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Well... I'm not exactly a science/physics guy, but I'm sorta fascinated by the idea of making things out of ice. Some WW2 guy wanted to make an aircraft carrier out of the stuff (with added 14% sawdust).
Theoretically, I believe you could build a steam engine made of ice that uses liquid nitrogen...
You could definitely build a boat (pumping cold saltwater around the edges to keep it cold)...
granted, ice doesn't have the lasting capability of steel/other metals - but it's COST (next to nothing) should help immensely :)
The only thing you really need, is energy and water (and water can even be gotten from the air). In the next couple yrs, energy prices should plummet ('cept in the states, I'd think).
Ice Buildings, mills, ?drills?, conveyor belts, water/air hoses, engines, fisheries, crude vehicles... you could even make a solar collector using ice as a lens. (while heavier, you cant argue with 'free')
There would be fast-moving parts that really wouldn't do well being ice, but for that 2% you could simply use something else, or replace often, or keep liquid nitrogen around.
ANY thoughts for things that you could build out of ice? (pumping cold saltwater around it should keep it colder) I'm thinking that Iceland would be an ideal location, normally being a bit colder. Thinking about an 'ice palace' myself, with giant lenses as energy & home protection ;)
Pykrete
http://jwgibbs.cche...odeve/bergship.html
Not such a great material. Ice is worse. [MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 16 2007]
Pyke: my hero "Creep is a minor problem, really it is....THINK LIKE ME!"
http://www.swalks.com/hab.html
greatly amusing, and inspirational info about the Habbakuk project [curiouswhitehat, Dec 17 2007]
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I'm not exactly sure there's an invention
here - people do build (or have
proposed building, as you point out)
many things out of ice, and this idea
seems to be saying "make more things
out of ice, somehow". The liquid-
nitrogen-driven ice steam engine,
however, is a very neat idea - you
should post it on its own. |
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One of the big problems with ice, even
when reinforced with fibres, is creep.
Even under its own weight, ice flows
slowly. Large structures will therefore
slowly collapse in a treaclish sort of
way. |
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// Some WW2 guy wanted to make an aircraft carrier out of the stuff (with added 14% sawdust). // |
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I believe Pykrete is a more common spelling.. it's the one that comes up under wikipedia anyway (though many websites use the pyecrete spelling). (semantics) |
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Basically, I'm just looking for useful, if not creative ideas on other things to make using ice. Dreaming of taking a trip to a land of ice, and building some sorta CHEAP manufacturing empire from scratch. |
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//I believe Pykrete is a more common
spelling// After Geoffrey Pyke, who
proposed to build aircraft carriers out of it.
I knew a guy who worked on the project
before it was dropped. |
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[Curiouswhitehat], just be aware that
whatever you build will slowly (or not so
slowly) sag and spread. Ice flows. |
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Wouldn't Greenland be better for this. |
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Yes, that's right.... apparently he made a soup tureen out of it and served Winston Churchill hot soup from a container made of ice....... |
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c'mon.. no aircraft? was just looking into kite designs to see if i could figure out what design uses the heaviest material :P
dirrigible I think would be cool... not sure how well that'd work; hydrogen contained by ice, cooled and propelled by L2N. |
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A spaceship that keeps to the dark . |
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Before you get too carried away, bear in
mind that Pykrete (let alone regular ice) is
a pretty lousy structural material. It has
low tensile and compressive strengths per
unit weight compared to any respectable
engineering material. It also has low
stiffness, and serious creep problems. |
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See link for some discussion of this. |
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HOw on earth are you expecting to make, amon gst other things, conveyor belts? Or hoses? |
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If you're thinking about life costs, I think concrete pretty much has you licked here. |
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This is a wish, not an invention. [-] |
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Ice has certain properties that make it a good or bad construction material, depending on the needs and uses. I'd not have fishboned this if it had said something like, "Ice blocks could be used to both support and lubricate a conveyor belt . . .." |
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"Ice blocks could be used as minaturised refrigeration units for tasty alcohol-based beverages" ? |
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Could this be moved to a more appropriate category than
the speaking clocks one? |
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There's always Other:General ... |
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I don't think I read this idea the other day, just used the
"find" feature in my browser to confirm that it didn't
mention clocks or speaking, because, if I'd read it, I would
have remembered, and mentioned, that, the other year, I
had been vaguely considering making the frame of a lathe
out of pykrete, and had looked into its mechanical
properties a bit. (It would have been a glassblowing lathe,
not a metal lathe, so no large forces or super-stringent
stiffness requirements.) |
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