How expensive would a solid piece of metal that size be?
It looks like aluminum. Someone posted 23.5" x 23.5" x ~144" as the dimensions. This comes out to be 46 cubic feet, and would weigh about 7,700 lbs. A floor of the price would be ~40 cents/lb scrap price, or ~$3,100. Ballpark 80-120 cents/lb might be a more realistic price if it were straightforward to manufacture like that (which it's certainly not).
As an industrial engineer and former employee of one of the largest aluminum plants in the world, I can safely say I doubt it is solid rolled aluminum, and bet it would be way bigger of an extrusion that is possible. And logistically, it would be far easier to transport to a remote location via helicopter if it wasn't solid. Any machining, metal forming, etc. would require specialized large equipment, and would quickly drive the cost up, potentially an order of magnitude higher than material costs.
The monolith in 2001 had dimensions in ratios of 1:4:9 [and continuing into other dimensions...].
Why the heck would you go to all the work of putting a monolith of the wrong shape out there?
1:22:33 becomes 1:33:77
It seems unlikely that there are serious tolerances to be kept here, couldn't this just be cast messily using a sand/clay mould and then cleaned up with portable power tools?
That way you don't need any special equipment and you can use whatever Aluminium you can get your hands on. Hell, you can even recycle Aluminium cans.
The fix is pretty simple though. You need directional solidification, meaning the freezing starts on one end and moved towards the other. If you apply a draft angle of 1 degree or so to the parallel faces, you will have enough difference in dimensions to get directional solidification working fine.
>That way you don't need any special equipment and you can use whatever Aluminium you can get your hands on. Hell, you can even recycle Aluminium cans.
I'd advise against mixing alloys, but you may still be alright to get something, but it will be worthless if you try to recycle it again. Mixed scrap fetches far less than sorted scrap when you try to sell it. E.g. Some alloys might allow 1-2% copper, while others require <0.01% copper. Each pound of type 1 mixed with type 2 requires lots of pig (pure aluminum, no alloying elements) to be added to get the proportions back to something you can legally call whatever alloy you're targeting.
Aluminum cans aren't a wonderful source for things like this because they contain a thin plastic film on the inside to prevent the liquid contained from having its flavor tainted. Normal recycling processes handle this fine, but cannot handle the plastic labels added on many small brewery cans. Those should be cut off prior to recycling.
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Side note - It is incredibly energy intensive to mine bauxite, refine it through an electrolysis process into alumina, and finally alloying it into your preferred type of aluminum. It recycles incredibly well though. Recycling 1 ton of aluminum saves about 95% of the energy compared to new aluminum. This 95% savings is about 14,000 kWh. The energy intensity is part of why Iceland houses 4 smelters. With nearly 100% of electricity production coming from hydroelectric, they have incredibly cheap electricity, and it's economically viable for the likes of Alcoa, Rio Tinto, and Century Aluminum to haul bauxite ore from around the world to a tiny country with almost no manufacturing base, process it, then haul it around the world to its final destination.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Icelan...
When I visited in 2018, we came across a 5 kW turbine installed in 1927 near a famous waterfall. It's no longer online, but was neat to see.
Arguably if you are worried about the environment and account for human laziness steel cans are better for the environment IMO
Aluminum can recycling rates tend to be higher in states that offer deposit programs. Back when they were getting introduced in the 80's, $0.05/container had a lot more buying power than it does today. It's enough of an annoyance now, they'd be best off eliminating it or increasing it to ~$0.15 or so. Or since this is HackerNews, maybe we could use block chain technology to verify each can is properly recycled and reimburse with bitcoin.
Cue reddit researchers combing through old helicopter flight plans/paths from the relevant time frame? Though I would have thought an off road vehicle might be more likely; looks like it's only about 2-3 miles from the nearest road.
Edit: actually there appears to be a dirt road ~1k feet or less away
I took this one on the point overlooking the monolith: https://www.instagram.com/p/BUFR5GZF2fX/?igshid=11nr2ljs2dh6...
I took this photo not too far from the monolith:
That's also a lot of polishing for the finish you would get from sand casting.
There appear to be screw holes (or rivets), so I'm going to guess that it's three aluminium sheets screwed onto an interior scaffold.
The monolith is about 141" long, and has sides of about 23.5", so 16 of those bars would neatly fill it.
So if it is solid aluminium, that's about $23,500 in material.
[0]: https://www.onlinemetals.com/en/buy/aluminum/6-aluminum-squa...
Using the weight calculator [1], and plugging in 23.5/23.5/141 (all in inches) I am getting about 7.7K lbs, or around $15K in material costs. Given it’s unusual shape, I’m assuming that normal is producing it. This would require additional costs for machining and processing Dash I’d probably say it would be several thousand dollars in additional costs. Overall this looks to me like a $25,000 piece of metal...
[1] https://www.bostoncenterless.com/tools/metal-weight-calculat...
[2] https://fastmetals.com/collections/aluminum-extruded-square-...
Given that the excitement will have died down by the time its precise structure is revealed, I'd say a simpler design served its purpose quite well.
Assuming the "monolith" is around 10ft tall with a 1.5ft square base, it would weigh 5 tonnes if it were made of solid steel. Whoever installed it would have needed serious machinery to haul it over there and stick it in the rock.
Thin sheets of metal, either welded or riveted together, would have been much easier to build and install. It could even have been filled with some other material (e.g. sand) before the top was put on.
Yes, it was a prism shaped object with 3 pieces of stainless steel panels riveted together, the bottom has concret and silicone:)