[HN Gopher] Exclusive satellite images show Saudi Arabia's sci-f...
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Exclusive satellite images show Saudi Arabia's sci-fi megacity is
well underway
Author : t23
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-12-10 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| euroderf wrote:
| Someone stealing the wheels off Snowpiercer.
| stavros wrote:
| How hard is it to obtain aerial photos of something? Surely, a
| $300 drone plane can take photos of things tens of km away
| undetected?
| metadat wrote:
| What are the green and black striped rectangles?
|
| https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/2...
|
| Edit: Thanks for the info, you are super quick!
|
| I have a follow-up question:
|
| Why build it 170km long and only 0.2km wide? This seems super
| inefficient, compared to making it shorter and wider. What's the
| advantage?
|
| Lots of things will be (unnecessarily) far apart. Won't this be
| annoying for those living in this archeology?
| gruez wrote:
| >Arrays of solar panels have been shaded in green.
| jdsnape wrote:
| Solar panels - the colour is applied by the publication to
| highlight it
| prepend wrote:
| Aside from being cool, I think the idea is to be zero carbon so
| they need someway to have solar panels that sustain a certain
| population without having huge solar farms hanging off
| sections.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think it's as dumb as some people claim. The basic
| premise is that everything could run off of a single
| mainline/bus.
|
| I think the inefficiencies are overstated and gains are
| generally underrated.
| cma wrote:
| Say it is a cross shape instead with one interchange/ hub in
| the middle. Now everywhere is like half as far away as
| before. Continue adding spokes. Now we're back to a filled
| circle with a central core more like traditional cities and I
| bet buildings would end up much taller in the core.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I get that. Alone and maximizes the distance between any
| two random points. A circle minimizes the distance between
| any two random points.
|
| However, it gets more interesting if you're not flying like
| a bird between the two points. If you are taking metro
| rail, you care about your distance to a stop which you will
| walk plus the travel time that you will ride, and number of
| transfers. As you see, it becomes a lot more complicated.
| You would have to put down a lot more rail so that every
| person in a circle is within 200 M of a rail line.
|
| A line 170km by 200m wide has an area of 34km^2. This
| equals a circle with a diameter of 6.6km.
|
| it would take 694km of rail to fill that circle with a grid
| so that no point is further than 100m from the lines.
|
| The same holds true for your power, water and sewage
| infrastructure.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _it would take 694km of rail to fill that circle with a
| grid so that no point is further than 100m from the
| lines._
|
| Rail stations wouldn't be 200m apart, though, so maximum
| distance to the lines is too simplistic a measure to use
| for this.
| BoGoToTo wrote:
| MBS plays Factorio confirmed?
| kortex wrote:
| I use a very linear mall style layout. But the difference
| in my design is each module juts out orthogonal to the main
| bus and tiles linearly. So as the bus grows, each "spine"
| grows outward to increase capacity. But it can't continue
| indefinitely - eventually the module-bus bandwith
| bottleneck dominates, and I have to start a totally
| separate bus in parallel.
|
| Neom will run into the same problem, except _without_ the
| ability to first scale laterally. There 's a reason
| logistical systems aren't a straight fuckin line. Cities
| are logistics machines.
|
| I think the average Factorio noob has put more thought into
| layout design than the architects of Neom.
|
| I can think off many ideas off the top of my head which
| would be striking, revolutionary, and less dumb than a line
| when it comes to logistics. Hell, even a circle (of limited
| width) would be better, as your worst case transit time
| immediately is cut in half.
| jws wrote:
| The long and narrow is a different aesthetic. A dweller will
| likely dwell in a dwelling with a view of the desert or sea
| unbroken to the horizon. When you come home you will look out
| upon a large natural world with a stunning unobstructed sunrise
| or sunset (choose your side wisely) every day.
|
| You are "in a city", but you are "living on Earth", both are
| present, separated by your front door..
|
| Culturally, most of the residents will be observing sunrise and
| sunset prayers which makes the transitions of the sun a little
| more anchoring. Traditionally morning prayer is twilight until
| sunrise, the evening is sunset until the red leaves the sky in
| the west. (So says Wikipedia anyway, then it gets into
| astronomical math, so I expect everyone just has an app for it
| now.)
