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Super interesting. It's kind of hard to believe how our species has managed to explore furthest of planets, stars and galaxies while just drilling 7.62 miles t
by abhiminator 8y ago
Super interesting.
It's kind of hard to believe how our species has managed to explore furthest of planets, stars and galaxies while just drilling 7.62 miles through the crust of the very planet we exist on and "dominate" [0] -- a testament to how challenging crust drilling can be, right on par with exploring deepest parts of Earth's oceans.
[0] https://www.fs.blog/2016/01/yuval-noah-hararri-on-why-we-dominate-the-earth-myth-making/ https://www.fs.blog/2016/01/yuval-noah-hararri-on-why-we-dom...
- avian 8y agoI don’t find it surprising at all that we found traveling through a vacuum easier than traveling through solid granite. Imagine how much mass that drillbit had to go through and now translate that into the density of interstellar medium. You could probably travel half way across the galaxy before your space ship went through as much matter as that drill.
- mark212 8y ago> a testament to how challenging crust drilling can be, > right on par with exploring deepest parts of Earth's oceans. except if you read the footnotes it says that Exxon beat the world's record for length of borehole in 60 days. Sounds like drilling in the crust is NBD, been doing it for years, the innovation is all in how to make it turn and twist and do so on time and under budget. My sense is that it's just not economically rational to drill a hole straight down for no other reason than you want to see how far it can go. Why bother? But it doesn't seem at all to be a technical problem.