Perhaps. But history suggests that "soon" will still be 6+ years. Scaling up from the first few successful launches of a(n orbital) rocket, to high-frequency / high-reliability / low cost launches of that rocket, appears to be extremely difficult.
If spending the 1887 price (adjusted only for inflation) got us an identical-to-1887 bridge, which lasted through another 125 years of mostly-neglected maintenance - very few people would refer to that as a failure.
No - but that 1887 bridge did not fail under heavier modern loads. And realistically, sourcing load-bearing members as weak as the 1887-tech cast iron might cost far more than using "average quality" modern reproductions.
Temperature only seems to be an issue because of the now-seized bearings.
I expected that to be the conclusion, but it's not. They could spend £250m on the bridge, but they're not. And it appears to be the right answer since it wouldn't provide anywhere near £250m worth of utility. They'd spend £250m to make things worse -- right now it's an awesome cyclist/pedestrian bridge, and after spending £250m it'd be much worse for that.
That's the takeaway I had as well. Spending a quarter of a billion pounds to get more cars into a traffic choked downtown is a bad investment. Spending that money on improving public transit options would improve the quality of life far more.
to me, the argument that we can't just print more money and do both because of a fear of inflation falls flat. We can't have nice things because it might be nice?
Having a strong-enough military establishment to defend your chair at the top table, when critical decisions are being made, is expensive and difficult. The US decided to do that after WWII. And again after the fall of the Berlin Wall. So it enjoys the occasional benefits.
Especially after the Berlin Wall fell, European countries decided on a different optimization - a far cheaper and easier one, which is overall better 99% of the time.
To be charitable - one could interpret all the European leaders' fussing over Ukraine as reminders to their citizens of the trade-offs they decided on. With maybe an occasional trial balloon for seriously revisiting those decisions.
The problem is further upstream. Capitalism is nice in theory, but...
"The trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy." - Herbert Hoover, U.S. President, 1929-1933
And the past half-century has seen both enormous reductions in the regulations enacted in Hoover's era (when out-of-control financial markets and capitalism resulted in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression), and the growth of a class of grimly narcissistic/sociopathic techno-billionaires - who control way too many resources, and seem to share some techno-dystopian fever dream that the first one of them to grasp the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc... trophy will somehow become the God-Emperor of Earth.
And far more complicated than the article describes. The supply chain runs back to forests, and deforestation and lumber industry misbehavior are a real problems in may places. Everyone from the lead architects to the tradesmen torquing the bolts needs to really understand the new type of construction. Building codes, inspections, and maintenance for skyscrapers are all extremely complex subjects, and there are plenty of developers who'd be happy to make a quick buck by building a cut-rate tower of toothpicks.
>and there are plenty of developers who'd be happy to make a quick buck by building a cut-rate tower of toothpicks.
There is an equally evil and opposite force of engineering firms looking to make a long buck by convincing permitting authorities that this needs tons of regulation (crafted to also apply to smaller buildings than the layman would consider reasonable, of course) and product supplier who'll egg them on every step of the way.
The more you learn about construction the more it makes sense why organized crime always winds up getting involved in it.
Yeah, but the opposition goes far beyond that. Need-more-excuses-for-"no" NIMBYs, bureaucrats who don't want to learn anything new, neophobes, tree huggers, skilled tradesmen in the concrete-and-steel biz, scare-mongering journalists, ...
From there - yeah, zero volcanoes had modern scientific monitoring before ~1980. Some have a few thousand years of written records...well, at least of major eruptions. Nobody ever kept "what did the volcano do today?" diaries.
So generally - eruption records depend on field geologists doing a lot of grunt work around a volcano, trying to work out details of its geological history. And in a very poor, remote country like Ethiopia - which has also a history of border conflicts, civil wars, and other nastiness - geologists both bold and well-funded enough to do such field work may be rather scarce.
Result - an eruption record may amount to "we have no real evidence that it's done anything big since maybe somewhere around X-ish thousand years ago".
Meaning 's/the Media Report/the Australian Media Report/' ?
At least in my part of the USA, the local paper seems overjoyed to report on any sort of pedestrian / cyclist / motorist injury or death. That might be related to how cheap such coverage is on their end (minimal editing of police announcements), and how little staffing the paper still has after several waves of downsizing.
If it was up to a jury, the creepy ads might not get much sympathy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
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