
10,000 year clock gets lowered into Texan mountain - fanf2
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/10000-year-clock-texan-mountain/
======
kragen
This is great news! Thank you for posting this, Tony!

The Long Now site says, "Located under a remote limestone mountain near Van
Horn, Texas, it will require a day’s hike to reach its interior gears. Just
reaching the entrance tunnel situated 1500 feet above the high scrub desert
will leave some visitors out of breath, nicked by thorns, and wondering what
they got themselves into." Presumably that means Jeff wants to make it a
little bit challenging for people to find the Clock, at least for a few years.

[http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/)

The Clock is designed to require the Hero's Journey to reach, because it's
primarily designed to inspire, to bring people to spiritual experiences, not
to tell time.

Also, keep in mind that the greatest risk to the Clock is human vandalism and
looting — the one thing you can't protect against by design, although they've
certainly tried. If the Clock survives a century without anyone visiting it,
it will have made it 1% of the way to its design lifespan.

They've published enough photos and videos that it should be possible to find,
though.

~~~
reificator
If 4chan can find a flag on a webcam, people can find this clock.

~~~
cypherpunks01
The clock is fully intended to accept visitors, if you check out the site
longnow.org/clock/ you'll see there are certain "features" for people visiting
the clock.

The 4chan CTF was truly epic and hilarious though.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _The 4chan CTF was truly epic and hilarious though._

I looked up the story expecting "epic and hilarious", and got "/pol/ Neo-Nazis
harass a bunch of people for not liking Trump and steal an anti-Trump flag.
But look how clever they were about stealing it!"

Is there some other, similar story that I'm missing?

~~~
vim_wannabe
A bunch of people saw an A-list celebrity do a publicity stunt and wanted to
have fun with it.

As far as the "Nazis!" claim goes you need to be able to read between the
lines if you want to read an imageboard as trollish as 4chan. And if you want
to see who really is behind the posts you can look up the first "He will not
divide us" event at a New York museum. Spoiler alert: It's not nazis. ;)

~~~
jquery
4chan doesn’t have natural defenses against “normie” invaders that other sites
have (moderation, identity), so it developed a potent meta-defense. Anyone who
takes the site literally will find themselves extremely confused and upset
like your parent post. In the old days it used to be gore posting to make
newbies flee. It’s defenses are constantly evolving as paid online agitators
try to control the message there (as they have successfully done on other more
straightforward platforms that limit free speech yet supposedly have far more
resources to prevent shilling). Turns out free speech is very powerful indeed.

~~~
simias
That's a romantic way to look at it I suppose. As somebody on 4chan for a
little more than a decade now I'd say that it slowly moved from an anarcho-
libertarian community who loved gratuitous provocation to an alt-right echo
chamber, at least as far as the big boards are concerned.

"Hitler did nothing wrong" went from a provocative joke to a political
stamement. 4chan is the embodiment of "any community that gets its laughs by
pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who
mistakenly believe that they're in good company".

That puts modern 4chan in the somewhat ironic position of being actually on
the side of the American government for the most part something I couldn't
really imagine 2007 ever endorsing, regardless of the who's in charge.

~~~
Kattywumpus
> "Hitler did nothing wrong" went from a provocative joke to a political
> statement.

I'm sort of fascinated by the phenomenon, which I think of as "LOLgical
argument". You start off with a joke where the humor is based in an extreme
and socially transgressive statement. It could be "Hitler did nothing wrong,"
or "The Earth is flat," or any number of similarly absurd ideas. The original
users are trolls who privately do not actually believe what they are saying,
but enjoy "rustling jimmies" and the increased status their daring obtains.

But as more members of the community join in, the original statement loses its
edge, and even more transgressive poses are needed to continue the joke. Often
this means doubling-down, and telling others that you do indeed believe the
thing that they had, at some level, still been treating as a punchline.

This meta-joke involves finding "proof" that the shocking thing you said
before was actually true, and demonstrating your commitment, by creating memes
and other "evidence"-based arguments for it. In doing so, you begin to create
a community that becomes indistinguishable from a community that actually
believes the original statement.

