Playing games with The Boring Company

Void · 2020-04-29 17:20:08

I like their bricks.

The more they bore, the better it is, in my opinion.

What I am going to present will likely be more important for Earth, but there can be adaptations of it for Mars.

I am actually bored, but I have time to kill, and this stuff has been on my mind for a while. I would like to unload it.

First, some energy information from Peter Zeihan. In particularly pay attention to the great plains of North America, although there are other places where what I might suggest could work out.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Pe … M%3DHDRSC3

I am going to suggest doing something with Boring Bricks on the Great Plains of North America.

https://www.boringcompany.com/

Going to have dinner in a bit, but first, imagine making a whole set of parallel walls out of bricks, maybe boring bricks. An if you like put a Roman arch doorway into each of them. The idea then is to put some type of roofing between each of them. Imagine an "A" frame, probably easier to visualize. However other shapes would be allowed. So if you put roofing of some kind on this long "A" frame, you may have a very long building.

Roofing could be solar panels, and glass glazing or ETFE glazing. Those would be on the sunward side. For the shadow side, then there is a device which is emerging that will generate electricity by emitting heat to the sky's. More better at night I expect especially on the great Plains, or probably on Mars.

And for that reason, I really don't care if the parallel walls are rather thick. They are thermal absorbers, as well, as holding up (Or for Mars down), a roof.

I think I really do like the notion of this on the Great Plains. It is a long structure with many semi-private cells. Perhaps people could build homes connected to it with boring tunnels. Sort of a Condominium thing if desired.

And for Mars, I like this better than a dome.

Honestly, for Mars, I really have put more thought into using this with low pressure or just Martian ambient pressure, but I suppose that if you used a tensile material, you could link all the blocks of a wall together, and so then it would help hold your glass panels down against a pressure differential where the pressure is higher inside the structure than outside of it.

In the case of Mars, if you looked at the windows from the outside, the panels would be concave, and would buttress against the walls. The end walls might be specially buttressed with formed structure, but you might also put a berm of regolith against the end walls.

A wall joined into a singular entity by tensile materials, would have compressive strength and tensile strength, and would be a counterweight to prevent the roof structure from giving into the force of differential pressure.

Of course for Earth, your windows may or may not be convex as viewed from the outside, so that they hold better against gravity.

By making the bricks, then I presume a tunnel(s).

This then can serve more than one purpose. If it is for transit, it can also be for thermal storage. And the tunnel system can be associated with the structure(s) mentioned above. So, depending on the scale of the tunnels, you might have quite a large amount of thermal storage. I am not sure you could get to the point of storing energy year around, but it should be OK for a weeks time or two maybe.

Done with this post I guess.

Last edited by Void (2020-04-29 18:19:24)

louis · 2020-04-29 17:59:06

I think what you're describing is v much what I have proposed before! Trench (dug by a Mars-adapted mechanical digger) with Roman brick arch...maybe over steel supports. Then cover with a metre or two of compacted regolith for radiation cover... internally tile with basalt - job done!

The major issue with this sort of hab is the airlock, I would say.

I have always thought we needed more innovative thinking on airlocks. Not sure we have got it yet. I have suggested before freezing and unfreezing water to create air locks. Also - how about sliding rock slabs?

Void wrote:

I like their bricks.
The more they bore, the better it is, in my opinion.
What I am going to present will likely be more important for Earth, but there can be adaptations of it for Mars.
I am actually bored, but I have time to kill, and this stuff has been on my mind for a while. I would like to unload it.
First, some energy information from Peter Zeihan. In particularly pay attention to the great plains of North America, although there are other places where what I might suggest could work out.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Pe … M%3DHDRSC3
I am going to suggest doing something with Boring Bricks on the Great Plains of North America.
https://www.boringcompany.com/
Going to have dinner in a bit, but first, imagine making a whole set of parallel walls out of bricks, maybe boring bricks. An if you like put a Roman arch doorway into each of them. The idea then is to put some type of roofing between each of them. Imagine an "A" frame, probably easier to visualize. However other shapes would be allowed. So if you put roofing of some kind on this long "A" frame, you may have a very long building.
Roofing could be solar panels, and glass glazing or ETFE glazing. Those would be on the sunward side. For the shadow side, then there is a device which is emerging that will generate electricity by emitting heat to the sky's. More better at night I expect especially on the great Plains, or probably on Mars.
And for that reason, I really don't care if the parallel walls are rather thick. They are thermal absorbers, as well, as holding up (Or for Mars down), a roof.
I think I really do like the notion of this on the Great Plains. It is a long structure with many semi-private cells. Perhaps people could build homes connected to it with boring tunnels. Sort of a Condominium thing if desired.
And for Mars, I like this better than a dome.
Honestly, for Mars, I really have put more thought into using this with low pressure or just Martian ambient pressure, but I suppose that if you used a tensile material, you could link all the blocks of a wall together, and so then it would help hold your glass panels down against a pressure differential where the pressure is higher inside the structure than outside of it.
In the case of Mars, if you looked at the windows from the outside, the panels would be concave, and would buttress against the walls. The end walls might be specially buttressed with formed structure, but you might also put a berm of regolith against the end walls.
A wall joined into a singular entity by tensile materials, would have compressive strength and tensile strength, and would be a counterweight to prevent the roof structure from giving into the force of differential pressure.
Of course for Earth, your windows may or may not be convex as viewed from the outside, so that they hold better against gravity.

