How deep could we bury the world in artifice?

I've been reading a few books lately, principally the Warhammer 40,000 descriptions of Earth and the Night's Dawn Trilogy, and it's got me wondering just how far down we could bury a planet under arcology type cities. I'm going to assume that artificial carbon allotropes are a viable and in fact widespread building material because we're already starting to be able to produce it with relative ease, and that our building techniques have progressed to nano-assembly.

Given that how far up can we build across the surface of the world?

Taking into account the compressive strength of bulk carbon in allotropic forms as a building material and the fact that there must be a basement level to take that compression somewhere at the bottom of everything and assuming that an unlimited supply of whatever raw materials we might need can be brought in. Economics are not an issue and with sufficiently shielded nano-assembly techniques depth is not an issues either, at least nothing short of 900km where natural diamonds are born.

posted about 7 years ago

Ash‭

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