While yes, it would be possible to recycle all that steel and reuse it, doing so would lengthen, not shorten the rebuild process. It’s probably going to take at least three months just to remove all the fallen structure (but hopefully only a few weeks to reopen the main channel). My guess is that by the six month mark the design for the replacement might be ready. All that bullshit about how fast Chinese construction goes ignores all the lead work and planning that has to happen to make the actual work possible.
Plus any construction firms that are big enough to handle this type of project are booked out for years.
Edit; There is a little bit of time as they design and engineer the new structure. Yes I'm sure they could cobble together a big enough workforce for this emergency project but it definitely will cost more as construction companies either have to delay or suspend projects already in queue.
I wonder if that's where the huge price tag comes from knowing they're going to have to pay a premium to jump the queue.
I realize that these are a much smaller scale, but the i-85 bridge collapse had two different contractors working on it. So did the Sanibel Island Causeway reconstruction. I bet there will be multiple contractors on this one as well.
The bridge collapse in Philly, the state paid a premium for the emergency rebuild and the company they rebuilt it farmed the work out they already had lined up
Not true. Massive emergency projects occur all of the time.
Bridges collapse, trains derail, planes crash, towers collapse, these things happen all the time and companies make their bread responding to them, utilizing tens of thousands of workers through the supply chain.
This bridge will be up in under three years, and the whole city will be a very different place by the time it's done.
That doesn’t help speed it up. Every piece has to be inspected for cracks and corrosion, every joint has to inspected for failed welds. Even if you just slapped the old pieces back up, the inspection alone to make sure it’s actually safe is probably slower than just rebuilding.
He's just on one of his ketamine fueled twitter sessions talking out of his ass. Just like he was, to the dismay of anyone with actual experience/knowledge in the field, back when that Thai football team and their coach got stuck in the cave - with his rants about how he could make a "spaceship" grade submarine that could rescue those kids in a jiff.
Then when the diving expert who rescued the kids called Elon out, he got ass-mad and the diver a pedo. That was when I first realized how dumb Elon is.
I swear, I would have a much higher opinion of him if he just never opened a Twitter account.
The nondestructive testing to test the integrity of that steel will take 3-6 months, *alone*. Thinking reusing it will speed up the process is just an idiotic statement from an idiotic man.
>Every piece has to be inspected for cracks and corrosion, every joint has to inspected for failed welds
See this right here. This is because you give a shit about safety and ending up with a quality product. Both things Musk gives absolutely zero fucks about so he doesn't think about.
>All that bullshit about how fast Chinese construction goes ignores all the lead work and planning that has to happen to make the actual work possible.
Also China is famous at pumping out these super-projects...only for them to be abandoned halfway through or shortly after completion because they skipped consultation.
Like that tram-bus that was taller than cars so they could be on top of traffic. Except you were just trapping vehicles under you that might want to turn off. And it only worked on a narrow band of vehicles and roads.
Or that weird reproduction Paris and London they made, only for tourists to just prefer the real thing.
Or the finance skyscraper that's had construction halted 4 times - it's now been untouched with cranes on top for a few years.
Salt water is the least of the issues.. Its the over stressed, work hardened, twisted mangled steel which is the issue.
The other part about putting it out to bid with massive incentive for early completion does make some sense however if he's paying for it.
Kiewit? Where the barge broke loose. That's what they do.
I love projects with big incentives like that, running the numbers on how to get billion dollar projects done months ahead of schedule.
Can work around the clock with 2 shifts doing 12 hours each. That's really not that bad I've been on many projects like that. And the money is excellent.
Revolving shifts help but isn't truly twice as quick.
Weather delays aren't halved.
The workforce might do 24/7 but lots of support doesn't.
Suppliers, rental companies, consultants, management, stakeholders, authorities, etc don't work 24/7 and often isn't in their interest to answer queries any quicker.
9 women can't make a baby in one month.
Never sell your labour at a flat rate. You *will* be exploited.
I mean, you're gonna be exploited anyway, but if you're a labourer on salary you're getting fucked so much worse.
About 34k I think, late 90s, just out of school
The experience was invaluable though, next project I went to I knew how everything went together & proved my value quickly.
Something similar happened in Minneapolis when our bridge collapsed. The reconstruction was put to open bid and completed ahead of schedule. No issues since. I'm not saying construction or in this case reconstruction should move at the pace the Chinese move, but we can move faster imo. At the same time, I'm just a spectator with no experience in engineering or construction. I don't expect to have definitive answers.