Not Done.

Void · 2020-04-29 18:03:59

Well, Louis it is perfectly fine for you to create your own. But keep in mind, I am more interested in Earthly applications, and in fact the spans between the walls would most likely be occupied by transparent structure, translucent structure, and perhaps solar panels. On the rear would be a device that generates electricity particularly at night by bleeding off the heat stored in the walls.

I am certainly not concerned about radiation on Earth, and for Mars, either it is substantially unpressurized but used for farming (I will explain later, or if pressurized, under normal conditions it might be OK radiation wise. In fact on Mars, their are fossil magnetic fields. I don't know what the potential for radiation protection is for that, but I hope that those might be the places where these might be built if people are going to be in them. Else, there is talk of making a artificial magnetic fields for radiation protection. Perhaps that would be an option.

By the way, I was not done.

Keeping in mind that another purpose of the walls, is to be a heat sink, I like them bulky. And in fact some radiation should be blocked by the walls, so it would be the protection of the atmosphere, + a magnetic field + the radiation protection of the walls themselves. I would think that morning and afternoon would offer the most protection from the emissions of the sun. And of course you would want to be aware of any solar storms.

The "Anti-Solar-Cells":
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-ant … night.html
Quote:

What if solar cells worked at night? That's no joke, according to Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis. In fact, a specially designed photovoltaic cell could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, about a quarter of what a conventional solar panel can generate in daytime, according to a concept paper by Munday and graduate student Tristan Deppe. The article was published in, and featured on the cover of, the January 2020 issue of ACS Photonics.

Now I don't know what the cost effectiveness will be, but I know that the Great Plains, and Mars all tend to have clear skies, and cold nights. So, it looks like a good application.

And if you can couple that with an auxiliary heat source, then you can generate even more power, and possibly that during a dust storm.

Auxiliary heat can be boring tunnels, that are also used for other purposes, and on Mars, Ice covered solar salt ponds, that store heat in a salty layer at the bottom.

Only problem I can see for Mars, is SpaceX is going to target massive ice sheets, covered with regolith/dust. Not a great foundation. But maybe can scrape the regolith into an ice hole and pack it down and have an acceptable foundation that way.

For Earth of course, we have to fear Earthquakes, and perhaps Tornados, and snow loads in the north. I guess I don't feel responsible to solve all of the problems.

As for water on the Great Plains, I feel that these things can be made fairly moisture tight, particularly if you can control the thermal swings within reasonable bounds with your heat sink. The walls and tunnels are the heat sinks.

It is possible that if there are connected homes, heating and cooling of them can be facilitated with, heat pumps that draw heat from the facility, and also can dump heat to the facility.

I think I will take a break. Next up why I choose the Great Plains of North America.

Last edited by Void (2020-04-29 18:55:17)

Void · 2020-04-29 18:56:59

Per the presentation offered by Peter Zeihan in post #1, the Great Plains appear to offer acceptable solar energy, not exceptional but acceptable.

Also much wind power.

And night power, that is the "Anti-Solar-Cell" which I think appears in post #3. The skies tend to be clear.

Therefore with that less need for backup power such as batteries, or natural gas power generating plants.

And further, it is relatively uncrowded spaces. It does seem to me that with the Corona Virus situation, it is better to have people spread out such as L.A. than all tucked together like New York.

And the land just might be less costly.

As I said, I think these structures could be frugal with water, like a cactus.

Another use for a boring tunnel, would be as a chilled water/hot water cistern. That would be water storage and energy storage. When it rains, collect it. More bricks, more of these structures.

Last edited by Void (2020-04-29 19:03:26)

Void · 2020-04-29 19:04:09

Now this next thing is for Mars only, and it may be a long shot.

The electricity in a Martian global dust storm. Could we tap it? It's at least worth a look.

