Well, the stuff is a lot better than our current concrete. According to the article above, it's been getting pounded in a Roman port breakwater by the surf for a couple thousand years while remaining intact. Portland cement is only good for about fifty years before it's crumbling so bad it needs to be replaced.
Personally, if a solid object is going to be several tens of thousands of feet over my head, I want it to be as durable as possible. Remember the concrete falling at Wrigley Field in Chicago a few years ago? Yeah. Luckily it didn't hit any Cub fans in the head...but you get the point.
A Dyson ring is going to take a LOT of material. Even if it's only a hundred yards wide and fifty thick, at 60,000 feet up, that is one huge circle. It would be several tens of thousands of miles long. It would make the Great Wall of China and the Great Pyramids look like Tinker Toys sitting next to the Hoover dam. You aren't going to make it all in one piece. That means modular construction with perfect interlocking of the modules is a requirement. Since concrete can be made with moulds, that makes manufacturing hundreds of thousands of interlocking identical modules possible.
The question is, how do you get all those pieces assembled at 60,000 feet high? Next post...
Dan
No comments:
Post a Comment