As these arguments pile up, even trolls who started off disbelieving their
original statement find themselves surrounded by "evidence" they were right
all along. There is a swell of camaraderie as those who were bold enough to
question the official version of reality begin to support each other. The
community pressure, the ego boost of having discovered some secret suppressed
knowledge, and the psychological difficulty of abandoning their previous
position all contribute to the complete conversion of a troll into an earnest
believer.

I find this fascinating because it works in such opposition to the ways we
normally talk about convincing people of new ideas. It's not the logic of the
argument here that leads people to a new conclusion but rather the logic of
the joke, the idea that the funniest punchline to an absurd joke is to
actually believe it. When enough individuals in a community feel that way,
they can actually end up convincing each other.

So it's not so much that the community becomes "flooded by actual idiots" as
it is the original trolls who become believers themselves.

Vonnegut once wrote, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what
we pretend to be." He was probably more right here than he knew.

~~~
simias
I think your analysis is accurate. These past years reddit's "The Donald"
community is a prime example of that, except it went through all phases in
about a year, maybe even less.

But I also think you need to take into account that many of the original users
who genuinely did not seriously believe the "Hitler did nothing wrong"/"Hearth
is flat"/"Donald Trump would make a great president"/... meta-joke end up
leaving when things get serious. It's actually a feature for the extremists
who push these ideas, if you're not with them you're against them, it's all
about creating an echo chamber at this point. Reddit is terrible for that
because of the moderation and voting system but even on 4chan good luck trying
to argue against the hivemind, you'll just get insulted over and over until
the thread 404's. Eventually you give up and stop bothering.

------
twic
Or does it?

> "Penn Jillette suggested that the real way to do this is make a video
> documentary of the making of the clock and then hiding it, but not actually
> doing it," Rose says. "(The clock) never gets found, but people would become
> intrigued. The mystery of the clock becomes the real thing." [1]

[1] [https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/THE-MARCH-OF-
TI...](https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/THE-MARCH-OF-
TIME-2492139.php)

~~~
nabla9
Write a book that allegedly contains hidden messages that reveal the location
of the clock. The book itself is teaching valuable lessons for the humanity.
Only those who follow the teachings with pure heart will find the clock.

~~~
pilsetnieks
The final message is that the 10'000 year clock was always in your heart.

Neal Stephenson wrote that book, it's called Anathem.

~~~
jrussino
The foundation claims that Anathem was inspired by this project:

[http://blog.longnow.org/02008/07/21/anathem-and-long-
now/](http://blog.longnow.org/02008/07/21/anathem-and-long-now/)

------
w0de0
"""

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

"""

~~~
jt2190
> The biggest problem for the beating Clock will be the effects of its human
> visitors. Over the span of centuries, valuable stuff of any type tends to be
> stolen, kids climb everywhere, and hackers naturally try to see how things
> work or break. But it is humans that keep the Clock’s bells wound up, and
> humans who ask it the time. The Clock needs us. It will be an out of the
> way, long journey to get inside the Clock ringing inside a mountain. But as
> long as the Clock ticks, it keeps asking us, in whispers of buried bells,
> “Are we being good ancestors?”

[http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/)

------
schoen
I've known about this project for a long time, but I was just reminded of the
song "Particle Man":

    
    
       He's got a watch with a minute hand
       Millennium hand and an eon hand
       And when they meet it's a happy land

------
chrissnell
What happened to their Nevada site up in the White Pine Mountains? What made
them choose the Van Horn area instead?

Long Now, by the way, has a great center and bar at Fort Mason in San
Francisco. It's my favorite place to get a drink in the city--great
bartenders, very low-key, and lots of interesting stuff to look at.

~~~
spc476
Perhaps similar to The Foundation and the Second Foundation---one to be
public, the other, private.

~~~
eludwig
What would you be inclined to do if you were making something truly unique,
something that required amazing attention to detail and custom effort?

Make two.

------
jjxw
Now if they could get to repairing the solar system model at The Interval ;)

I've been stopping by at midnight for the past year or two in hopes that I'll
be able to see the system in action, but alas it appears the system is so
complex that repairs are costly. For those of you intrigued with The Long Now
and are based in SF - definitely visit The Interval, it's one of the more
interesting "themed" bars out there with books and a collection of mini
exhibits dedicated to science, art, and music.

------
Bucephalus355
In case you want to visit, both the Amtrak Texas Eagle (LA to Chicago) and the
Amtrak Sunset Limited (LA to New Orleans) pass right through Van Horn.

The Amtrak Station is technically in Sierra Blanca, TX FYI.

[https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.com/routes/texas-
eagle-...](https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.com/routes/texas-eagle-
train.html)

~~~
briandear
Have you ever been to Texas? Why would you take a train for a dozen hours when
you could fly and rent a car for far less money?

