The Applicability of "Depthscrapers"

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ironically I first found this at Tales of Future past which lampooned the initial idea, but, as someone who is proponent of maximizing natural space, as well as knowing the increasing engineering problems of mega skyscrapers like the Burj Dubai, I bring you... DEPTHSCRAPERS



My question to the more logically minded of the bored, is how feasible would something like this be today? Would the engineering of a large structure going Down be any easier, safer, or more efficient then one going up? For me personally, the idea that you could have vast amounts of a city, not necessarily "underground" like a "Caves of Steel" type city, but simply below ground really appeals to me. The question is would building such things serve a noticeable advantage?

[Eleas]

It's interesting, but it would depend on a number of factors. For instance, sure tunnel systems may suffer less from earthquakes in terms of destruction, but if a single exit tunnel is collapsed or a single fire starts, you're basically fucked.

[Mr Bean]

I assume the giant reflect is not meant as a death ray... but it sure as hell become one.
That aside this comes from the old school of building that said buildings needed to be a ridged as possible. Later know as the school who collapsed during the next earthquake. Buildings need to be able to flex during earthquakes. I'd imagine being underground this would be even more so.

Then there are the problems of building underground
1. Dig a hole what happens? It fills with water
2. Bedrock is not thirty stories down and most places neither is the water table (See problem 1)

And don't even get me started about the nightmare of building thirty stories down then needing to build a sanitation system on top of that.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Well that is primarily why I posted it, most on the bored know I am far from being an engineer so I don't know a lot about the problems faced with something like this. Of course the example I have is woefully out of date so its a bit of a poor example, but the concept seems interesting. My thought is much of the tech developed over the last century for making buildings tall, may be applicable to making buildings in the reverse direction. I may be 100% dead wrong on that of course, but I think the concept is worth exploring as a thought exercise. I mean we have large structures all of the world built underground, not on this scale, but there are underground houses and such, huge underground parking garages, subways and such have few problems with flooding and such. I would imagine would be easier to heat and easier to cool, being underground would be a hell of an insulator for escaping energy.

On bedrock, would you Need to build something like this on Bedrock? Or is your comment more that to build something like this you would have to bore through bedrock?

[Eleas]

I assume the giant reflect is not meant as a death ray... but it sure as hell become one.
That aside this comes from the old school of building that said buildings needed to be a ridged as possible. Later know as the school who collapsed during the next earthquake. Buildings need to be able to flex during earthquakes. I'd imagine being underground this would be even more so.

I thought about that, but didn't know enough to even make a guess. Still, I think the major costs are what you enumerate, with the extra caveat that you actually have to dig the thing out. Not cheap. Then, of course, there's the ventilation issue...

I could see it happening given certain conditions, though. If the Earth's atmosphere was contaminated enough, for instance, then a pit like this might make for easier environment control, once you find a way to deal with human waste.

EDIT: Why would it be easier to heat and cool, though? Easy to heat I can see, but the reverse? Mines today can be incredibly hot and uncomfortable places.

[Starglider]

EDIT: Why would it be easier to heat and cool, though? Easy to heat I can see, but the reverse? Mines today can be incredibly hot and uncomfortable places.

This is nowhere near deep enough to suffer from that problem. Near-surface caves roughly approximate the average annual air temperature; they are still in equilibrium with the envrionment, they just have a huge amount of thermal mass to smooth things out. With this kind of structure you insulate it sufficiently to maintain an interior temperature n degrees above that, given the building's normal heat load (mostly electrical devices, some human body heat). Solar heat gain is easily controlled by shading the shaft, heat-exchangers on the air intakes and exhausts would minimise heat gain or loss through the ventilation. Now that ground-source heat pumps are a mature technology, this design also makes it easy to install those for cost-effective temperature control.

Still looks massively more expensive than normal construction, a potential safety risk (how easily could you evacuate this if there was a fire, how bad would the smoke & oxygen deprivation get?) and unattractive to live in for most people.

[someone_else]

I assume the giant reflect is not meant as a death ray... but it sure as hell become one.

A very limited one, with a crappy range and angle of fire (since it relies on sunlight). It is more a hazard than a weapon. More so if it drops down in the hole after stormy weather.

but there are underground houses and such, huge underground parking garages

I live in a rainy area, and rain usually gets through the gigantic horizontal (covered with grates) air intakes needed to allow natural air circulation of a few huge underground parking garages (4 or so stories underground). That allowed the designers to not install annoying and expensive air circulation systems, but they had to place a few badass water pumps to get rid of the water.



