Posts tagged construction
The setting I've cooked up for a D&D campaign I'm running features a fair amount of buildings that have been totally abandoned by civilization for hundreds or even a thousand years. Obviously w...
So I just got back from watching an episode of the Science Channel program Unearthed, a show focusing on archaeological discoveries. In the episode in question, the subject was on the Lighthouse o...
I'm looking for a more economical and efficient method of making steel for my project Death Star Unlimited, a mega infrastructure orbiting Mars with a mass of 500,000,000 metric ton give or take 1%...
There is a concern that's been brought up only recently--steel and concrete buildings are environmentally wasteful. In further clarification, they waste away too much greenhouse gases. And consid...
I am building a city in the sky; it floats thanks to hot air balloons and hydrogen. The main issue I have is how to make it grow, as this is not some kind of giant structure to start, it is a small...
In my world, there are giant fish, reptiles, and bugs. My question is, how would you be able to put a harness or saddle on a fish? Info: Swamp bio being ridden by humans Fish range in all differ...
Lets say you have a space ship. This ship will do a lot of maneuvers causing a lot of G forces to go in different directions through the ship. During straight acceleration it pushes the people insi...
I mean as in a city that is not situated at the bottom of the ocean but is not floating on the surface of it either. What would a plausible size and population size be for this kind of construct? C...
If the Earth's interior was not hot and liquid, how deep could we dig before the tunnels collapsed by the pressure or the air became too pressurized to be breathable? In other words: how deep can u...
So, we've reached The Moon/Mars. Our band of intrepid Colonists/Lunatics will almost certainly start by working out of prefabricated facilities (ship, habitat etc) but they will eventually run out...
So based on the question can pumice stone be use as castle material on water? I wanted to take pumice and use it to construct a floating road, so my Lava People can safely travel from one volcanic ...
Suppose that for some reason gravity magically changes, but only for people. While this goes on, instead of gravity pulling people down, it pushes them East. To be clear, it's just people. Not anim...
Let's say that some Oriental emperor had decreed that he should move his palatial residence from China to Everest. Specifically, he wanted Mount Everest to be his palace, which means hollowing the...
A launch loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop is a proposed way to put lots of things into space at lower unit cost than rockets (only need to pay the energy cost in electricity for each ...
Note: this takes place in a world populated by humanoid bears, where the population density in Siberia is much higher. The northern part of Russia is taken up by a country called Medwedia. As said...
Set in the late 22nd century AD, spaceship designs are becoming more streamlined and have longer bodies measuring from the tip at the front of ship to the thruster located at the back of the ship. ...
I have been drafting the concept of a future world based on current research. I have been contemplating the long lasting transportation tunnels of the future. I am asking about the likelihood of th...
In this scenario, an underwater city is a collection of domes interconnected by tunnels 17 feet wide and 17 tall. The largest of the city's domes is 71,000 square feet in area and 137 feet tall. ...
Long ago, I asked for a kind of steel alloy under an alternative recipe. Right now, the list is as follows: Carbon (2%) (Reasonable material and amount) Chromium (12%) (Reasonable material a...
This is a simple question, hopefully not broad. My colonizing company wants to put little habitats on the surface of a planet with more gravity (2.0G) than earth. Is there a way to reduce gravit...
I'm writing about a setting where building technology is quite advanced, but elevators have not yet been invented, so the limiting factor on height is ergonomic. What would be the maximum practica...
I just won the national lottery! I am a billionaire, and can do whatever I want with my money! Tv interviewer asks me what would I do with this money. Then, come the Idea. I remember this guy whe...
I had this idea the other day just for the heck of debating about if it would be feasible to build a bridge that crosses North Atlantic Ocean from Canada to Spain. I mean from St-John's (Newfoundl...
Assuming that there is a prison somewhat akin to the one in The Dark Knight Rises, except being nothing more than a cylindrical hole in the earth, how deep would it have to be to make escape attemp...