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Well underway is a bit of a stretch.
|
| They dug a trench in the sand, which is not such a tall order
| given the consistency of sand.
|
| It's also the reason why they can stick a straw in the sand and
| oil comes out.
|
| The only big trademark Core infrastructure project made in Saudi
| up to now has been the Abraj-Al-Bait [0], spearheaded by the Bin
| Laden Group [1] (founded in 1931 by Osama Bin Laden's father)
| which is something comparable to the recent CityCenter Las Vegas
| Development.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraj_Al_Bait
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Binladin_Group
| input_sh wrote:
| > They dug a trench in the sand
|
| And that trench is maybe 5-7 kilometers long (it's supposed to
| be 170).
|
| I never doubted they'll build _something_ , but until they
| reach that something the original presentation will get dumbed
| down a few times. It's still gonna be a long (but definitely
| not 170 kilometers) line with a metro and no cars, but that's
| about it.
| yabones wrote:
| This will end exactly the same way as the Jeddah tower. I'll eat
| my shoe if they come anywhere close to "completion" on this
| project. It's such a profoundly stupid way to spend half a
| trillion dollars.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeddah_Tower
| enriquto wrote:
| There does not seem to be anything "exclusive" about these
| images. They look like regular worldview 3 images that anybody
| can buy.
|
| From TFA:
|
| > The strange gap in imagery raises questions about who gets to
| access high-res satellite technology. And if the largest urban
| construction site on the planet doesn't appear on Google Maps,
| what else can't we see?
|
| This is ridiculous. Commercial satellite images are sold everyday
| to thousands of buyers. You only need a credit card. Google maps
| is just not updated immediately with all these images that people
| buy.
|
| I'm surprised at the low quality of these MIT "reporters".
| hef19898 wrote:
| Lately I see this dosconnect from "reality" (for lack of a
| better word, in your example how satelite images are bought and
| how Google maps works) and people writing about it without a
| clue or interest to actually investigate (using outdated Google
| maps data to formulate a conspiracy theory). And it is not just
| journalism, it is everywhere, I see it at work (between
| seasoned people and those fesh from university or those that
| drank too much founder kool aid), in politics, you name it. I
| find that tebdency rather troubeling.
|
| I think it is also one of the reasons why a majority of people
| have no idea how the infrastucture of world works, from
| electricity over supply chains to the internet and basically
| everything in between.
| boxed wrote:
| Apple maps still show a construction site near where I live
| where there has been houses for several years. WhAt ARe thE CIA
| HiDIng in thIS SwEDIsh suBURb?!
| gerbler wrote:
| Spot on
| selimthegrim wrote:
| They are very loosely affiliated with MIT- they just buy the
| brand at this point
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| To add to the possible justifications for this project, the
| YouTube channel Economics Explained made a nice video on how
| these insane megaprojects can make sense. Essentially, they are
| meant to be long and expensive just to attract enough foreign
| companies to establish permanent presence in the country. Once
| that happens, the idea is that they eventually start to
| contribute to the SA economy independently, helping them move on
| from oil only economy.
|
| It makes sense if you consider that when you have oil, it will
| make your currency strong, so exporting goods is expensive and
| that makes developing other industry difficult. Also,
| investments, people and other resources in your country will be
| all mainly directed towards oil, since that's where the profits
| are largest. So to escape this trap, you have to basically do
| something rather crazy.
| albertopv wrote:
| Insane Saudi Arabia is still considered a developing country.
| rurp wrote:
| I know, they even let women drive now!
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Developed countries have an educated professional population
| and a diverse market economy.
|
| Saudi Arabia has billions raining from the sky.
|
| Both make you rich, but the societies function very
| differently.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Does Saudi Arabia produce anything outside of oil?
| oblak wrote:
| Pretty sure last bubble gum I bought was made in SA. I
| remember because it was a while ago and it was the sole
| reason I got them in the first place. Got curious. There is
| plenty of near eastern stuff around, if one looks, but that
| one felt rare enough to me. I am not even a collector of any
| kind.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Date pastries and dates?
| unity1001 wrote:
| This is a good project. The way we currently run our living
| spaces is extremely inefficient. We distribute people to many
| disparate neighborhoods, and - in the case of the US - _gasp_
| suburbs, and then face the problems which having to provide all
| the infrastructure, supply networks, transportation to those
| places create. One unmistakable example of this is traffic
| congestion and how a lot of energy, productivity and even more
| importantly, the precious time of people are lost while going
| from place to place, leave aside in congestions. The people are
| having to do this because it is just how things are, not because
| it is the best thing that mankind should have been doing.
|
| The systems logic that they have in this project makes sense: A
| more efficient structure would definitely make running a large
| urban region much more effective. And Saudi Arabia has a lot of
| flat, uninterrupted, unused space that is largely outside the
| earthquake, storm and other disaster zones, so a big linear
| structure can be easily workable there.
|
| The line structure seems to be well calculated - its long, but
| its very thin. Meaning that they plan to run everything one
| single, uninterrupted, well, line of infra. Which totally makes
| sense from an engineering standpoint. If it was a vanity project
| or wasteful indulgence as some claim, the systems side of this
| would not be made as simple as this and it would be something
| more grand. Moreover, the linear building concept that apparently
| does not seem to inspire anyone judging from the comments, is
| another evidence that it was chosen for its systems efficiency,
| and not awe factor or tourism value.
|
| Again, its an interesting project. Even if they can pull off a
| fraction of it and succeed in developing a large, uninterrupted
| urbanization that is efficient, it can make a great breakthrough
| in terms of urban technology.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| No, it makes zero sense to build a city along a line.
|
| It is comically inefficient, offers no fault tolerance nor
| ability for expansion. I don't even know where to begin.
|
| By all means put it in a forgettable sci-fi movie. Don't take
| it further.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > No, it makes zero sense to build a city along a line.
|
| Why.
|
| That we are building cities in non-linear fashion because we
| dont have enough flat, contiguous land in most of the world
| does not make it the best paradigm.
|
| Moreover, there were historic communities that were built in
| such linear fashion. Ancient Egypt itself, was a gigantic
| line around the Nile river where the Nile played the role of
| the infrastructure.
| majewsky wrote:
| > because we dont have enough flat, contiguous land in most
| of the world
|
| But even in the plentiful places where we do, cities grow
| in two dimensions.
|
| > Ancient Egypt itself, was a gigantic line around the Nile
| river where the Nile played the role of the infrastructure.
|
| This is indeed a good example, though it proves the
| opposite of your point. The Egyptians spread in a linear
| fashion because (and only because) the land far away from
| the Nile was pretty much uninhabitable (except with a
| nomadic lifestyle).
| emkoemko wrote:
| how is a line more efficient then a circle?
| unity1001 wrote:
| A circle is literally a bent line. It could work as well.
| However, you would get a bent line in the end. Aside from the
| problems that running an infra on a circular shape with bent
| curves would bring, it could work. A line would be just
| easier.
| olig15 wrote:
| It's not that simple. A 'bent line circle' can be crossed
| from one 'end' to the other much faster than with a line by
| going through the middle.
| Oxidation wrote:
| For the work and resources[1] of these mental projects, humanity
| could solve world hunger, probably several times over. Or build
| enough nuclear energy to power half of Europe. (Edit: These are
| _examples_ of what this much time, resourcing and manpower can
| do, merely examples)
|
| Oh well, I guess at least some of those hundreds of billions will
| end up winkled out of the Saudis by consultancies, at least.
| Presumably it can then trickle back up and be lent out for
| something more useful.
|
| I'm more surprised the Saudis haven't already slapped down a few
| trillion dollars worth of solar on empty desert and future-
| proofed their energy exports. After all, just because they sell
| solar energy wouldn't mean they've have to stop the oil
| overnight[2]. Electricity supply isn't going to be sufficient any
| time soon and demand isn't going anywhere but up[3].
|
| [1]: it's easy to say "the money" but actually the money can be
| recycled once it's spent by the KSA royals, so it's kind of
| immaterial. It's the opportunity costs and resource use.
|
| [2]: energy aside, polymers and petrochemicals aren't going
| anywhere, even if a few supermarkets have changed to paper tomato
| trays
|
| [3]: moving all of the world to electrical heating, even fully
| leveraging ground- and air-source, and traction is going to
| require mind-bending amounts of installed capacity.
| hjkl0 wrote:
| But why do you think your ideas are any better or more worthy
| or ethical than theirs? This project addresses many important
| issues, it's far from a vanity project.
|
| I think the problem here is not that any one idea would have
| been better than this. The scale is just out there. It's too
| much.
|
| Especially on HN, it seems like it just begs the question, what
| would the MVP look like?
| Oxidation wrote:
| I don't think ethics really come into it. People have
| _already_ been shot and sentenced to death over this.
|
| Maybe it's a grand megaproject to save humanity and worth
| many many lives and I just can't see it. We will see.
| prepend wrote:
| Isn't world hunger solved in the sense that it's no longer
| monetary? Are there people starving due to lack of funds?
|
| That being said, these aren't exclusive tasks. It's not like
| Saudi Arabia chose between feeding people and a multi-year
| 170km infrastructure project. It seems odd to compare building
| a city in one country with feeding people all over the world.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Technically they did. They're not the first to many that
| choice, but they made it.
|
| They could have set up a global food infrastructure fund and
| used it develop sustainable and accessible food technology to
| produce the food and get the calories to everyone.
|
| They didn't, and neither did anyone else, on the scale
| required (a few beleaguered charities, aid agencies and the
| UN notwithstanding)
|
| Ditto for the other example I gave, and any others you can
| think of.
| toast0 wrote:
| SA (or whoever) can set up such a fund, but do they have
| the influence to make sure the fund does what it needs to
| do in other countries to actually get the work done?
|
| And then there's places where hunger is more of a factor of
| war or governnent corruption or ineptitude. It's hard to
| fix that without causing other problems.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Everyone's focusing on what was the first example if what
| that much "will to get shit done" could do. There's lots
| you could do with that much.
|
| Hell, they could have done what I would have done if I
| were an country and slapped a cool trillion on modular,
| exportable, nuclear reactor technology and become the
| world's supplier of those (though actually maybe we've
| waited too long and bulk solar is a better bet these
| days, which they're in on domestically, but not
| apparently as a mass export).
|
| I don't think they'll get much useful return on these
| gigatonnes of steel, glass and concrete in the desert and
| that's more then a little sad to me. But maybe I'm wrong
| and it'll become a mega-Shenzhen and outshine the world.
| toast0 wrote:
| Again, that's an idea that requires buy in from the
| outside. You could do all that, but not if the IAEA
| decides not to like you, and if you can't find buyers for
| the reactors when they're ready in 10? years what's the
| point. May as well build a locally focused boondongle.
|
| If the tolerances are good, maybe the central rail makes
| for a decent linear accelerator site if the rest of the
| building is vacant.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Well, again drilling into a specific off-the-cuff
| example, but even if Saudi of all countries can't muscle
| in there, install a shitload yourself on the peninsula
| and become a net fresh water exporter with massive
| desalination plants. Probably you don't even need nuclear
| at this point and go straight for solar.
|
| In 10 years, or 20, or 30, there's going to insane water
| demand on all sides: the entire middle East and most of
| Africa is going to be at each others throats for water
| and will pay whatever you ask. Pretty much how it works
| now for oil, actually.
|
| With that in mind, maybe it's indeed the best possible
| outcome that that KSA splash the cash harmlessly and
| uselessly rather then build a new chokehold on something.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| This is a frankly disingenuous way to put it. Saudi isn't
| to blame for world hunger, which isn't caused by money
| anyways. The primary concern of the Saudi ruling family is
| themselves and their citizens and last time I checked, they
| weren't facing food insecurity.
|
| Countries facing widespread hunger do so due a mix of
| factors, including war, corruption, lack of policies
| promoting agriculture, etc...throwing money alone at the
| problem won't solve it and at some point, these countries
| should be held responsible to fix their problems.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| The only hunger they are responsible for is in Yemen, and
| that's fixed by a change in policy not by funds
| Oxidation wrote:
| Yes, poor maligned Saudi Arabia, they've never hurt
| anyone and haven't maintained a death grip on the world's
| energy for decades by undermining alternating energy at
| every turn (even while embracing it for domestic use). I
| mean, this [1] is from this year, and that after their
| own pivot into domestic renewables.
|
| Just from the damage they've caused by inhibiting
| renewables, they're up there as some of the biggest
| contributors to global issues now and in the future. It's
| not only on them, many others are more then complicit,
| but they know what they've been doing.
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/climate/saudi-
| arabia-aram...
| rdtwo wrote:
| World hunger is a logistical problem in a high corruption
| system. It's easy to find enough calories for everyone, it's
| hard to get them there if only 10% goes where intended
| mabbo wrote:
| > humanity could solve world hunger
|
| Humanity does not need any extra money to solve hunger. We have
| enough food. Food prices, despite recent inflation issues, are
| being made more cheaply than ever in human history, in
| quantities more than sufficient to feed us all.
|
| We just choose that some people go hungry, for being too poor.
| Oxidation wrote:
| It's more an example of what such resources (I _specifically_
| avoided focusing on the money) could achieve, rather then
| air-conditioning a few cubic kilometres of desert.
|
| But compared to a hundred billion dollar motorway perhaps
| it's actually a better investment. Maybe they genuinely will
| hit on how humanity can live in zero carbon harmony with the
| world. It would be pretty ironic that the Saudis crack that
| one first and finish what Paolo Soleri started.
| okasaki wrote:
| Oh well, at least it's civil engineering and not dropping bombs
| on people.
| doliveira wrote:
| We can solve world hunger. It's just that we've collectively
| decided we don't care enough.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| This whole idea is so incredibly dumb.
|
| This is the problem with unfathomably rich authoritarian rulers
| with unchecked power. They don't have people pushing back on
| their grandiose and insane ideas.
|
| A great example of this is Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| It's not just that no-one pushes back, but the opposite: many
| actively encourage it (especially the consultants and the US/EU
| firms who ultimately mostly benefit from it).
| yrgulation wrote:
| So this is america's and europe's fault again somehow?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No, just the usual symbiosis between stupidity and greed.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Architects and engineers too. This is surely a very
| profitable business...
| Oxidation wrote:
| I'd almost like to have my nose in that trough (and God
| knows when I was looking for a job, YouTube was spamming me
| with Oxagon adverts enough to know there exist such jobs),
| but then I imagine the type of person that would gravitate
| to manage such a project that I'd be down-line of and think
| "maybe not".
| OtherwiseBenign wrote:
| At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, this reminds me of a 3-mile
| building that was built on the German island of Rugen 1936-1939
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prora
| sandworm101 wrote:
| So many of these articles, and none address the realities of
| Saudi/Gulf family power structures. For the king/MBS to remain in
| power they need to keep the powerful families on side. That means
| giving them money, enough money that they don't get too jealous
| of the king's money and decide they should be king. But handing
| them money without directing how they spend it will lead to ruin.
| They will set themselves up as new powers, to the point that they
| will one day be buying weapons and influence to overthrow you.
| You have to keep them busy doing other things than plotting your
| doom. You give them jobs. Rich Saudi families own and run the
| construction firms building these silly projects. The up-and-
| coming sons of these families are called "investors" and
| "developers" of mega projects. They go to nice schools and spend
| their working lives consulting with architects and engineers.
| They hire famous westerners (Beckham) to promote their pet
| projects (soccer/golf tournaments). That is way way better than
| them consulting with militants, extremists and mercenaries. It is
| better than them running around the world building their own
| power bases. Call these projects wasteful and inefficient all you
| want. They are doing exactly what they are designed to do: keep
| the king from being overthrown. They are the Saudi version of
| Louise XIV's Versailles.
| personjerry wrote:
| This is an interesting take, do you have any recommended
| readings?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'Ud. Robert Lacey -
| 1982
|
| Also any and all European history dealing with Kings and
| royal houses. They are all basically the same: Property,
| religion, upstart sons and a king trying to stay king.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Power dynamics never really change, do they? The currency
| in which power is measured, and the eules by which they
| play are all that changes. And the more things change, the
| more they stay the same.
| lolc wrote:
| Wow, the last time I read about it, I thought it was just a wild
| idea. Now they're moving dirt.
| zabana wrote:
| this strangely resembles the fictional city of rabi'ah, in deus
| ex mankind divided [0]
|
| [0]: https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Rabi%27ah
| wmf wrote:
| Because MBS loves Deus Ex.
| relwin wrote:
| Thunderf00t has an entertaining analysis on the absurdity of
| NEOM:
|
| https://youtu.be/rB_X5ZUcZlE
| ledauphin wrote:
| I'm well aware of the explanations that this project is
| infeasible and not based on logic. But it still seems to me that
| digging foundations across the entire footprint is spreading
| development resources more thinly than a standard development
| would?
|
| Can someone better-versed in the economics of large development
| projects explain to me why this isn't being pursued in a more
| risk-reducing fashion, with a smaller section being built top-to-
| bottom to demonstrate its viability?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I don't think there are major technical issues.
|
| The issue is the scale, which requires a construction effort
| probably spanning decades.
|
| So if they really do start building it they'll likely start
| from one end and build it section by section until either it's
| complete or they give up. Even 1km out of the 170 will result
| in a very large building.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > in a more risk-reducing fashion, with a smaller section being
| built top-to-bottom to demonstrate its viability?
|
| My guess would be the time. If this would be built in 3-5
| years, then with a demonstrator it would take 5 to 10 years to
| complete. Also - not enough (heh) money constraints.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The (literally) central part of the project is a railway
| running through the whole length.
|
| I'm no construction expert, but building the railway first so
| you can use it to ship material and workers seems like it could
| be good.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Not only.
|
| I have no idea on what the project details are, but -
| generally speaking and if possible - building an open-cut
| tunnel (as opposed to bored) is much cheaper (like 1/3 of the
| cost) and much faster (also because the works are not
| sequential and can thus be carried on easily in multiple
| stretches at the same time, given enough equipment and
| workers ).
| CydeWeys wrote:
| They're not remotely digging foundations across the entire
| footprint yet. This thing is (in theory at least) supposed to
| be 170 km long. The linked article says that only half of that
| length even has any construction activity on it yet.
| largepeepee wrote:
| Well the pictures prove the whole "line" bullshit is nothing more
| than marketing if there is that much boring infrastructure
| already around it from the start.
|
| Aren't we just falling for their plans for giving it that much
| media attention?
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