
Massive balloons help polar scientists build underground tunnels - rhapsodic
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/massive-balloons-help-polar-scientists-build-underground-tunnels
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ddlatham
Sounds like the balloons are actually not massive, but voluminous.

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dredmorbius
Quite the peeve of mine, though it hadn't occurred to me until the 3rd or 4th
sighting of that headline.

Bravo.

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jaclaz
The idea in itself is not "new", pneumatic formwork (to cast concrete) has
been largely used in the past, to build (mainly) waterpipes/aqueducts, but
also for civil buildings, As an example this company was established in 1956:
[http://www.socapsrl.com/about/](http://www.socapsrl.com/about/)

And - igloo like - reinforced concrete "thin" structures for domes were
largely used since the '60's:

[https://www.architectural-
review.com/rethink/viewpoints/skil...](https://www.architectural-
review.com/rethink/viewpoints/skill-inflatable-concrete-domes/8641827.article)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binishell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binishell)

And of course building "arch" tunnels in snow is common enough, and used - as
an example - to build (each year) "ice hotels":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hotel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hotel)

It is the mix of the two that might be interesting because of the reduced
amount of materials that can be tranported in remote north (or south).

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digi_owl
One variant of this that i ran into recently was from a british company, meant
for erecting temporary shelters etc.

Basically a balloon wrapped in a canvas saturated in cement powder.

Basically you unrolled, inflated, hosed down with water, and waited for it to
harden.

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Phithagoras
This technique reminds me of Quinzhee huts. I've been building them for years
but I never considered scaling them up to create proper infrastructure.

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ninju
Looks the tunnels that the article is referring to were built over a year ago
[http://eastgrip.org/field-diaries-folder/uk-
diaries-2016/201...](http://eastgrip.org/field-diaries-folder/uk-
diaries-2016/2016-05-12/)

I guess it takes some time for the story to be written, prioritized and
finally published

~~~
mncharity
Treating this as supplemental media thread, the full
[http://eastgrip.org/uk_diaries_2016/](http://eastgrip.org/uk_diaries_2016/)
and
[http://eastgrip.org/uk_diaries_2017/](http://eastgrip.org/uk_diaries_2017/)
field diaries are also online.

The author tweeted
[https://twitter.com/elikint/status/885562039720189953](https://twitter.com/elikint/status/885562039720189953)
their video
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLZifcrPajE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLZifcrPajE)
of the story (5:30).

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dennyabraham
I wonder if this is a potential application for pykrete[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete)

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ninju
Maybe spray the pykrete around the side of the trench, before laying the
balloon and mix into the first layers of snow that form on top of the balloon
and you might get a much stronger support than just plain snow

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Jaruzel
Could some form of this, on an automated scale, be used to build tunnels or
covered buildings on Mars?

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noir_lord
Digging a hole, inflating a dome then burying it is an idea that's been
considered yes, has the nice benefit of a pressurized atmosphere for the
humans inside as well.

With access to water you can make martian concrete as well.

You can do it without water using molten sulfur as well.

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mrleinad
Those polar scientists are quite resourceful. Nothing like those cartesian
scientists.

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jandrese
A lot more fun too. The cartesian ones are a bunch of squares.

~~~
anigbrowl
No need to be so hyperbolic.

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nitrogen
Underground is a bit of a misnomer; these are under ice and snow.

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dredmorbius
Etymological origins suggests this is faithful:

ground (n.): Old English grund "bottom; foundation; surface of the earth,"
also "abyss, Hell," and "bottom of the sea" (a sense preserved in run
aground), from Proto-Germanic *grundus, which seems to have meant "deep place"
(source also of Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Danish, Swedish grund, Dutch grond,
Old High German grunt, German Grund "ground, soil, bottom;" Old Norse grunn "a
shallow place," grund "field, plain," grunnr "bottom"). No known cognates
outside Germanic.

[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ground](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ground)

