[ExI] Trying for a minimum technical comment

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Mike Dougherty


>>... who post on the topic, if you have the engineering expertise to do 
> just top-level order of magnitude-ish BOTECs, do them and include the 
> basis of your estimates... spike

>...I  have enginerring experience: i think of a lot of ideas that won't
work...

Me too Mike.  It seems like all of my ideas fall into one of two categories:
old or wrong.  Actually I like what I think was your typo and suggest a
definition.  Enginerr: (verb) design something that doesn't work.

>...This made me consider geothermal energy.  Instead of sending water into
deep holes in the ground and bringing warm water up to the surface, can we
just put the people underground instead?  

It is done that way in some places, but it is a solution that will likely be
attractive only where the climate is really harsh.  You have an air-handling
problem, one that can be solved at a reasonable cost.

I know of a US Navy facility near Washington DC Crystal City that is mostly
underground, earthscrapers.  I don't know for sure how many levels it goes
down, but I do recall getting into an elevator and going up to the ground
level.  The motive for building that was not for insulation purposes but
rather for surviving a nuclear attack.

>... Well, I guess digging earthscrapers (opposite of skyscrapers?)  could
be prohibitively expensive.  I agree, though energy shortages are going to
make everything expensive.  I'm not sure we have any simpler "tech" than
digging a really nice hole in the ground...  Mike

Ja.  We use it now for some things, such as storage of nuclear waste.  If we
look around, I can imagine some underground homes exist.  It doesn't really
appeal to me, but it might to some market segment.  I can imagine building
homes out of big Styrofoam blocks of some sort.

spike