For anyone interested, this just played on the Discovery Channel, but I missed it. It'll be re-run at 10pm. I'll probably just DVR it and watch it later. They're talking about building a 1 mile wide, 1500 foot high dome over Houston. http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mega-engineering/mega-engineering.html I guess these videos go with it : http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mega-engineering-saving-houston-with-a-dome.html http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mega-engineering-a-magic-dome-material.html
I did not realize the situation here was so dire until watching that video. WE ALL GONNA DIE ITS TOO HOT
Hell, I'm still trying to figure out if this has even remotely been considered by anyone or if they just picked a city and said "let's make a show about a big dome over it".
Welcome to The Truman Show. Seriously, could you imagine the "Houston, we have a problems..." if this thing started going bad....
Don't recall where I read or heard it, but the reason Houston is the city it is now, is because of the Hurricane. Galveston was suppose to be "the City."
Didn't they try this in the Simpsons movie? An interesting idea as a thought experiment. The EFT material they use to make the dome looks pretty cool and might look to spec it in a future project. One thing I'm curious about is how long can it stand up to UV exposure and corrosive pollutants in the air and water.
Yeah, I've read that Galveston was supposed to be the major city of the South in terms of finance, trade, etc. but after this storm, people wouldn't dare build anything important down there. I think around 1900 Houston and Galveston had about the same population - something less than 100,000 people combined.
lol. No, I meant building a dome over Houston to protect it. I was going to ask people in Houston if this had been discussed or if this was just pulled out of the show's creators' butts. They talk about Fuller's geodesic dome and the materials used to build the Olympic pool in Beijing (ETFE) and how light it is in the show towards the end.
It's a badass concept just from an engineering/technology standpoint, but it's a dumbass idea otherwise. The hurricane argument is extremely irrelevant, hurricanes do major damage to houston every 10-15 years at best. Ike was the first hurricane in a while to actually put people out of commission and cause the city major financial and property losses. As for the rest, welcome to the south and welcome to the reality of building concrete jungles everywhere as people overwhelm the earth and suck up all of the resources .