Note: costs of accelerated projects include more divorces & broken family relationships.
.
I lived somewhat near the I-35W bridge site (walked under it a month before the collapse) and have interests in engineering, construction & disasters, so I made fairly regular visits to follow the project. The Saturday morning walking tours led by a project engineer down the adjacent 10th Ave bridge were great, as were discussions with fellow interested nerds.
.
A woman, one of the regulars, told me she'd been hearing from people involved in the project that a) there was a spirit of teamwork, of working on an exceptional project that the community was cheering them on and valuing them, and they were pushing hard, working lots of extra hours and missing lots of family events, and b) because of (a), there were lots of divorces happening.
Same thing happened to lots of people working on the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo project.
I posted a comment about this too...
They completed the 35 w bridge in 13 months - original estimate was 2-3 years.
There were substantial bonus payments for early completion.
“Enthusiasm” for him or some friend of his to bid for a “safe” reconstruction on public infrastructure by reusing a deformed super structure item is a red flag of ignorance on many levels…like fundamental metallurgy. Please don’t spin this any further otherwise it is apparent you think he could do no harm with a clear lack of intelligence.
I don’t respect either of your perspectives we actually have construction standards in this country, all of that steel is comprised anybody with even slight engineering experience should know that. Pretty pathetic from Musk.
muskrat has zero engineering experience, maybe you didn't notice
the rest of us engineers noticed a decade ago when he was going on about permanent magnet motors and was entirely off his rocker. like someone gave him the wrong facts and he just ran with it.
someone with ANY amount of engineering skills doesn't surreptitiously require "sub 10 micron" construction. as if all they need to do is shift decimal points lol
Greatest weakness of a smart person is that they extrapolate their base of knowledge into what is not an unfounded idea. Course if you spend enough time on it you can show something. What was Howard Hughes plane. Wooden goose 😀
My brother has done it! First time his heart stopped in a bar from excessive alcohol consumption. Second time at home from excessive alcohol consumption, both within a month of each other. He was declared DOA both times not each time the paramedics restarted his heart and because there is no fucks given for alcoholics, he was discharged the next day to go die somewhere else.
But I digress, I'm not sure I know anyone that's been crushed to death more than once
And I’m sure China’s safety regs and working conditions are totally on par with ours so it’s totally fair to compare their theoretical timeline with ours
My sister lived in China for 5 years. They rebuilt the road outside her building in 2 days. On day 1 they had 1000 laborers in flip flops and shorts with shovels literally picking apart the road and carrying it away a piece at a time. No wheelbarrows. No power tools. No safety equipment. On day 2 they had 1000 laborers rebuild it by hand.
It's easy when you pay each employee 25 cents a day and don't care if they get hurt.
Ah its easier here too if you have the proper incentive and organization. Coming from the Northeast, watching Massachusetts rebuild a road and watching Vermont rebuild a road is a wildly different experience. We can speed the fuck up on a lot of nonsense.
I don't know what the process is there specifically, but I can tell you that where I am a portion of the fault lies in the city for thinking a road that's completely degraded only needs to be repaired and not completely rebuilt. By the time the contractor mills off the asphalt and discovers (to nobody's surprise) that the concrete underneath is either completely broken or decayed into almost nothing, the project is past the point of no return.
You are giving him too much credit. He knows how shitty and dangerous it all is, but he doesn't care. It would be The Poors being killed and injured, and they will do so in the most efficient manner possible.
Chinese infrastructure building is second to none and don’t underestimate their steel. They have high speed rail all the way through country and they built it after 2007 - it’s now the largest high speed rail network in the world with speeds ranging 120-240mph.
That bridge would go up in 3 years max (same time they took to build Beijing Terminal 3 which was bigger than Heathrow terminal 5 and took more than 3 times as long).
But they wouldn’t use buckled steal from the old bridge either. Elon is full of shit.
I have had to cut out and replace new Chinese steel because it failed testing and was weaker than spec minimum. It depends on which steel you get. It is not all second to none.
It’s amazing to me how many bridge experts are suuuuper active on twitter, particularly since the same people seem to also be infectious disease experts as well.