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-electrici … rates.html
Quote:

In the low-density Mars-like atmosphere, which has less than one percent of the atmospheric pressure of the Earth, charged particles are less likely to accumulate at a distance to form the dramatic spiking arc of lightning. Instead, wind events carrying sand and dust are more likely to develop near-surface electric fields that result in either Townsend Dark Discharge, an effect which is not visible, or normal glow discharge—which appears, just as it sounds, as a dim glow.

So, of course to tap that you would have to have widely separated electrodes, and a rectifying circuit setup. I cannot say that it is possible, but I am curious what the potentials may be.

For it to work, each location would have to have a different relative (+) or (-) charge, and then diodes or such to rectify it.

But if it worked there would be an additional source of electrical energy during a global dust storm. The electrodes could be included in the structures I have been describing and in other structures as well.

Last edited by Void (2020-04-29 19:12:02)

Void · 2020-04-29 19:17:13

For using the structures unpressurized:
-Maybe you have photo-catalyst action in there. Perhaps on water vapor, or CO2.

-Maybe you have batch farming. You put a plastic terrarium into each cell from a door in the back. Fork lift desired. Then you take each bubble to a chamber that can be pressurized, and harvest and replant, and put it back into a cell. Here I am imagining normal plastics, not stuff with Fluorine in it.

Perhaps the windows of the cells are of glass, and you put sunblock on them so you can use ordinary plastic bladders for your batch farming.

A possible arrangement in such a thing would be potatoes, and mushrooms. The mushrooms would grow on organic matter, and give off CO2, the Potatoes would perhaps receive nutrition from the stuff the mushrooms are decomposing, and they would give off Oxygen. A sort of symbiosis.

Void · 2020-04-29 19:19:35

Well, that's a lot I think.

I did not at all intend to plagiarize anyone, and I don't believe I did. My concept arrived to me by its own coming to me awareness, and if you examine it the walls are the fins of a heat sink. They also are a thermal storage method as well, and can support a roof of various kinds.

I have other things, but it is late.

Void · 2020-04-30 12:39:58

To make things more clear...

When I spoke of a "Roman Arch" for the parallel walls, I intend a passage for a person and perhaps small machinery/robots. I do not intend to use a "Roman Arch" to support the roof of the thing.

There could be two doors like that, and a pedestrian walkway. However each chamber might be a sort of "Yard" that a individual or family might have sway over. At least if it is on Earth. Although, it might be possible to regulate the conditions inside of this structure, I would rather see it be a source of services, less than a consumer of services. So, certain times of the year, particularly when it is hot, you might not care to go inside it, particularly in the summer in the southern locations. But in the other seasons, it might be quite pleasant, particularly in the north.

Void · 2020-04-30 12:41:11

I am going to reference something I already mentioned:
http://www.novasolix.com/ (The video keeps locking up for me, so maybe you don't want to bother with it).

Last edited by Void (2020-04-30 12:52:39)

tahanson43206 · 2020-04-30 12:46:42

For Void re #9 and topic in general ...

You have hinted that you will be providing information about new developments in solar panels, and I am looking forward to those announcements. However, with regard to "transparent glass" .... are the panes you have in mind designed to hold internal pressure?

Or would they be used where there is no pressure difference between the out-of-doors and the inside?

it would be terrific if you could find a friend who would help you create computer renderings of your ideas.

(th)

Void · 2020-04-30 13:00:04

Well, I actually conceive of these things on Earth, maybe on the Great Plains of North America, but I am looking at adaptations for Mars. I am glad that Louis has a concept that he mentioned because I will be trying to connect to it soon it might be a very good adaptation for Mars.

And yes for Mars they could be pressurized or unpressurized. For various purposes. If you read prior posts you may see that I think the structure could be more sound than trying to make a glass dome, as the walls can serve both as compressive and tensile in strength, and can be counterweights on Mars, against an internal pressure trying to blow the structure apart.

Just now however, I am trying to speak of not using window glass or any glaze at all. That is why I am mentioning this, again.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/11/23/ … lar-panel/
Quote:

All I want for Christmas is a 90% efficient solar panel
NovaSolix hopes to use carbon nanotubes to capture a broader portion of the sun’s electromagnetic spectrum, a process they hope will yield a 90% efficient solar cell at a tenth of the cost of modern solar modules.

Well, we will see if they succeed. If they do, then I suggest using the electricity for "Pink Light" greenhouses.

So, if we had the structure Louis has suggested, then it could be built as he has mentioned, in his post #2. However the structure I have mentioned would work nicely for this on Earth. Maybe Mars.

