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Huge amounts of effort, money and risk go into climbers
ascending Mt Everest. Once they've summited, they
smile,
take a few pics then begin the much less glamourous, but
still extremely dangerous, descent back to Base Camp.
I propose an international effort to install plastic slide
tube
as commonly found in children's playgrounds from the
Summit to Base Camp. Complete with loop-de-loops to
burn off extra speed.
The tired mountaineers can then pop themselves into the
tube, avoiding the snow, wind and rockfalls, to quickly
find
themselves back at Base Camp. On alternate Thursdays,
the tube can be designated as a rubbish chute for
returning
empty oxygen bottles, food containers and frozen
corpses
hence cleaning up a mess which would otherwise be left
on
the mountain or humped out on the backs of overworked
Sherpas.
Could use something like this?
https://www.google....IC-MQ4dUDCAg&uact=5
Inspired by [AusCan531]'s anno. [neutrinos_shadow, Jul 23 2021]
Mountain Zorbing
https://youtu.be/2tbTgi2bqXQ
Fatality. [AusCan531, Jul 23 2021]
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Also useful for rapid evacuation. Add on a device to move supplies up using the energy gained descending, and charge by the kilogram. Although I guess all the REAL billionaires have moved on to space these days. |
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Some typical plastic tube slides cost maybe $100 per
foot. Let's estimate $200 per foot since it needs
anchoring, cold weather performance, and thermal
expansion gaps. |
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The length of the hike one way is approx. 40 miles, or
211,200 feet. |
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So, the cost to build a plastic tube slide up Mt. Everest
is (as a wild guess) $40 million dollars. |
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A neat way to assemble it would be to pressurize it and
shoot the parts up it like those pneumatic document
tubes at drive thru banks back in the '90s. Then at the
end of the workday the tubes could be launched back
down the slide, and possibly even personnel could go
down this way (though they would need an emergency
escape out of the tube). |
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If we up the budget to $400 million, it might be
sufficient for a giant "Project Babylon" cannon. |
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About space, it's easy to spend money and it's hard to
make it economical. Building the space
megastructures isn't a matter of throwing billions of
dollars at it. It's a matter of finding a way (e.g.
reusability) to make it massively cheaper. SpaceX
made reusability actually happen. If the other builders
want to win, they should stop copying Musk and use
their own unique approach to find a new angle, and
they should personally verify their basic idea before
delegating it to the smart employees. Here are some
guesses:
-- SpaceX should keep doing what it's doing, which is
working great.
-- Blue Origin should crowdsource their entire system
architecture to the Kerbal Space Program community,
should build their rockets entirely out of Amazon stock
items, and should assemble them using their normal
warehouse staff. This is terribly inefficient, so they
should make their rocket 50x the size of Elon's to
compensate (benefitting from scaling laws) and win
using the massive scale of Amazon logistics. Yes, this
means building rockets the size of an Amazon
warehouse, and blowing them up to help the Kerbal
guys tune their models.
-- Virgin Galactic should make their rocket nuclear
powered. Branson's narcissism can cut through the red
tape and win using this vastly superior fuel source. NB:
may need to launch from an ocean platform in
international waters and/or kerguelen island.
-- Zuckerberg should just build a giant floating eye of
sauron and tell his "fact-checkers" to ban people who
claim that the giant floating eye is not actually in orbit
-- Actual billionaires in non meme industries should
consider a career in engineering, where their
spreadsheets can mean something original |
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My guess would be $2500 per foot. You need to stabilize it against shifting ice and vicious winds. You also need to get the materials up along one of the most challenging areas in the world. Add in environmental factors, lawsuits, feeding and supporting the work crew, international bureaucracy and bribes, and probably about a dozen things I haven't thought of. This isn't a Sunday stroll through the forest. Indeed a cannon and catcher would probably be cheaper and safer. |
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On second thought, I would agree with [Voice]. A better
cost estimate is probably "slightly cheaper than Bay
Area Housing", so a bit less than $3000 per 3ft area (1ft
length) of slide. |
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Economy of scale. Yes its expensive laying the tube all the way up Mt Everest. but if this kind of tube were to be laid everywhere all over the surface of the earth, then the cost per unit length would drop considerably. |
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+ Who cares how much it costs, this is the hb. |
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I love it when someone worries more about the cost and is not
so worried about how many might be killed or maimed. That's
the bakery for ya. |
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Would users need Kevlar/asbestos trousers to cope
with the friction? |
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Pre-assemble somewhere convenient (eg: Kathmandu) into
manageable (for some value of "manageable"...) lengths,
then lift into place with a hot-air or helium balloon. |
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In a nod to the quite sensible annos above concerned about
cost, perhaps great sections of it could be constructed of
Lay-Flat hose - say 500mm in diameter. Outside pockets
filled with water/rocks for weight and away you go! |
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(Note: Away 'you' go cuz I'm not getting in the bloody thing). |
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^ Indeed. The rest of us will descend using our Zorbs. |
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Is there something wrong with your toboggan? |
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[whatrock]; extreme alpine Zorbing - now THERE'S an idea!
(In fact, I'm surprised it isn't already a Thing here in New
Zealand...) |
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Mountain Zorbing is a thing. See [link] but be warned there
was a fatality. |
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OK here is a serious question. Thinking about costing and price, would it be cheaper in the long term to tunnel up through the mountain, than to build a surface-mounted tube? The tube has the problems of extreme climate and installation and stability referred to above. Tunnelling would seem more expensive but mitigates these issues. |
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//that’s boring//
Genuinely, the UK phone book used to have a
section |
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Original idea [+], tubes, hoses, tunnels all good… |
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What about an Inflatable tunnel? I’m imagining
something that ‘unfurls’ length-wise, so you could
start at base-camp and ‘pump’ the outer end of
the tunnel up to the summit. |
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Ooh, that gives me an idea for space-towers… |
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//it might be sufficient for a giant "Project Babylon"
cannon.// |
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Good to see we're putting in the work on 8th-style
contributions. |
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If you trained pigs to tunnel their way up that would really be boaring. |
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I would like to think that a new boring technology using
water-jet cutters to extract neat little wedge-shaped
chunks of rock might make it easier. |
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// Mountain Zorbing is a thing. See [link] but be warned
there was a fatality // |
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A fatality? Just one? Pah. Not enuf data, Shirley. We need
dozens of climbers to descend in their Zorbs to prove that
this is the manner every climber should opt for to get down
to hi-ox within the hour. |
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Going up takes too damn long. Maybe a Babylon Cannon? |
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//If you trained pigs to tunnel their way up that would
really be boaring.// |
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South African pigs - Boers. |
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Boer Constructors would be no good for tunnelling but they could build the support infrastructure. |
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How do you keep the top end clear of the snow and ice? I'm
thinking a wind turbine at the top is needed so you can bleed
off the power to an electric heater system in the tube. That
way people can climb the tower for turbine maintenance
every couple of days. While they're up there they can clear
out the ice and snow that the electric heater system didn't
catch, and ride the tube back down. See, it's all self-
contained...
How much to sherpas know about wind turbine maintenance?
Think we have budget for training? |
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I have slid down a 20-foot plastic tube in cold weather. I can
imagine this as being somewhat akin to being struck by
lightning continuously for an hour or so. |
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