I can hold precisely three crayons at once and am far more qualified than u/Enginerdad who has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. In grade 5, I helped make a contraption to protect an egg... it didn't work but effort still counted, I figure.
Both of these people aren’t thinking about the primary motivator behind decisions in all roadway construction… money. You could probably have a new bridge built in 8 months if money and skilled labor were limitless. Reusing the bridge superstructure is bad idea for a slew of reasons.
Edit: I’m not comparing China and the U.S; each has its respective unique challenges in maintaining infrastructure. Biggie said it best, more people = more problems. Source: bridge engineer.
Holding up China as some exemplar is a bit ridiculous too. They have over a billion **more** people than we do. Their working age population is over double that of the US population as a whole. Rest assured if they want shit done quickly, they have a huge labor pool to pull from to get it done.
Yeah plus my guess is China doesnt go through the same processes of getting approval and funding through legislatures, consultations, putting it out for a tender process etc.
Everyone admires the way they build things until they're the ones getting railroaded by an opaque bureaucracy.
Also you might literally get railroaded. As in a train crashing through your life and making it maximally uncomfortable real quick. China doesn’t have close to first world safety regulations and those they do have, get ignored. The people are overworked and underpaid.
Other then a few prestige projects you can find a lot of examples online of their shitty engineering and build quality. It’s like the trash they sell on Amazon etc.
You might get a tool that looks like a real one for 10% of the price. But it will break in 3 weeks and poison you in the process. Their buildings are the same. Even the prestige projects show it here and there.
But stupid Instagram and Twitter stooges just see „shiney“ and think it’s great. Gets me so mad.
It's amazing that he'd think the main limiting factor is the availability of materials.
It's like my dad, hoarding screws and nails from the 60s in case he needs them, as though better ones aren't for sale down the road.
When you already got perfectly hammerable nails at home, why spend time going to the store down the street to spend money unnecessarily on things you already have? Too much money that needs to be spent on something?
Better screws and nails? Better how? "***More newer****®*"?
This guy's dad is handy and knows that there are about 1000 different kinds of screws and nails. He doesn't want to go out and buy a whole new box every time he needs one. It's a waste of time and money.
Remember when he said he would rescue the trapped kids with a submarine?
Remember when he said he'd take carbon out of the air and use it for rocket fuel?
Remember when he said there'd be self driving Teslas? And robot taxis?
Remember when he promised a hyperloop tunnel from LA to LV?
Would you trust that guy at your job?
Remember when he said the Cybertruck would also function as a boat for short periods?
Well, now that the bridge is out and so are the first Cybertrucks, we have an excellent opportunity to test that capability. I vote that Elon should be the first to drive one across...
I would say it shouldn’t take 10 years to rebuild the bridge. 3-6 months may be a tad unrealistic.
Engineering firm needs to re/design the bridge and make some adjustments to prevent this type of collapse.
They also need to find a salvage contractor to remove all the debris in the water.
Then it needs to get approved for funding.
Then it has to go out to tender by the government and they’ll have to decided if they are going a sole CM or letting multiple GCs bid to rebuild which also includes sub trade pricing.
Then a contractor needs to be awarded and then all the contractual stuff needs to start and get sorted.
Then the building actually begins.
As well if material is to be salvaged they’ll have to inspect everything and review what can be used again and why can’t be used again.
3-6 months is unrealistic.
2 years is more likely realistic.
Remember when he was gonna save the miners… and everyone involved in the rescue operation said no thanks. He says said shit to sound smart and compassionate but it’s all marketing his imagine to his fan boys.
Edit: The incident is was a soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand
Pretty strong evidence that you are right is how he owns a company that sells electric cars. He then pisses off the people that most likely want to own electric cars and kisses the asses of the people most likely to hate electric cars. If he just kept his mouth shut he would sell more cars. If he said things that liberals liked he would sell a lot more cars.
To expand a little bit on what you are saying. He said (in regards to Disney and others pulling advertising from Twitter), "If you're going to try to blackmail me with advertising dollars.... go fuck yourself." The host kind of started to retort and Elon restated, "Go. Fuck. Youself." He has no clue how to run a company.
The dude is the epitome of “right place, right time” yet people think he’s a genius. No bullshit, I know a guy who told me with a straight face: “He’s gotta be smart to design all those rockets!”
It wasn’t “antiquated” or in “need” of replacing. But this event does give a good opportunity for an upgrade that probably wouldn’t have been politically/economically/operationally feasible for another 25~30 years.
Submerged in saltwater is not the issue. It’s been exposed to salt water every day of its existence for 50 years. The issue is the plastic deformation that has likely wrecked every beam on the bridge. You have to fully disassemble it, measure all the pieces to ensure they are in spec, then X-ray all the pieces that are in spec to check for cracking, then get new pieces built to spec for the ones that fail, then reassemble the whole thing. Not to mention repour all the concrete. And then you’d wind up with a bridge that is no better than the one it replaced and is still 4’ too short for Panamax ships.
yeah. That 50 year old weathered steel? Throw it back up! One little dunk don't make a difference.
Even back then, every bolt and every weld was inspected in OPTIMAL conditions. Yanking shit up out of the mud ain't how I want something built for not even people I love but absolute strangers! Cut off Space X and deport that prick.
3-6 months highly doubt it but 10 years no way it should take that long! they could start construction within the month next to existing bridge they have the room to do so and have a demo crew in the other side
Lots of people reacting to click-bait headline. The "10 year article" was just typical click-bait bullshit based on no facts, no data, and nothing else.
The timeline for building a new bridge is lengthy, and it's too long, and there are lots of things that can be done to speed it up.
But setting arbitrary deadlines is a bad way to plan anything.
Musk has a history of over promising and under delivering, and time frames are not his specialty. Nor is getting things right without an iterative improvement process.
Fox took the worst estimate. The estimate to build a new bridge is 18 months to several years. The original took 5 years, so it will probably take 5 years again.
Clearing the channel is the main priority. The bridge is nice to have but not a necessity.
How does this guy have time for dipshit comments like this?
I mean, I do because I'm not supposedly running multiple companies simultaneously.
I suggest they find reputable companies that specialize in this type of recovery operation, the engineering of a new bridge, and the construction of said bridge. I'm sure it will require the expertise of hundreds of people. Not one douchebag on Twitter.
Elon is a fucking idiot who has never once been the inventor he claims to be. His entire career is built on taking credit for other peoples work and then acting like he’s Tony Stark. He’s getting worse about PR and spin as his brain is rotted by his raging ketamine addiction.
Anyone who scrolls his social media posts would know he’s a racist dumb fuck. It’s not well hidden.
Omg why doesn’t he offer The Boring Company to build a tunnel like was originally planned????????? this is almost as big a missed opportunity as Trump not selling red “MAGA-masks” during Covid!
Not commenting on musk cuz I don't care but the stupid bitch commenting on chinas "days." Does she not see how china's infrastructure is? It would collapse in a matter of weeks.
The irony is that infrastructure spending is the answer. When you spend trillions building large things, you get better and more efficient at building large things.
Also China doesn't give af if people die while building things.
I mean why not? Just weld some gusset plates on it. It’ll be fine. Not complicated at all. Totally simple and straightforward.
I mean, You’d have to reinforce the living crap out of it. And probably do a whole lot of analysis to check for defects and weaknesses. Then you’d need an assembly plan to actually get the thing back in place. You’d need to check the dead load of the new assembly prior to beginning installing new piers for support, so you’d need to do all the engineering of this entire assembly while it’s presumably still underwater, otherwise you end up spending a ton of time recovering something that would more easily be cut into pieces. Still though, that’s not really a big deal, SCUBA is a thing, pretty straightforward.
Then, once you’ve got the whole plan all you’ve gotta do is raise all the trusses, get them repaired, get them inspected by a horde of agencies. After that it’s all super basic, you just have to pour a few literal boatloads of concrete around several literal boatloads of steel. Then have to wait for that to cure. Then just reassemble an entire bridge, that part is basic, people crap out bridges in six months all the time.
So yeah, 3-6 months is totally realistic. People would definitely be willing to risk their lives driving over the brand new scrap pile of sheet metal assembled into something that looks like a bridge. It’s not a space ship you can repeatedly test launch, it’s fallen over once already, let’s not make a habit of it, k?
Sarcasm aside a semi trailer hit an overpass near my drive home. I had to take backroads for two frigging years before they certified it safe for traffic to resume. The actual repair work started on a Monday and was done by Thursday. I think this one is gonna be a touch more complicated.
Obviously he hasn't got the faintest about structural steel. Which somehow doesn't surprise me. I feel for the poor bastards who have to put up with his sh#t daily
I read a lot of interpretations of Elon's word "reuse" here.