When you finally get to Sierra Blanca, then what? There aren’t any car rental
places there and certainly not any taxis.. and I am sure you aren’t going to
just walk everywhere — look at the distances. The West Texas Light Rail
Project hasn’t quite made it as far as Sierra Blanca or Van Horn.

Your advice to take Amtrak is just ridiculous and could get some idealistic,
yet ignorant hipster eaten by vultures or, at the very least, severely
sunburned and dehydrated.

~~~
lardo
Idealistic hipster here.

I've hitched a ride from Kent to Van Horn which is about as far in the
opposite direction. West Texas is beautiful. Bring a bicycle, and don't go in
the summer.

------
bcherny
Great work Kevin, and everyone else involved in Long Now!

For those who aren't familiar, Long Now is a non-profit dedicated to long term
thinking (on 10,000+ year timescales).

~~~
bonsai80
Fun related fact: Neal Stephenson's involvement in Long Now also led to ideas
in Anathem. Excellent book, which has a fun long term clock idea in it.

[http://longnow.org/events/02008/sep/09/anathem-book-
launch/](http://longnow.org/events/02008/sep/09/anathem-book-launch/)

~~~
versteegen
In particular, a clock with a 10,000 year cycle.

It's one of my favourite books.

------
grondilu
> inspiring a more long-term view of the world and our place in it

I fail to see how that is pertinent. We know the world will still exist in
10,000 years, but we have no idea what it will look like. The mere existence
of a clock that could potentially still be running then doesn't change
anything about that, does it?

If anything, celestial objects do exist and provide some kind of a natural
long term clock. I really don't get what a mechanical one hidden in a mountain
adds to it.

~~~
hbosch
> but we have no idea what it will look like

That’s the point. The point of the clock is to put a frame on a span of nearly
unimaginable time and live life now in a way that will be significant in
10,000 years - it is a challenge to do big, great, meaningful things with long
term impact.

The clock itself as a mechanical object is an expensive monument and nothing
more, it likely won’t last the full 10,000 years of course...

~~~
grondilu
> live life now in a way that will be significant in 10,000 years

That does not make much sense to me. You can't both admit we have no idea what
the world will be like in ten thousands years, and at the same time claim you
can do something that will be significant in such time frame. You don't know
what will be significant then.

~~~
shervinafshar
The way I understand it, long term thinking is neither about the future nor
about predicting it or planning something significant for it; it is rather a
thought model which tries to extend beyond the timeframes humans might feel at
home with cognitively. An off-the-cuff, superficial yet interesting example is
the lack of a common word in English language to express units of time longer
than 1000.

This style of thinking sometimes has its benefits, like gathering together a
community to build a mechanical clock, create a manual for restarting a
civilization[1], or write a non-fiction book about "earth without people"[2].

It's just an interesting intellectual, cultural endeavor.

[1]: [http://blog.longnow.org/category/manual-for-
civilization/](http://blog.longnow.org/category/manual-for-civilization/)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us).

------
abruzzi
I’m happy to see progress on this. I hadn’t heard update for so long I had
stopped checking their website. I don’t live terribly far from the
location—maybe a five or six hour drive, so when it’s ready to be visited,
I’ll definitely make the trek.

~~~
grondilu
> I hadn’t heard update for so long I had stopped checking their website.

I hope I'm not the only one who appreciates the irony of this sentence.

~~~
Nomentatus
Poignantly appropriate, perhaps piquant - but not ironic (contrary or
inappropriate in a poignant way.) "As you might logically expect" is not what
we usually want to point to with the word "ironic" which derives from the
taste of blood in the mouth (iron), I believe. Irony is always poignant, but
what is poignant is not always ironic - it can be poignant and
suitable(appropriate/consistent). Poignant and surprising and nonetheless
consistent with what one might expect; not contrary to expectations.

Of course, 100 years from now I'll probably be wrong, the word irony is so
thoroughly misused, that by then the dictionary will have dropped the word
poignant entirely, substituted "irony" and we'll need a whole new phrase to
say what one word, "irony", means now.

~~~
grondilu
Expressing impatience regarding a project that is supposed to inspire long-
term thinking is pretty much ironic in my book.

~~~
Nomentatus
You think it would be unusual to find a ten-thousand year project a bit slow
and even frustratingly so? No, you don't. Follow the logic.

------
mulmen
There are a lot of comments here expressing concern for the longevity of the
clock due to vandalism and human activity. The inspiring thing about this
project to me is the optimism that something like this can be exposed to the
public and that we will respect it for 10,000 years.

~~~
briandear
Sorry, but “yeah right” is what I thought when I read your optimism that
people will respect something for 10,000 years.

Look at everything ISIS and the Taliban blew up. Look at all of the random
vandalism everywhere. There was once a cool balanced rock near Fredericksburg,
Texas — until in 1986 vandals blew it up with dynamite for no reason other
than “fun.” I visited that place when I was a little kid and I was 9 when it
was destroyed.

Be inspired — but be disappointed. Humanity is a dark and imperfect species.
That’s why I treat utopians, Communists, and socialists with such contempt —
because they base entire economic philosophies on a naïve hope of the
perfection of man rather than acknowledging man’s inherent desire for his own
self-interest.

~~~
mulmen
So what? Just give up? What’s your point?

I don’t know what will happen to the clock. What I know is someone put in the
time to make it and express their idea now. In this moment in time that
inspires me.

What does a defeatist attitude of dwelling only on the negative do to improve
the human condition?

~~~
meric
The human condition is as good as it can be at this point in time - To try to
change it, damages it. E.g. A child feels loved when they're accepted as they
are, rather than pushing onto it things the parents wished they had done or
ideals the parents wished they lived by.

Sometimes, to yield to the current gives strength.

------
MR4D
Creating things that last a long time is hard. If for no other reason than
forecasting the future is hard.

I have this weird thought that this project could be undone by fracking within
100 years.

Current well map shows how much is in the area:
[http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/oil-gas/major-oil-and-gas-
formati...](http://www.rrc.state.tx.us/oil-gas/major-oil-and-gas-
formations/permian-basin-information/#)

(FYI, the Texas Railroad Commission is the regulTor of oil & gas operations in
the state. )

------
pantalaimon
Now will they also build a math around it?

------
TheGrassyKnoll
You can actually appreciate country music driving through West Texas. It works
out there.

~~~
mulmen
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso...

------
Animats
It should last. The oldest working clocks are big tower clocks over 600 years
old. They've needed maintenance over the centuries, but they're iron and
brass, not stainless steel and ceramics.

------
nugi
I am late to the party, but others may have similar interest:

Are there any physical 1000+ year clocks for sale?

Asking for a friend.

~~~
darkmighty
There are clock that run on small temperature variations, there seem to be
commercial ones with a hefty price tag:

[http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/us/en/watches/atmos/atmos-
cl...](http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/us/en/watches/atmos/atmos-
classique/5101202.html)

(previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16419434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16419434))

The problem is those don't have an automatic synchronization mechanism. That's
the really tricky/cool part about the 10ky clock.

If you wanted to create, say, a time capsule that'll last for 1000 years with
a working watch, I think your best bet would be some ultra-low power
microcontroller and an LCD that you could turn on occasionally. Both power and
syncronization could be done from temperature variations. Just leave it buried
somewhere outdoors exposed to daily (night and day) and seasonal variations,
it should be enough to keep time with +/\- a few hours at decent probability.

Just make sure to avoid anything that exhibits remotely any degradation, like
electrolytic capactitors, and account for erosion of the moving parts.

Some relevant discussion:
[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/317684/could...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/317684/could-
modern-electronic-chips-e-g-arm-and-intel-processors-operate-for-millen)

------
sulam
It’s sad that they couldn’t get Danny Hillis’s name spelled correctly in the
article!

~~~
reassembled
I seem to recall reading an article in Wired back in the 90s about Danny
Hillis, The Clock and how he liked to give everyone piggy back rides.
Actually, reading that article about Danny way back then definitely inspired
me to realize that its OK to have big huge enormous ideas and do things that
other people think might be a little weird or silly. Kind of like 10,000 year
clocks and running up and down hallways with strangers on your back.

