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Mine-pit enclosed city

B

BlackBat242

SOC-14 1K
http://io9.com/5689785/a-proposal-for-a-domed-city-in-a-kilometer+wide-siberian-diamond-mine/gallery/

Here are plans for Eco-City 2020, a 100,000-person domed city built in the kilometer-deep and 550-meter-wide Mir diamond mine in the Yakutia Republic. According to designers AB Elise, the mine will be powered by the Siberian sun.

Here's a description of AB Elise's plan from Evolo:

The new city is planned to be divided in 3 main levels with a vertical farm, forests, residences, and recreational areas. One of the most interesting aspects of the proposal is the glass dome that will protect the city and would be covered by photovoltaic cells that will harvest enough solar energy for the new development.
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One of the most interesting aspects of the proposal is the glass dome that will protect the city and would be covered by photovoltaic cells that will harvest enough solar energy for the new development.
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Very nice concept, but I think the designers have overlooked one very important issue. Who is going to be clearing the snow and condensing ice crystals off the dome for five months of the year? :rofl:
 
Pete Nash said:
Very nice concept, but I think the designers have overlooked one very important issue. Who is going to be clearing the snow and condensing ice crystals off the dome for five months of the year? :rofl:
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Really not an issue. Siberia, like most of Central AK, is actually incredibly dry, and doesn't get much snow. What it gets, stays, but it isn't much. The icing will all be inside, not out, and the inside will melt off the snow that does land on it.
 
aramis said:
Really not an issue. Siberia, like most of Central AK, is actually incredibly dry, and doesn't get much snow. What it gets, stays, but it isn't much. The icing will all be inside, not out, and the inside will melt off the snow that does land on it.
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I actually live further north than both you and Mirnyy, in a very dry part of Scandinavia (Norway steals most of our snow), so I'm perhaps more experienced in what Siberian weather does/can do.

Mirnyy Weather

My current weather

Whilst snow flurries are intermittent they will block light, and once the temp starts descending to minus double figures it becomes a nightmare when it hits a relatively warm surface, melting, then refreezing into ice which then gets further insulated by additional snow landing atop it. Coming from Alaska I'm sure you've experienced this and know how much of a problem it is to scrape off. If I know snow is coming I generally turn off the heating inside my car for precisely this reason.

Even if it doesn't snow you still get constant ice crystal growths. Sometimes they are spiky formations which can get several centimetres thick (depending on ambient atmospheric moisture) and when it begins to get properly cold -10 down to -42 (which is the coldest we've had it here) you instead get very fine surface crystals which are translucent white but are a complete bugger to scrape off a glass surface.

This kind of crystal deposit/growth never stops because there's always some degree of moisture in the atmosphere above you... especially when you are venting the transpired moisture of an entire city into the air above (or nearby) the dome. The walls of my house are currently covered in this particular whiteness, which in many places is reflective enough to hide the fact that the wall underneath is painted red. So you can guess how much solar energy that will cut. ;)

Imagining that the warmth of the glass dome will simply melt such irritations is overlooking the fact that to enable a city like this to stay warm just using solar power, requires it be massively insulated. Its a catch 22. If you have the quadrupedal glazing necessary to let the light in but no heat out, it will become opaque from external frosting.

On the other hand, if you allow enough heat to escape through the dome to melt snow and ice, you're likely inputting far more energy than you are gaining from the light. Then you get the other problem you correctly pointed out, that of internal freezing, which is just as bad since scraping ice from the underside of a dome will be an even bigger problem and will still reduce light penetration. Believe me, when it drops to -20 outside you'd be struggling to keep the entire dome support structure from forming massive internal icicles - let alone melting off any external frosting.

You should see the condensation ice I have on the inside of my triple glazing this morning, and it was only -19 last night and my house is heated to a nice toasty +20 with underfloor heating in every room. :)
 
Both external and internal icing can be solved by incorporating electrical heating elements* into the outer-most and inner-most layers of the dome.

However, even just using these elements intermittently (on an "as needed" basis) will likely use a considerable portion of any solar-generated electricity, due to the vast area that needs to be heated.

This would likely not leave enough for the daily usage of the city.


It would be best to build any such cities in warmer climates that only experience mild winters.

Otherwise, you would need to include a small fusion or fission reactor for the dome-heating system... unless you build in a location where a significant geothermal heat source is present, then you can just blow cheap warm air through the outer inter-layer space.




* similar to those in the rear windows of autos
 
beowulf2044 said:
Suitable as a diagram/map for any city on a no/very thin/tainted/exotic/corrosive atmosphere world.
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I saw a couple of really nice establishing shots for an enclosed habitat, but nothing that would work as an actual diagram/map. Am I overlooking some links?


Hans
 
With all due respect to the siberain debate, may I point out that vacuum and trace athmos worlds will not have snow and outside condensation.

However, blocking the sun by covering the dome with photo-voltaic cells is not my idea of that thing. It you do not want to use the sun for greenhouses, health or recreative purpose, the most cost effective minimg town in a vacuum world is the one that is built using the galleries as streets if not as housing.

Selandia
 
An easier method might be to have hot water flowing between two layers of glass. This might be done as a heat exchange for dumping waste heat from the city's various energy processes. If the outside temperature was low the water would cool for reuse by the city while keeping the dome sufficently warm to prevent any accumulation of snow or ice.

Hot air or gas exhaust from industrial and city processes might work in a similar fashion keeping the dome warm before either being vented or recycled.
 
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