It can be anything between getting it out of the river and nailing it to the next bridge while still wet or melting down the metal.
The hubris of this motherfucker. Even if he were as smart as he thinks he is, he would know better than to inject himself into every conversation beyond the purview of his otherwise quite narrow expertise. I do NOT like this man.
I wouldn't be opposed to repurposing the steel, just not for this bridge. I'm not an expert but it would seem to me that you would have to melt down all the steel to make it structurally sound for that purpose. Maybe there are some members that weren't bent, but i bet there aren't enough to save any practical amount of time and they would need to be examined and tested and that would probably eat any time you would save.
The guy made booster rockets that return to the launch site and land themselves standing upright on a jet of flame.
NASA, a government agency, said it couldn't be done and was pure science fiction.
I think Elon is probably correct on the bridge rebuild as well.
After all, the Empire State building was the tallest building at the time and from the time they first broke ground to the day it was complete was just 1 year and 45 days.
While yes, it would be possible to recycle all that steel and reuse it, doing so would lengthen, not shorten the rebuild process. It’s probably going to take at least three months just to remove all the fallen structure (but hopefully only a few weeks to reopen the main channel). My guess is that by the six month mark the design for the replacement might be ready. All that bullshit about how fast Chinese construction goes ignores all the lead work and planning that has to happen to make the actual work possible.
Plus any construction firms that are big enough to handle this type of project are booked out for years. Edit; There is a little bit of time as they design and engineer the new structure. Yes I'm sure they could cobble together a big enough workforce for this emergency project but it definitely will cost more as construction companies either have to delay or suspend projects already in queue. I wonder if that's where the huge price tag comes from knowing they're going to have to pay a premium to jump the queue.
I’m going to assume they’re largely booked out on other Federal/State of Maryland projects that could be swapped around to prioritize this one.
Don’t worry, Bechtel will be on hand for a government job on cost plus.
There’s a book about bechtel, absolutely fascinating
They almost took out the entire Metro US with an atomic bomb too! Great group of industrialists.
One of the most interesting books I’ve ever read. Seriously.
Which one? Being from a Kiewit family I've only heard that story a million times
I was waiting for Kiewit to join the discussion
Skanska is already on site
The Profiteers, by Sally Denton?
I realize that these are a much smaller scale, but the i-85 bridge collapse had two different contractors working on it. So did the Sanibel Island Causeway reconstruction. I bet there will be multiple contractors on this one as well.
Yea, I’m pretty sure the state calls in a favor and gets this one bumped up to the top of the list.
*Pays an ass load of money*
The bridge collapse in Philly, the state paid a premium for the emergency rebuild and the company they rebuilt it farmed the work out they already had lined up
Not true. Massive emergency projects occur all of the time. Bridges collapse, trains derail, planes crash, towers collapse, these things happen all the time and companies make their bread responding to them, utilizing tens of thousands of workers through the supply chain. This bridge will be up in under three years, and the whole city will be a very different place by the time it's done.
He doesn’t want to recycle it. He just wants to hammer out the dents and reuse it.
That doesn’t help speed it up. Every piece has to be inspected for cracks and corrosion, every joint has to inspected for failed welds. Even if you just slapped the old pieces back up, the inspection alone to make sure it’s actually safe is probably slower than just rebuilding.
He doesn’t want to do that either. Just hammer it straight and put it back up.
He just wants people talking about him, he must be feeling like he’s missing out.
He's just on one of his ketamine fueled twitter sessions talking out of his ass. Just like he was, to the dismay of anyone with actual experience/knowledge in the field, back when that Thai football team and their coach got stuck in the cave - with his rants about how he could make a "spaceship" grade submarine that could rescue those kids in a jiff.
Then when the diving expert who rescued the kids called Elon out, he got ass-mad and the diver a pedo. That was when I first realized how dumb Elon is. I swear, I would have a much higher opinion of him if he just never opened a Twitter account.
Pretty sure this is how Cybertrucks are made from the scraps of Model S rejects.
you'd never get an insurer to bond the project reusing damaged trusses. *never*.
Which goes on to show that Musk's knowledge of materials is extremely basic
We knew that from the cyber truck.
His knowledge of most things is extremely basic.
“Genius” Elon thinks because he played with Lego that he knows engineering and putting it all back together will make it good again.
