They should build a large astronomical observatory on the summit of mount Everest

Nowhere on earth has less atmosphere above it. The highest observatoey elsewhere on earth is about 2 miles lower.

Did it ever occur to you that The Red Room is not the place for you to vomit forth every stupid thought that comes into your pea-brain?

IOW why did you feel the need to share that here?

Yes, then PedoBear could watch 14thDoctor molest Tibetan children just to keep this thread in the Red Room.

Why do you hate the advancement of science, RD?

He's a backwards fundamental.

Why do you hate putting things in the correct forum? And why do you think that your dopey ideas advance science?

[mouse]Look! It's another RickDeckard post![/mouse]

Why do you hate the advancement of science? Things like submarines in space and an astronomical observatory in one of the least accessible and least habitable parts of the earth do not advance science at all. So why do you advocate wasting time and resources on such idiocy?

It's pretty easily accessible if you're willing to commit the necessary resources. In this case, a spiral tunnel bored up the inside of the mountain, with train tracks laid down in it, would be the easiest way to provide safe and rapid access to the top.

A large observatory at that altitude would have a better view of the night sky than anywhere else in the world that currently has an observatory - simply because it's so high. 5 miles above MSL.

The only higher option is a space telescope... but the Hubble (for example) is actually a lot smaller than the largest ground based scopes... such that the largest, most modern ground based telescopes, using laser distortion compensation, can rival its imagery. And they are situated at much lower elevations than everest.

A large world class observatory at the everest summit makes sense. It would produce unrivalled imagery and observations, exceeding those of hubble by a significant margin.

It's easier to launch otters into orbit from Everest.

I'm pretty sure launching the Hubble Telescope into orbit was cheaper than your plan.

The more important question is, are they attack otters? And are they launched with conveyor belts?

This guy's had some dumb ideas before, but this one goes to the top.

Let me get this straight... you want to build a spiral tunnel -- unlike anything previously constructed -- in a geologically active zone -- Everest is thought to have risen 7 feet in the last 60 years -- to take people quickly to the top of a mountain -- where hundreds of people have died from ascending too fast when walking -- to an observatory -- which couldn't actually fit on or anywhere near the summit -- and you think it'll be cheaper than launching a state of the art space telescope? You have the reasoning powers of a sea cucumber.

Which is why the Hubble is obsolete and they're building the James Webb Space telescope.

The JWST will do the same, only it wouldn't cost trillions of dollars and the life of every scientist stupid enough to take your suicide train.

On the other hand, if you'd be willing to take the first ride, I'm sure someone would pony up the cash for the train.

Why not just use a conveyer belt?

A quick Googling indicates that the prices might be pretty close, surprisingly. A rough estimate for the price of a tunnel through hard rock is about $1 billion per mile., with the Hubble coming in at $1.5 billion in 1990 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, we get a final cost of $2.5 billion.

It should be noted that these calculations fail to take in some very important considerations:
1.) Building a Hubble telescope today could be done cheaper using off-the-shelf components. If you wanted to build a fancier telescope, (like the James Webb Space Telescope) your costs would be higher, by about 4 times.
2.) The Hubble was launched using the shuttle, not exactly a cheap way to get into orbit, using something like SpaceX's rockets (assuming they can hit the price targets they claim) would lower the costs to a degree.
3.) The price quoted for tunnel boring is for a horizontal tunnel, a spiraling vertical tunnel would probably cost more.
4.) The estimate also ignores the costs for things like surveys and prepping the final site for the telescope, as well as the installation of the train, etc. I imagine the construction costs for the telescope (even if it was prefabbed and merely assembled near the top of Everest) would be very high.
5.) Most of the time, there's really shitty weather on the top of Everest, so the telescope will be unusable for months at a time, while a space telescope like the Hubble doesn't give a shit about the weather. (As a side note, if you google Mt Everest weather, the listing is the current weather for Everest! Its presently 32F and sunny, which seems a bit warm for that place, IMHO.)

It could work. It only takes a week or two of acclimatization. They could have the train go up to camp 1, stay there a day, come back down to base camp, go up to camp 2, stay there two days, come back down to base camp for two days, go up to camp three, come back down to camp one for a day, go up to camp 4, come back down to base came for a day, then go to the top, where people could stay for up to 24 hours with oxygen before having to come back down at least to camp 2. I'm sure lots of scientists would enjoy that!

(Ok, I'm a nerd about Everest among other things. I've read too many books about it, while studying maps, charts, elevations, and other data. But I bet I know more about what ascending Everest entails than MF does, at least...)

You could know almost nothing about ascending Everest and safely make this claim.

I think if they built a casing for the telescope out of the hull of a submarine it would shield it from the wind. Then they could train otters to go out and de-ice the lens.

And the baffles.

Brilliant.

I just learned something from this latest MFpisdoe!:

Conveyor belts AREN'T enough to launch attack otters of the ass-powered submarines into space. They need to be pulled by suicide trains through Everest to make orbit!

How silly of us not to realize this to begin with!!!

So we can keep an eye on the Commies, right!?

He said more than Midnight Funeral, which makes a very important difference. Then again, I could write "Duh, Everust is made of creem cheeze!" in crayon, and I'd still know more than Midnight Funeral.

You're forgetting one really important fact: These are attack otters. Attack otters of the ass, no less!

Instead of de-icing the lens, they would bore right into the asshole of the scientists and attack. The scientists would die from otters in the ass before they died from lack of oxygen.

Scorp we need canuckistani otter fighting league for tv.

not sure what your smoking my friend but send some this way

The tunnel idea is sound. They did a similar thing inside the Eiger, albeit on a smaller scale. And it might be noted, the alps are also being pushed up in a similar manner to the himalayas, but that doesn't stop them being riddled with tunnels. AFAIK the entire Tibetan plateau is rising as a whole - individual mountains are not plastically deforming internally. Or at least, not much. Not that would make tunnel operations dangerous.

All the other problems relate to pressure. That's a simple matter of pressurised chambers... pressurised trains, pressurised top station, pressurised elevators leading to the observatory... I guess the telescope chamber itself could not be pressurised when the scope was in use, but that's not an issue with the largest modern scopes anyway, since the scientists mostly stay in equipment cabins adjascent to the telescope... they aren't staring into a lens like the astronomers of old. This is the case with Keck and all others of similar caliber and elevation.

Even the pressure issue is overblown... people at the everest summit level experience slow hypoxia... they gradually become confused and irrational, then start hallucinating, then become unconscious, and eventually die if not given oxygen or repressurised. But it takes quite a while... climbers have actually reached the summit and taken off their oxygen masks and arsed about for some minutes without their oxygen supply, before putting them back on. It's not some vacuum, instant-death scenario... it's more that the pressure is low enough that it just isn't enough to replenish oxygen fast enough. It replenishes it, but just lower than the body uses... so the level declines slowly. So, when you're working with large pressurised chambers, there's a much greater margin for error there.

Those doing initial construction would probably need to be wearing pressure suits, or at least breathing pure oxygen, and work short shifts... but after that, everything's pressurised.

If we ever go back to the moon, or to mars, we're going to have to get used to working and building in pressure suits anyway.