Personally, I'd see something like this concept more reasonable when placed on a muntain's side instead that on a flat valley. That way you can make horizontal tubes that bring the waste and the surplus water from the bottom of the hole "outward" (and then down when they get out from the mountain side) instead of placing pumps to bring stuff up. (and maybe make some hydroelectric power out of it)
Maybe you can make something like that for air circulation too.
Although you fuck up solar irradiation.
Anyone can help me here?

[Sarevok]

How vulnerable would an underground city be to a nuclear attack ? It seems if we lived in a world where atomic weapons were commonly used living underground would be lot more safer. While nothing is invulnerable a subterranean structure would suffer lot less damage. A weapon that would devastate an entire surface city would do far less, perhaps manageble harm to an underground one.

[Samuel]

How vulnerable would an underground city be to a nuclear attack ? It seems if we lived in a world where atomic weapons were commonly used living underground would be lot more safer. While nothing is invulnerable a subterranean structure would suffer lot less damage. A weapon that would devastate an entire surface city would do far less, perhaps manageble harm to an underground one.

Well you could probably seal it off from fallout, but I imagine a close blast could seal if off from the surface or cause it to collapse which would be bad.

[Broomstick]

I'd like to point out that suffering "less" damage during an earthquake is not the same as suffering no damage whatsoever. Japan's tunnel engineers do worry about their earthquakes either damaging or collapsing underground tunnels. I'll also point out that in 1992 the sub levels of Chicago's tallest skyscraper flooded to a depth of a little over 15 meters and it took weeks to clean that mess up. If your "depthscraper" ever floods the problem will be MUCH worse. I suppose you could install watertight bulk heads and the like, but that will only add to the expense.

Is such a structure feasible? Probably. Cost effective? Unlikely (although that isn't the always the point - many large buildings have been erected for reasons of prestige rather than economics) Safer? Probably not the first few times we try it. We've had over a century of trial, error, and disaster prompting us to refine skyscrapers, we'd probably go through a similar thing with depthscrapers.

[Akhlut]

Frankly, the thing looks terrible for earthquake protection from my mostly uninformed self. However, it does look excellent for tornado-protection. The giant magnifying lens is an obvious problem, but, hey, replace that shit with solar-collection panels above and natural-light lamps in the actual structure. Now, you have a nearly tornado-proof building. And, luckily in the US, areas prone to tornadoes are fairly bereft of earthquakes of any significant size.

[RedImperator]

subways and such have few problems with flooding and such

The New York subway must by constantly pumped, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to avoid flooding. If the pumps ever shut down, the tunnels will flood to their ceilings in 36 hours.

Now, granted, not every place's water table is as high as New York's, and they had to build the subways beneath the storm drains because the drains were already in place by the time construction started on the tubes, but I guarantee you there isn't a city in America where the stormwater system is 20 stories underground.

[Broomstick]

>cough<

Actually, parts of Chicago's Deep Tunnel network used for storm water management do exceed a depth equivalent to more than 20 stories.... but that's because they've utilized the Thornton Quarry as a reservoir. Parts of Thornton Quarry are 125m deep, roughly equivalent to a 40 story building.

I'll just throw in for free that in 2008 the area received such a quantity of water that the Deep Tunnel system filled up entirely, including the whole of the Thornton Quarry. That's 3.1 billion gallons of holding capacity, or 11,734,776,530 liters (more or less - I'm assuming the gallon quantity involved rounding). Here's a picture of it:

(yes, that's a freeway going through the quarry, on a bridge). There's a new water run-off reservoir being constructed, scheduled to open on 2014, that will have about three times the capacity of Thornton, as even that massive capacity is considered inadequate for the region's flood control needs.

It is certainly within our abilities to build such structures. It's a question of whether or not we want to do so badly enough.

[someone_else]

Did anyone consider building one of these structures on top of a hill or in a mountain side? (instead that in a flat plain)

That way you can dig tubes that connect the bottom of your depthscraper to the sides of the hill/mountain and let gravity do the work of draining the building.

In theory, the water table will be well below the hill/mountain's slope.

Again, in theory, this would allow you to make other conduits for air and use the vertical hole in the middle as a Solar updraft tower.
Maybe not enough to produce energy out of it, but maybe enough to have decent air circulation for free.

