Posted on 01/11/2022 12:49:12 PM PST by Red Badger
A combination of heat and high pressure allow this semi-autonomous boring robot to tunnel through undrillable rock - credit: Petra
San Francisco startup Petra says its new contactless thermal drilling robot can make steady progress through the hardest rock on Earth – stuff that would normally destroy drilling equipment – so quickly and cheaply that it could make a lot of underground infrastructure projects economically feasible.
The semi-autonomous "Swifty" robotic system can create 18-60 inch (46-152 cm) diameter tunnels through any geology, blasting the rock with an extremely hot, high-pressure spallation head such that it glows, chars and flings away.
Petra, founded by serial entrepreneur Kim Abrams, says it's demonstrated the robot's capabilities by boring a 24-inch tunnel through 20 feet of Sioux Quartzite – which Abrams describes in a CNBC interview as "the hardest rock on earth ... harder than bluestone granite ... the type of rock that would normally have to be dynamited." Swifty progressed at a rate of an inch a minute.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Mark I Volcano Creator. Just aim down and start her up!
The Core wasn’t a horrible movie.
This would be a great optional item for a car if mounted forward facing.
You could get through traffic jams much easier.
Can’t wait to see the DPRK start using it for executions.
Lol
Worked on a system for a prof. from Vermont in the late 60’s.
1/2 in pipe w/diesel and a concentric 1 1/2 pipe and a few
hundred hp compressor.
From the headline, I thought this was going to be about that ancient site in Jordan.
The extension cord length and diameter of the wires would have to be YUGE.
Just strap a nuclear reactor to it’s back.
Sioux Quartzite is extremely hard (7.5 on the Mohs hardness scale)
“Alien technology”? Really?
Do you think that if the aliens were here they would let the puny humans continue to think they ran the joint? That they would give a rat’s ass about how we run our affairs?
We would either be fodder or slaves.
Then again, with what governments are trying to pull right now, perhaps you’re not so far off...
THANKS!..........................
It was a comedy.
I laughed at it all the way..................
Until you hit their gas tank...................
We would either be fodder or slaves.
“We’ll Make Great Pets”
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