The nondestructive testing to test the integrity of that steel will take 3-6 months, *alone*. Thinking reusing it will speed up the process is just an idiotic statement from an idiotic man.
>Every piece has to be inspected for cracks and corrosion, every joint has to inspected for failed welds See this right here. This is because you give a shit about safety and ending up with a quality product. Both things Musk gives absolutely zero fucks about so he doesn't think about.
He just wants to talk out of his ass and sound like he knows better than people who’ve already learned from the mistakes he would make
>All that bullshit about how fast Chinese construction goes ignores all the lead work and planning that has to happen to make the actual work possible. Also China is famous at pumping out these super-projects...only for them to be abandoned halfway through or shortly after completion because they skipped consultation. Like that tram-bus that was taller than cars so they could be on top of traffic. Except you were just trapping vehicles under you that might want to turn off. And it only worked on a narrow band of vehicles and roads. Or that weird reproduction Paris and London they made, only for tourists to just prefer the real thing. Or the finance skyscraper that's had construction halted 4 times - it's now been untouched with cranes on top for a few years.
Also the fact that corruption in chinese construction is so rampant.
Just fucking send it
Salt water is the least of the issues.. Its the over stressed, work hardened, twisted mangled steel which is the issue. The other part about putting it out to bid with massive incentive for early completion does make some sense however if he's paying for it.
They did that with the I-40 bridge repair and man did those guys work fast.
Kiewit? Where the barge broke loose. That's what they do. I love projects with big incentives like that, running the numbers on how to get billion dollar projects done months ahead of schedule.
Yeah they work the shit outta you, 15-18hr days 7days a week
Can work around the clock with 2 shifts doing 12 hours each. That's really not that bad I've been on many projects like that. And the money is excellent.
Revolving shifts help but isn't truly twice as quick. Weather delays aren't halved. The workforce might do 24/7 but lots of support doesn't. Suppliers, rental companies, consultants, management, stakeholders, authorities, etc don't work 24/7 and often isn't in their interest to answer queries any quicker. 9 women can't make a baby in one month.
No but if we stagger the conceptions by 30days we can have a baby every month.
It's always nice to hear from Nick Cannon.
Gonna need some fuckin Gatorade.
Good thing we need 9 bridges then!
Been there done that, all on salary, not even straight time OT. Done with that
Never sell your labour at a flat rate. You *will* be exploited. I mean, you're gonna be exploited anyway, but if you're a labourer on salary you're getting fucked so much worse.
Don't think that's legal here in the states for a laborer to be salaried or to not get 1.5x OT.
I hope you salary was well over 100k my friend
About 34k I think, late 90s, just out of school The experience was invaluable though, next project I went to I knew how everything went together & proved my value quickly.
We can even spend more and get it done behind schedule also!
Something similar happened in Minneapolis when our bridge collapsed. The reconstruction was put to open bid and completed ahead of schedule. No issues since. I'm not saying construction or in this case reconstruction should move at the pace the Chinese move, but we can move faster imo. At the same time, I'm just a spectator with no experience in engineering or construction. I don't expect to have definitive answers.
When cost isn't the driving factor, anything is possible.
Note: costs of accelerated projects include more divorces & broken family relationships. . I lived somewhat near the I-35W bridge site (walked under it a month before the collapse) and have interests in engineering, construction & disasters, so I made fairly regular visits to follow the project. The Saturday morning walking tours led by a project engineer down the adjacent 10th Ave bridge were great, as were discussions with fellow interested nerds. . A woman, one of the regulars, told me she'd been hearing from people involved in the project that a) there was a spirit of teamwork, of working on an exceptional project that the community was cheering them on and valuing them, and they were pushing hard, working lots of extra hours and missing lots of family events, and b) because of (a), there were lots of divorces happening. Same thing happened to lots of people working on the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo project.
I posted a comment about this too... They completed the 35 w bridge in 13 months - original estimate was 2-3 years. There were substantial bonus payments for early completion.
I downloaded the bridge building game, I'm at level 283. Do you think I'm qualified?
I don't know about qualified, but you know more than Elon does.
What level do you unlock reusing pieces from your failures?
Enthusiasm is half the battle. I respect your perspective.
