The Houston Dome Will Save the City from “Peril”, May Help Environment
- Posted by Alex Ion in Environment
Jun 9,2009
Houston Dome – The fourth-largest city in the United States and the largest city in Texas, Houston is vulnerable to killer hurricanes, extreme heat and other natural disasters. And the problem is only getting worse as the city is forced to spend a fortune in a losing battle against nature. Hence why a team of engineers decided that the most viable solution for the moment is to “move the city indoors”.
The Houston Dome is supposed to protect the city from category-5 hurricanes
The Houston Dome surface area will stretch over 21 million sq ft, which will make it the biggest structure with the largest roof in the world. The dome’s panels will be 15 ft across, with over 147,000 to cover the city of Houston. The only problem would be that using glass or plexiglass would make the whole structure extremely heavy.
But the answer comes from German city of Bremen, from a company dubbed Vector Foil. Vector Foil manufactures an innovative strong, lightweight, transparent polymer known as ethylene tetra fluoro ethylene (ETFE). At just one percent of glass, ETFE is described as 99 percent nothing. And considering that it can withstand winds of 180 miles per hour, it could be the breakthrough for the Houston Dome.
Designed to protect a city from a category-5 hurricane, the Houston Dome raises other problems related to actually building the structure. It will take years and billions of dollars, but would it be worth it?
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- Tags: dome over houston, geodesic dome, houston dome project, houston geodesic dome, the houston dome
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9 Responses to “The Houston Dome Will Save the City from “Peril”, May Help Environment”
This will go right along with the cap & trade bill, this way they can charge you for breathing oxygen. What was that movie Mad Max? Where they turned off the air supply to an indoor city??
Come On all you Cowboys, are you REALLY going to take this??
My great Grandfather going back 9 generations WAS Sam Houston I wonder what HE would say about this??
Wow, i think this city needs something to put it back on the map. Something this crazy would bring tourism and would be the new 8th wonder of the world.
Plus our President loves to waist money, let his waist some on this!
I’ve got a Houston Dome in my pants!
If houston the CITY pays for it itself, then I see no problem with it. Lack of rain might be an issue, but the drop in heat would make up for it.
Thought it says it can withstand a hurricane, I think it would need testing to make sure it can handle the worst possible situation. Otherwise, the dome FALLING on people may be worse than the problem it was supposed to save them from.
I like the idea of at least one or two cities with domes or other protective structures. But not just from heat, ozone issues, but from a survivalist standpoint. Humanity needs atleast a few “insulated” cities/places to survive a global cataclysmic event. This could protect from volcanic ash, meteoric debris, and prepare a city to use it’s own air supply, etc.
In the event Earth became inhabitable, the domes might actually be able to survive if modified for that purpose.
If we’d stop wasting trillions on healthcare and social security, that is. But humans care too much about their own lives. They’ll just keep on wasting money on welfare and on keeping 90 year olds on life support. I foresee global slavery in the future, so who needs to worry about the environment? Everyone is in debt about $30k and rising. The banks are growing, but are a destructive economic element. Why? Because banks provide no service or product. They don’t create what humans need (clothes, food, shelter) or what humans want (luxuries), they only create debt slaves, and hire millions of employees who do nothing but drain the rest of us. And people wonder why the economy is screwed up. US banks alone now have over $650 trillion in debt owed to them, and the interest earned annually is soon to exceed global GDP. How can banks earn more interest than the entire world’s income? The “Fractional Reserve Banking” (look it up) global scam which has made everyone enslaved with debt from non-existent money loaned to them (and due to the inflation, FRB causes in real estate and other areas, people HAVE to get loans to afford anything).
The final nail in the coffin: Cap and Trade, should help ensure economic destruction of the lower and middle classes (as energy costs rise dramatically). Of course, if you want to cut CO2, you have to kill all the humans and cows. Humans breathe out more CO2 than all cars combined. Cows emit more greenhouse gases than all trains, cars, airplanes, and boats combined. But of course Al Gore won’t tell his liberal buddies to go out and shoot cows.
Life isn’t the problem. CO2 is the “emission” of ALL LIVING LIFE. Even trees emit CO2, they only “hold in” CO2, but when they die, they will have actually EMITTED more CO2 because of their existence.
I’m with anyone who says to stop methane (cows emit poison), and other gases, but leave CO2 out of it.
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What about surroundings of the dome? What happened if in the time of working on the structure appears a hurricaine?
I just want to own the window washing company….lol
I don’t think this is doable to begin in. Second, even if it is possible is it a good thing? Helicopter and planes won’t enter, rain won’t enter, pollution won’t leave, it will deprive the habitants of seeing the sky and it’s a great target to terrorist attacks.
People keep saying that investing in the enviromnent is too costly and engineering impossible and then go around and spend billions on this?
What this article doesn’t explain is the mechanical side to the dome. To my knowledge, this dome is suppose to have an air filtration effect. There will be large vents along the bottom as well as the top of the dome so air is absorbed and released, as well as pollutants.
If this dome ends up being a success, I believe this is our future. But if its a failure its only a matter of time until someone suggests something similar, or perfects it.
If you are really interested, you should research Buckminster Fuller, he perfected the dome, as a structural element.
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