Thursday, September 15, 2016

Thinking about building Bridges that last

Most metal even aluminum rusts and Stainless steel is just too expensive to build Bridges with. So, this creates the lifetime of most bridges that are not maintained like the Golden Gate Bridge where it has been continually repainted as a symbol of California and the U.S. Golden Gate (sort of like the Statue of Liberty in New York.

So, most metal bridges have only an effective lifetime of 50 to 75 years before completely rusting away in various places in the U.S.

Though this would not be practical to do in long spans I was thinking a lot about stone bridges constructed by the Romans in ancient history. Many of these engineering feats are still workable today including stone pipes to bring water out of the Alps to cities in Italy. And when you think about when they were constructed it was around the time of Christ or before. So, maybe we need to start thinking more like this so what bridges we build last hundreds or thousands of years.

Because what we have done the last 50 to 75 or more years just isn't working because we are thinking in too short a term when we build bridges and this is harming our nation now extremely as bridges collapse from rust one by one and gas mains 50 to 100 years old not properly maintained or repaired blow up one by one across our nation. You can see the famous one in San Bruno here in Northern California.
    • Good Morning America: Gas Main Explodes in San Bruno ...
      hulu.com
    • San Bruno Gas Explosion
      youtube.com
    • San Bruno Explosion, September 9, 2010, 6:38PM
      youtube.com
    • New dramatic CCTV, amateur videos of San Bruno gas ...
      youtube.com
    • Large Explosion in San Francisco, 35-45 Homes Damaged
      metatube.com
    • New Video of San Bruno Explosion
      youtube.com
    • San Bruno Fire Caused by Gas Line
      youtube.com
    • CNN: Aftermath of San Bruno gas explosion
      youtube.com
  1. 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion - Wikipedia, the...

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_p...
    2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion; ... into the night even after the exploding gas main had been ... video of the explosion from a gas station one quarter ...

No comments: