Crackpot de jour

[Kelvin]

http://ezinearticles.com/?Fast-Hole-...Down&id=254902

Obvious typos and grammar aside, this article is mildly entertaining. Would it really be less expensive to drill into the earth, reinforce the sides (as in tunneling), and build downward as he suggests? Conventional tunnels (the horizontal variety) are hardly cheap and consume vastly more energy, materials, and engineering talent than comparable sized vertical towers. Can he really support these claims?

Then there is the mention of "...laser molecular realignment technologies" to accomplish these feats?! What episode of Star Trek was that one lifted from?

Still - with all these issues aside, is the concept of burrowing a real solution (to the numerous problems noted in the essay - including loss of atmosphere (huh?), climate change, etc. ) or are there better alternatives to the supposed impending Doomsday?

One final conundrum: How does "building a city underground...allow for more solar radiation"??

[CGII]

People aren't going to burrow unless the entire surface of the Earth is like the walled city of Kowloon. We like our sunlight, and we don't like feeling shut in, nevermind the ridiculous cost of boring. And where would all that transplanted earth go?
That writer's claims are worse than those of 'Personal Mass Transit.'

I guess it could be kind of like Metropolis, though, with the bourgeois up at the top and the workers shoved in underground cities.

[kakalakambeki]

Jeah, what CGII said... The whole thing sounds kinda weird considering the fact that he still calls them skyscrapers... mudscrapers would be better then...

Human beings need the sun... I have forgotten the exact data, but on our University (in Berlin...) they taught us that there were experiments on living under the surface with artificial light and air supply... Although the simulated conditions were nearly equally to the surface conditions people felt very uncomfortable knowing that they are under the ground...

Maybe not telling them would be an option...^-^... Dark City, anyone......?...