For Earth, it is of course going to be much easier. The structure will not require pressurization, and the structure can be strongly insulated, and so be a heat trap. On the shadow side, will be "Anti-Solar" cells which reportedly can produce ~1/4 the electricity that solar cells can by shedding heat to the sky. Either you do not insulate that surface, or you must conduct warm air through a duct to that part of the roof.

Ideally, when no person is in the structure, it is mostly pink LED's, but if more elaborate, the when a person enters, a more normal light can come on. If battery storage is involved, you could trick the plants you might be growing by giving them a longer day that what is real at that time, and so prime them to act as through it were a different time of the year.

If it happens that there is a network of car tubes or pedestrian tubes, such as The Boring Company calls their business plan you can use those tubes as thermal storage to a degree, to try to store excess heat from the LED greenhouse, or to add heat to the LED greenhouse. As long as the snow if kept removed from the shadow side roof, where the anti-solar cells are, in the winter in the north, there might be a 24/7 flow of electrical power, if you had a persisting source of relative heat.

I would Segway at this time to mention, that the reason I choose the Great Plains, is that it not only has somewhat good solar characteristics, but excellent wind power potential. So, in fact these devices could be load levelers. When you have excess wind energy, you can turn the light up and the waste heat will be stored in the walls of the structure, and if you have tunnels, in there as well.

If you are low on electricity, then the plants get less light, as if it were a cloudy day. I am pretty sure that most plants can cope with that as that is typically how nature works outside.

(th), Post #1 sort of describes a pressurized version on Mars.

Post #6 talks about possible uses in an unpressurized mode.

I will now mention a possible dual mode unpressurized implementation.

Lets say you have a sun facing glass wall. If you coat it with Titanium Dioxide for a catalyst, the coating being on the inside, then you might hope to kill several birds with one stone, so to speak. If the particles of the coating are small, it might be translucent or even transparent to visible light. However it may block U.V., and might serve as a catalyst under the U.V. light. You might be splitting CO2, or H2O vapor. And in a perfect world, this would block the U.V. sufficiently from the interior, to allow for the use of batch gardens, consisting lf a tray, and a pressurized plastic bladder. These units would be rotated in and out of these cells using a robot/forklift, through a planed entrance structure.

The manufacture of such plastics, is probably in the family of industrial capabilities such as making Methane fuel, and manufacturing Styrofoam, which could be used for many things on Mar.

In spite of the U.V. protection I hope for, I think that the bladders would have a service life, and would eventually be damaged by the modified environment they were in. In which case they would be recycled into something else, and would be replaced by new ones.

So, I don't necessarily need to see strong pressurization of these structures, on Mars for them to have a potential usefulness.

I taking a break.

Last edited by Void (2020-04-30 14:38:47)

Void · 2020-04-30 14:58:15

Pumped Hydro Power energy storage, could eventually be a big deal for The Boring Company:
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-storage-h … anger.html
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-montana-e … ncial.html
https://understandsolar.com/pumped-hydr … for-solar/

I think good for the North American South west, and of course other places.

Where it is arid, I think floating solar power systems, and indeed excess energy shining underneath with LED's. The arrangement to reduce evaporation, and also to grow things in the water.

Mars seems like it would be much harder. It can be something to think about.

I have wondered how much energy you could recover if you could melt water on the south pole and hydroelectric the flow down to Hellas. Of course you would then have water in Hellas which might be useful.

The river, canal, pipeline, tunnels (Boring), would need to be covered with ice where necessary. Seems like tunnels are the best bet. So, I am incompetent to find out how much energy you get if you melt a cubic unit of ice and flow it downhill that way on Mars.

Probably centuries away.

Last edited by Void (2020-04-30 15:04:27)

Void · 2020-05-02 11:52:35

Returning to the brick walls, if you wanted to be able to exchange heat faster, you could perforate the walls. But that then carries the danger of vermin taking root. Rodents, or insects.

For Earth this could be a major problem.

For Mars if the structure is pressurized, of course you only have to reduce the Oxygen by come means, periodically. The chances of infestation there are relatively small anyway. You could also do a scheduled depressurization to achieve similar results.

If it is not a pressurized structure, then it is unlikely that such vermin could take hold.

Void · 2020-05-03 12:32:23

I might have posted this before, but so what.

https://electrek.co/2020/02/25/elon-mus … n-machine/
Quote:

Elon Musk’s Boring Company announces third-generation machine is working
Elon Musk’s Boring Company announced on Twitter that its third-generation boring machine, which is supposed to have had its ability greatly improved to dig tunnels fast and cheap, is now working.

