The $1 billion mission to reach the Earth's mantle
edition.cnn.com
edition.cnn.com
Especially if compared to all the other things that we nowadays spend billions on, and where the long-term benefit is much less clear.
While it's true B-52's do most of the actual bombing it's only after stealth aircraft like B2's take out air defenses that you can swap to using B-52 safely. Not to mention aircraft are just expensive for comparison a 747-8F: costs US$352 million. Where a B-52H: was only US$53.4 million in 1998 dollars.
PS: In theory long range missiles can take out air defenses there bloody expensive at US$569,000 to 1.4 million a pop vs. equally accurate smart bombs are a small fraction of that.
Designed and manufactured by Northrop Grumman with assistance from Boeing, the cost of each aircraft averaged US$737 million (in 1997 dollars).
Total procurement costs averaged $929 million per aircraft, which includes spare parts, equipment, retrofitting, and software support.[3] The total program cost including development, engineering and testing, averaged $2.1 billion per aircraft in 1997.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit
Think of it like this, the cost of designing and creating molds to create parts and assemble them is included in the 737 million. But, that just get's you an aircraft. The cost of spare parts and maintenance facility's is included in the 929 million. And the cost of initial flight tests and the ability to actually use them in a war is included in the 2B figure. The 2B figure also includes costs before Northrop Grumman got the contract to design and build them.
PS: It's often hard to decide where to draw the line with R&D costs. If another aircraft uses the paint designed for the B2 where to you put the 'paint' R&D costs.
There's all kinds of things that are possible, but not profitable. And especially when it comes to energy, "profitable" isn't just about money; putting in 2 Joules to create the ability to generate 1 isn't economically practical any more than a company that burns 2 dollars to make 1 is.
"Want mining/mineral rights? Then you must provide this [data] as a part of allowance for access"
I am tired of the outright corruption in all industries and the massive profit and exploitation of the oil companies.
I as a citizen demand that the representatives in government require a "benficial tax" on all commercial endeavors: the big corporations are not paying financial taxes, then they must begin to pay a beneficial tax to society.
This is a tax on research requirements, innovation, infrastructure and other methods of physical payment that are immune to loopholes.
I live in a country where for the last 10 years I have watch oil defense and banking interests have trumped all else and destroyed any and all faith I once held in my government.
Ill choose to rage on whichever form page happens to be an open tab at the time.
According to Apple, putting rounded corners on things with touch-screens will cost you a billion. So yeah.
Wow, that quote really put it all into perspective for me.
That said, the whole concept of just digging and digging until you hit the middle holds childlike fascination for me.
[1] Mostly related to discovering alien artifacts and the like.
Even transmission of data uses interesting techniques.
(http://www.nov.com/Downhole/Directional_Tools/MWD_Systems/Bl...)
1- I would not do it in the ocean
Lots of reasons, from the potential to damage an ecosystem to the unknowns that could be catastrophic in so many ways. Of course, cost is another reason.
Doing anything in the ocean --particularly deep-- is incredibly difficult and expensive.
2- I would not use a ten mile long shaft with a drill at the end of it.
I just don't think that this is the way to do it. Again, I am ignorant when it comes to drilling of this sort.
What I would do would be to design a drilling robot that would drill the hole and burrow itself down the hole as it works. To continue with the overly simplistic view, the only thing this robot would need would be power (lots of it).
You select a candidate site and build a large solar array, large enough to power the drill-bot.
A starter hole of the required depth and diameter would be drilled via conventional means. The robot would then be inserted into it. It would expand and clamp itself to the hole to begin drilling deeper. If the broken-up dirt and rocks must be removed either the robo-drill has the capability to collect some amount of it and traverse back to the surface or it comes back and a "cleanup" robot would go down to get the stuff out.
It'll take a long time? Is that a problem? The operation could probably have a good degree of automation.
Probably a horrible idea. Don't know.
1: The ocean is the only place where it's feasible. The continents have much, much thicker crust (40-70km) than the ocean basins (7-15km). Areas of exposed oceanic crust (e.g. Iceland) have much thicker than normal oceanic crust.
Beyond that, it's (slightly) easier to "drill" through water than through rock. There are a still a _lot_ of challenges involved in deep-water riser drilling. You don't just have a what's basically a steel rod going down (as you would with riserless drilling), you have to have a system that's capable of returning fluids and maintaining high pressure going all the way down to the seafloor (and below, once you case the well). However, it's still faster to deploy the riser than it is to drill through solid rock. At any rate, I'm getting sidetracked. The locations where they're looking to drill to the moho are in relatively shallow water (3-4 km) compared to the water depths that the Chikyu has already drilled in.
2: You're misunderstanding how drilling works. :) In some sense, what you've described is exactly how it works. (Just think of the drillbit as the robot.) However, you have to overcome the pressures at the depth you're drilling at (otherwise the hole will collapse, among other things) and you need an efficient way to return the cuttings (waste material) to the surface. Thus: drilling mud. You circulate pressurized (and very dense, so that the pressure increases with depth) fluid that flushes the cuttings back to the surface and keeps the borehole open. (It's an oversimplification, but that's the basic idea.) In some cases (e.g. coil tubing rigs), this fluid is even what drives the drillbit.
At any rate, hopefully that helps illuminate things a touch. :)
That aside, they're very good and very reasonable questions.
Low bit rate as in < 30 bits per second (As of when I interned for a major oil services company this past summer)
I too don't know much about drilling.
Perhaps I will shift my wishes to this mantle quest to unlease some fiery, earth-destroying demon/alien.
"bah, more money spent to perpetuate the fiasco, why don't they just enter through the poles?"
And yes, there are still quite a few people believing this.[2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth
[2] http://www.google.com/search?q=hollow+earth+conspiracy,
http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2011/01/hollow-earth-evid...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole
"Because Russia"
Can someone clean up this horrible analogy?
If this is indeed an accurate analogy than I would be very interested to see it done as a proof of concept!
If the mantle at the bottom of this new bore-hole is under pressure and liquid, then it will go up the bore hole until the pressure above it equals the pressure below. If the bottom of the bore-hole hits a part of a liquid mantle with a lot of pressure, then we might get a volcano. Hence, Moria.