The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building and the proposed Nazi Volkshalle are cited to be "big enough for weather systems to form inside them". The building has at least 10,000 tons of air conditioni...
Detailed Synopsis: I started writing a story wherein advanced technology slowly stop working (starting from most advanced, and progressing until only handmade items function), while the global clim...
A common question seems to be how to survive tsunamis / floodings and the like. However I'm interested in what a building would look like after a year under the water. Depending on the depth and t...
I found an interesting Wikipedia article, quoted in an answer here. I'm looking into writing a story where someone has built a Death Star. The purpose of this craft is important to the story (and ...
Let's say a group of people live on icebergs. They want to shape them - e.g., let's say they want to add a pier to their iceberg, how do they "grow" the ice. Prefer a primitive answer, but if ther...
Asked a similar question before but didn't think it through and mangled it. Anyway would it be possible to build a structure between two star systems? Basic scenario is that you have two stars su...
I'll confess that I have a real issue with iron--it rusts quickly. In fact, the History Channel program Life After People constantly states that, left to its own devices, the iron that makes up a ...
This is a bit hard for me to put into to words, but it is an idea I have been working on for a few days, with input from a few other people. I have actually brought up part of this in a previous qu...
I'm writing a scene set on a construction site where the builders notice that the cement they pour is not setting: it just remains in its liquid state or it is taking a very long time to set. This ...
Following up on my Martian canals theme from this question and assuming the canals can be constructed, I would now like to ask what level of technology is required to do that. The basic problem Th...
So lots of Sci-fi works use mono-crystalline diamond as a wonder material used to build all sorts of impressive and in some cases seemingly impossible structures, I'd like to ask about the science ...
In my space western setting, I went nuts with the time scale, so now I have a faction living entirely in space stations (with planets used for transit and agriculture, but that's irrelevant for now...
Imagine a very long bridge (Visbi Bridge - named after the designer) across an immense canyon - really almost a wide deep gorge -use on an earth-like world. My concept is that part of the support o...
In my universe a 4th SPACIAL dimension exists around our 3 dimensions. I'm playing with ideas for a society that has access to a 4th spacial dimension and am currently thinking of what they would b...
In many scenes you see something like this: If I was designing a world for a culture living in a rain-forest and their land was cut through by many vast ravines then what sort of spans could the...
This is a followup to this question about city building on flood plains. There is a civilization that developed along the rich varzea flooded forests of an enormous rainforest river, larger than ...
I was told that building a tunnel into the centre of Enceladus is not possible, since it has subsurface ocean and molten, rocky core. But its brother, Mimas is a bit smaller, and shows no sign of ...
If life were discovered in the supposed ocean on Europa, it would be a popular destination for scientists and researchers. I am curious as to what life on Europa would be like, in terms of engineer...
The extreme pressure and temperature greatly reduces our ability to drill holes deeper than some kilometers into Earth's mantle. However, on a body smaller, colder and less dense, this would be a ...
An ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) has come to the conclusion that we humans should be put in a simulation. It has also decided that it would rather not turn the Earth into computronium. Fortun...
Thanks to the recent discovery of handwavium "¡ filaments that can in principle be extruded to any length, we will be able to build space elevators sooner than most people would expect. The inte...
I'm looking at a science fiction scenario similar to Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness where buildings are exposed to the elements for millions of years. I have a feeling they wouldn't be qui...
I've worked a couple of Habitat for Humanity mass builds where entire houses go from a poured foundation to complete in the course of a few days, and whole neighborhoods are built in a week. There'...
In an effort to accurately map and predict earthquakes and tectonic plate movements, scientists wish to insert sensors through the earth's crust and into the upper mantle. Through some Excel wizar...
The year is 2026 and there's angry talk of repealing old free-trade deals as politicians claim jobs are being destroyed by foreign competition. That is, Chinese and Indian construction companies ar...
I'm working on a world where the human race lives on a planet that is much closer to its star than Earth is. The temperatures range from 150C to 300C in the day and below 0C at night. My question...