[Iroscato]

I think all in all, not a good idea.
Hollowing out that much space would be a economical and logistical nightmare in itself, then there's the reasons listed above...
What year was that article from? I'd guess 50's...

[Imperial528]

It seems to me that this would be too maintenance intensive to really work out, or at least on Earth. But on the Moon, where the rock would act as radiation shielding and help regulate temperature, as well as the absence of a water table or earthquakes, it would seem to be a pretty good idea, provided the industry to build it could be put on the Moon in the first place.

[Simon_Jester]

>cough<

Actually, parts of Chicago's Deep Tunnel network used for storm water management do exceed a depth equivalent to more than 20 stories.... but that's because they've utilized the Thornton Quarry as a reservoir. Parts of Thornton Quarry are 125m deep, roughly equivalent to a 40 story building.

I'll just throw in for free that in 2008 the area received such a quantity of water that the Deep Tunnel system filled up entirely, including the whole of the Thornton Quarry. That's 3.1 billion gallons of holding capacity, or 11,734,776,530 liters (more or less - I'm assuming the gallon quantity involved rounding).

[science guy hat on]

When converting a number in one unit to another unit, preferred practice is to keep the number of decimal places you write out the same. This saves typewriter fatigue and avoids confusion, thus 11.7 billion liters.

Disclaimer: this is in no way a hostile remark, merely a strong suggestion.

[science guy hat off]

I think all in all, not a good idea.
Hollowing out that much space would be a economical and logistical nightmare in itself, then there's the reasons listed above...
What year was that article from? I'd guess 50's...

This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931."

[Iroscato]

Oops...missed that detail

I think there might be something in building it on the moon, however. More I think about it the more sense it makes...

[Skgoa]

I think all in all, not a good idea.
Hollowing out that much space would be a economical and logistical nightmare in itself, then there's the reasons listed above...
What year was that article from? I'd guess 50's...

This is pre-WWII. You can sort of tell from the sketch style, from thee way it refers to Japan (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding from WWII), the spelling of Tokyo, lots of details. Nothing obvious... except that the upper right hand corner of the page reads "November 1931."

I just HAD to quote that in my sig.

[Iroscato]

Oh nooo...been here 5 minutes and already my stupidity has been immortalised!

[Broomstick]

Happens to all of use sooner or later. And it's less embarrassing, painful, and emotionally scarring than the initiations ceremony involving two live chickens, a paperclip, four rubber bands, a dozen frog legs, and a tub of petroleum jelly.

(P.S. Skoga, you have a small typo in that sig quote)

[Iroscato]

Happens to all of use sooner or later. And it's less embarrassing, painful, and emotionally scarring than the initiations ceremony involving two live chickens, a paperclip, four rubber bands, a dozen frog legs, and a tub of petroleum jelly.

(P.S. Skoga, you have a small typo in that sig quote)

Wow glad they got rid of that before I joined

[Temjin]

I honestly don't see a whole lot of reasons why anyone would want to build this. I mean, it probably could be done, but why would you want to when building above ground is so much more economical? I could maybe see it being built in cities that don't have any more space to expand in, but even then a different solution would probably be prefered since it would have to built under existing buildings.

Honestly, the concept reminds me of the Freedom Ship.

[madd0ct0r]

If Tornado alley becomes more troublesome, then it might find a use.

I'm certainly puzzled every time a tornado hits and it shows acres of devastated timber frame buildings. Did the three little pigs not reach America?

[Broomstick]

If my camera hadn't died I'd be happy to show you pictures of where a "mere" F2 tornado razed masonry buildings to the ground back in 2008 in my neighborhood. Aside from bunkers and some very massive structures, what you build from doesn't make a heck of a lot of difference in regards to surviving a major tornado. An F4 or F5 is going to scour any home that makes any economic sense to its foundation, outside of the "earth shelter" variety which are essentially underground. You build a storm cellar or safe room that can withstand a tornado and get into it, you don't build your house to survive a tornado because it's just not practical.

Aside from the that, most of "tornado alley" in the American Midwest is within range of the effects of the New Madrid fault - it doesn't pop off very often, and when it does it's usually pretty mild, but once every so often it really goes nuts, doing things like making the Mississippi flow backwards and ringing church bells in Boston, on the other side of a small mountain range from the fault (that happened in 1812, an 8.0 shake). As a result, any large, permanent structure like either a skyscraper or a depthscraper will have to be built to withstand significant earthquakes. I do know that both Chicago and St. Louis building codes take earthquakes into account.