------
myroon5
save 10,000 lives [1] or make a 10,000 year clock?

Opportunity cost exists

[1]: [https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-
effec...](https://www.givewell.org/how-we-work/our-criteria/cost-
effectiveness), [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity-
can-s...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-best-charity-can-save-a-
life-for-333706-and-thats-a-steal-2015-7)

~~~
adventured
Or maybe save a lot more lives than 10,000 over time by doing things that
keeps the species aspirational, helping avoid protracted regression and short-
term thinking.

For another example, building out space infrastructure.

The notion that the other things we do, with creating and building, often
don't pay off in a radically superior way than directly saving a life, is
ridiculous.

How many lives could we have directly saved instead of doing the space race?
How about: instead of a space race, the US and USSR focus more on regressive
behavior, war, and nuke the shit out of eachother, killing hundreds of
millions of people.

How many lives will the transistor have saved, improved, or made possible over
a century: should that investment have gone into saving 10,000 or 100,000
lives back then instead?

Your setup is a false choice.

~~~
myroon5
I do actually find the project fairly neat, and I'm not saying it shouldn't be
done. Just wanted to start a discussion about a different aspect of this and
see people's arguments because opportunity cost definitely exists, and the
allocation of our limited resources is a difficult and interesting problem.

Also, I would contest that some of those charities are arguably long-term
thinking as well.

~~~
draugadrotten
How many lives could you personally have made better, by not reading Hacker
News, and instead helping the homeless in your city?

> the allocation of our limited resources is a difficult and interesting
> problem

The one without sin cast the first stone. There is always a better, more
impactful choice available today than spending time online or watching
Netflix. Yet, it is unreasonable to expect others to live the life of Mother
Teresa when oneself is writing it on such forums. Even the most good people
alive today probably played a game, read a book or watched TV at times. People
should not be judged on what they did in their off time, but what absolute
good they have accomplished. Let Mother Teresa build all the silly clocks she
wants.

------
yitchelle
This project has $42M pumped into it. Still having a hard time seeing the
value add for this type of project with this level of investment (or
spending).

~~~
fastball
But it makes sense to spend $100m on a painting?

Not all money is going to be spent productively, and not everything needs a
clear purpose.

~~~
yitchelle
No, spending $100m does not make sense either.

------
juanmirocks
10,000 years is a LONG time (for our modern civilization, that is).

To me the question is: how will we measure time once we become a multi-planet
species?

------
tim333
>The clock will tick just once a year

It looks like it has a large pendulum, maybe 50m which would lead to it
ticking every 7 seconds or so?

~~~
clarkmoody
No, the article is wrong.

The large weight simply powers the clock by gravity. The blowtorch part of the
video shows the triple-sided chain attached to the weight.

Visitors to the block will wind up the weight in order to hear the chimes. The
clock chimes once per day, and a mechanical computer varies the chime such
that it is different each day for the full 10,000 years. If it's not wound,
the chimes are silent.

The time-keeping function of the clock is much smaller and can run for a
_long_ time without anyone winding the clock. The idea is that even if there
is a serious calamity, the clock will continue to keep time until it's found
again and wound by visitors.

------
davidw
So where is it? "near Van Horn Texas" is all I could find.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
There's also this site[1] which seems to be more specifically about the clock
in Texas, and has a mailing list sign up to be notified about visiting
possibilities.

1:
[http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html](http://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html)

~~~
davidw
[https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4485152,-104.902702,1698a,35...](https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4485152,-104.902702,1698a,35y,2.05h/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?hl=en)

Looks like some construction work on top of a mountain near Bezos' land north
of Van Horn. If you zoom out, you can see it shows 'West Texas Suborbital
Launch Site' a bit to the east.

Looks like it's in the Sierra Diablo range.

Bing's satellite map of the same place:

[https://binged.it/2ou7xtf](https://binged.it/2ou7xtf)

Background image from the site you linked looks consistent with those sheer
ridges in the Bing imagery:
[http://www.10000yearclock.net/img/bg.jpg](http://www.10000yearclock.net/img/bg.jpg)

~~~
maxerickson
Nice find! These guys have a picture that looks like the tower:

[http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/project/10000-year-
clock/](http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/project/10000-year-clock/)

~~~
davidw
Oh, yeah, you can see the strip mine type thing in this photo:

[http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/swaggart/wp-
content/uploads/...](http://www.swaggartbrothers.com/swaggart/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/IMG_0472.jpg)

That's visible in the bottom of this satellite image:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4370941,-104.8992241,5680a,3...](https://www.google.com/maps/@31.4370941,-104.8992241,5680a,35y,2.05h/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e4?hl=en)

~~~
maxerickson
Looking at a USGS topographical map, the tower is located right on a peak.

