedded controller board at the Haddam Neck nuclear plant set off the fire protection systems in the control room, causing everyone to evacuate the control room for an hour. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen-comm/info-... And the conclusion? "They also confirmed that the light from the Canon flash and the Polaroid flashbulb could be effectively blocked by "blac…

No shit, now read my post again with the knowledge that I already knew that ! :)

You're absolutely right. My apologies.

Re: "Nothing like this will be built again"

#70

Post by ddeck »

_delirium wrote: post #45

One often gets the "nothing like this will be built again" feeling around these kinds of engineering projects from the 20th century, since modern constructions tend to have a very different feel, more sleek and less massive. Also true with things like transit infrastructure: even though a modern subway or elevated train line, like the Copenhagen metro (which has both), is better in just about every way from the old s…

I guess the key difference is the sense of massive person power one gets from those older projects. Rivets and the like bear the unmistakable mark of human assembly.

That said, I still find modern day mega engineering projects similarly impressive. The Large Hadron Collider and the current construction of the ITER in France come to mind....

http://www.iter.org/construction/tkmfoundations

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