The Boring Company’s mission is to reduce traffic in metropolitan areas by improving the technology of boring tunnels and developing a fully electric and autonomous transport system that works well inside those tunnels.
For its first test tunnel in Los Angeles, the company basically bought an existing boring machine, which it named Godot, in order to learn more about the process of digging tunnels.
After completing the mile-long test tunnel, the Boring Company bought a second machine and modified it. This second-generation boring machine is called “Line-Storm.”
At a launch event in December 2018, CEO Elon Musk said that the company is working on its third-generation gorging machine called Prufrock.
For that machine, they are working to increase the power of the machine by a factor 3, modify the cutter design, and add an automated segment erection system.
Musk said existing tunnel boring companies spend only about 10 minutes mining per hour, as the rest is spent installing the reinforcement and deploying all the logistics behind: power, dirt removal, etc.
They see a potential 15x improvement in the speed of boring versus the next-best boring technology by engineering a system that automatically takes care of that at the same time as they dig.
At the time, Musk said that the new system would be ready “relatively soon.”
Now just over a year later, the Boring Company has shared an image of a boring machine with the caption “Prufrock is alive”:

So, I like that.

It is my intention to try to make the bricks even more valuable, if possible, to encourage more tunneling, as it think that process will have great value on Earth, Mars, and elsewhere. Solid asteroids for instance.

As I am in favor of all these things, I don't mind making what I think could be a useful donation.

In my opinion Earth (Excepting Earthquakes and Tornados, Hurricanes), is going to be the place to pioneer the approximate devices.
Mars will be harder, but still it may be more valuable on Mars, and so worthwhile.
Other places will be harder. Ceres? Well the tunnels would be valuable, an above ground structure involving bricks? Possible, especially if not pressurized. Worthwhile? Don't know.

Although I could imagine a situation where you had greenhouse glass on the sunward side, and ant-solar panels on the shaded side, I have something a bit different in mind. I think I may have spoke of it previously to some extent. That would also leave free for solar panels, the sun facing part of the walls. And that would be a way to do it.

But I would like to consider a situation where the amount of window was greatly reduced, the amount of solar panels sharply increased, and the immediate load leveling use of pink lights, inside of the enclosure.

How much insulation you used would be up to subsequent discovery, of what is appropriate, as judged by accomplishment of satisfying results. But in the situation I have mentioned now, insulation can be a bigger factor, because the window surface has been greatly reduced.

Attempting to filter this through the K.I.S.S. process, then I would prefer to insulate the sunward side under the solar panels, and less so everywhere else. This would allow better thermal regulation in warm spells, so as to not overheat the interior of the structure so much.

As for how much glass on the sunward side? Well three things come to mind. Will enough light be present in the enclosure during the day for people to see? It doesn't take that much. How useful is the relatively natural light to plant growth? How much relatively natural light can you let in during hot spells, so that the enclosure does not overheat? The definition of "Overheating", would depend on what you were trying to do inside of the enclosure.

-----

The "Local Integration" of functions, vs. discrete functions.

If Elon Musk has solar panels, he may use them in local integration with his power walls. Or in a discrete function, where a batch of solar panels or windmills are remote from the battery storage units. Some distance apart. Kimbal Musk is somewhat involved in Pink Light greenhouses.

For this building structure, it is hard to say how remote the wind power devices will be. I suppose it can be variable.

The other functions, Solar Panels, Batteries, Pink Light Greenhouses can be rather integrated locally.

The intention is to use some of the peak power locally, load leveling, and also to try to reuse the energy at least once. Also, perhaps, to reduce the mass of conductor you require. You are not sending solar energy to power packs miles away.

Else, however, some of the power of both the solar aspects and the wind aspects might be provided to consumers who are slightly remote, but perhaps local homes. Maybe.

For Mars, the batteries will have to have greater protection from cold, I think. Also you are not going to have wind power, most likely. But other than global dust storms, you will have rather clear skies, day and night. As I have mentioned before, I hope a way will be found to extract electricity from global dust storms. Not at all sure about that.

I have chosen the Great Plains of North America as a place to try this. Although not necessarily ideal for solar, it will be complementary to wind power, and anti-solar panel power, particularly at night and in winters when energy may be harder to come by.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=gr … &FORM=IGRE

https://www.unl.edu/plains/about/map.shtml

But of course the presence of off shore wind power on either coast, gives temptation to those locations as well, particularly in the American South West where solar may be very good.

Oh, I think that is enough playtime for now. Time to sun myself on my deck.

Oh, one more thing. If you wanted to do more load leveling, you could put electric heating elements in the boring brick walls. Hopefully in such a way that the walls are not quickly damaged.

Last edited by Void (2020-05-03 13:44:24)

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Playing games with The Boring Company

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