------
luxurylive
This will be another place to visit, once this clock start.

------
sosodaft
The 10,000 year is very convenient for Discordians.

------
medlinkstudents
Really interesting, thanks for sharing!

------
bitL
Corrosion, dirt etc. How is that going to last 10,000 years?

~~~
burnte
They built it out of specifically engineered materials that are highly
resistant to corrotion. It's in an underground hole carved into rock to be dry
and fairly dirt free. This was planned for quite a long time, I assure you.

~~~
bitL
> I assure you.

Wonderful. I was simply asking how did they do that. Like in technical
details.

------
just_steve_h
It will be interesting to see how this mechanism fares, for sure.

If they can master this, they're at least 10% of the way toward figuring out
how to contain high-level radioactive waste! That brilliant (!) engineering
marvel needs to be contained at least ten times longer than this clock is
supposed to run.

Easy peasy!

"Clean! Safe! Too cheap to meter!"

~~~
philwelch
Just a minor technical quibble (because that's what HN is for, after
all)--"too cheap to meter" refers to the expected cost-effectiveness of fusion
power, not fission, and "too cheap to meter" doesn't necessarily mean that
power is free, just that the costs of power delivery are dominated by the
delivery infrastructure rather than the generation of the power in the first
place. In other words, you'd pay a flat rate per month for unlimited power to
keep the power grid up and running.

Fusion power would _also_ be cost-effective enough to literally turn CO2 and
water back into hydrocarbons, desalinate ocean water for large-scale
irrigation, sustainably produce nitrogen-based fertilizer from the air, and
otherwise solve virtually every sustainability problem we face or will
conceivably face for centuries. (The rest can be solved by harvesting mineral
resources from asteroids instead of the Earth's surface, but that problem can
be solved through better orbital infrastructure, which turns into an energy
problem.)

~~~
skybrian
Even in principle, this is similar to saying a bridge is "too cheap to meter".
There's no fuel cost, but it can certainly take a long time to pay for pricey
infrastructure via tolls.

I don't see why anyone would charge a flat rate for unlimited electricity when
you can pay off the enormous debt faster by charging market rate.

~~~
philwelch
This might be a case where public infrastructure makes more sense than private
infrastructure; if a large industrial country like China standardizes on a
design and builds dozens to hundreds of identical plants, they would enjoy
vast economies of scale and probably regain their investment in GDP growth
purely from the economic activities made possible through fusion.

------
wiradikusuma
I'm in awe, but at the same time concerned of its longevity due to vandalism
and human acts.

I assume this remote site will be unguarded? Expect rubbish, empty cans, used
condoms etc there. That's assuming nobody does damage to the clock itself,
either on purpose (stealing) or not ("what if I put a wood stick inside...").
Some people would start climbing it just because.. and some of them would get
hurt or die. Police would come and seal the place.

"It's one day hiking!" \-- yes for now. Human settlements expand, and within
few years maybe the distance from nearest settlement would be half. Also if
the place becomes famous, people would pave ways to it (you know, as tourist
attraction).

I guess I'm an old fart.

~~~
maxerickson
It's 3 kilometers from the nearest public road, an unpaved access road for a
wildlife management area. There is an access road they have used for the
construction but that can be blocked a considerable further distance away.

And go look at how sparse that part of Texas is. It'll be just a little while
before any development encroaches on the mountain. The access road above is 50
Km from a village with ~2,000 people.

~~~
cialowicz
Don’t underestimate what a tiny percentage of people with malice in their
hearts can do with 10000 years of opportunity.

~~~
maxerickson
Right, a determined vandal could go damage it. My argument is that the level
of determination required isn't going to change very quickly.