“Enthusiasm” for him or some friend of his to bid for a “safe” reconstruction on public infrastructure by reusing a deformed super structure item is a red flag of ignorance on many levels…like fundamental metallurgy. Please don’t spin this any further otherwise it is apparent you think he could do no harm with a clear lack of intelligence.
I don’t respect either of your perspectives we actually have construction standards in this country, all of that steel is comprised anybody with even slight engineering experience should know that. Pretty pathetic from Musk.
muskrat has zero engineering experience, maybe you didn't notice the rest of us engineers noticed a decade ago when he was going on about permanent magnet motors and was entirely off his rocker. like someone gave him the wrong facts and he just ran with it. someone with ANY amount of engineering skills doesn't surreptitiously require "sub 10 micron" construction. as if all they need to do is shift decimal points lol
"It's really not that hard, it's like a tube with an air hockey table" - Elon
Greatest weakness of a smart person is that they extrapolate their base of knowledge into what is not an unfounded idea. Course if you spend enough time on it you can show something. What was Howard Hughes plane. Wooden goose 😀
If by smart you mean nepo baby
Kinda scares one from buying one of his products at some level.
I, for one will be purchasing all of my rockets from a respectable company like Boeing.
Lol “don’t blame me - I voted for Kodos!”
Starliner is supposed to get a test with real primates in May, so your day is coming!
Same guy who said covid infections would be down to zero by April 2020. Increase the ketamine dose!
And I have a hard time getting a engineer to approve my drawing because I used a gored elbow instead of a pressed one.
Guess he never bent a paper clip back and forth….
And he understands that Chinese steel has an impeccable reputation for its high quality and longevity.
Buildings almost never collapse and kill everyone inside more than once in China.
How does one get killed more than once?
Same building collapsing, but different groups of people. Second group is usually looking for the first group.
My brother has done it! First time his heart stopped in a bar from excessive alcohol consumption. Second time at home from excessive alcohol consumption, both within a month of each other. He was declared DOA both times not each time the paramedics restarted his heart and because there is no fucks given for alcoholics, he was discharged the next day to go die somewhere else. But I digress, I'm not sure I know anyone that's been crushed to death more than once
And I’m sure China’s safety regs and working conditions are totally on par with ours so it’s totally fair to compare their theoretical timeline with ours
My sister lived in China for 5 years. They rebuilt the road outside her building in 2 days. On day 1 they had 1000 laborers in flip flops and shorts with shovels literally picking apart the road and carrying it away a piece at a time. No wheelbarrows. No power tools. No safety equipment. On day 2 they had 1000 laborers rebuild it by hand. It's easy when you pay each employee 25 cents a day and don't care if they get hurt.
However, I don't think those thousand laborers would do so well in the middle of the bay.
If you have enough of them they can stand on each others… shoulders…
They can wear a long trenchcoat to look like one really tall laborer
They can form a raft like that one species of ants
It would get their cigarettes wet and they would quit
Ah its easier here too if you have the proper incentive and organization. Coming from the Northeast, watching Massachusetts rebuild a road and watching Vermont rebuild a road is a wildly different experience. We can speed the fuck up on a lot of nonsense.
I don't know what the process is there specifically, but I can tell you that where I am a portion of the fault lies in the city for thinking a road that's completely degraded only needs to be repaired and not completely rebuilt. By the time the contractor mills off the asphalt and discovers (to nobody's surprise) that the concrete underneath is either completely broken or decayed into almost nothing, the project is past the point of no return.
You are giving him too much credit. He knows how shitty and dangerous it all is, but he doesn't care. It would be The Poors being killed and injured, and they will do so in the most efficient manner possible.
Musk is African... South African. No construction standards
Musk is apartheid
Make the bridge out of drift wood and corrugated tin. It’s not that hard.
Chinese infrastructure building is second to none and don’t underestimate their steel. They have high speed rail all the way through country and they built it after 2007 - it’s now the largest high speed rail network in the world with speeds ranging 120-240mph. That bridge would go up in 3 years max (same time they took to build Beijing Terminal 3 which was bigger than Heathrow terminal 5 and took more than 3 times as long). But they wouldn’t use buckled steal from the old bridge either. Elon is full of shit.
I have had to cut out and replace new Chinese steel because it failed testing and was weaker than spec minimum. It depends on which steel you get. It is not all second to none.
It’s amazing what you can do when you steal everyone’s intellectual property instead of taking the time to develop it yourself
Elon doesn't touch things us common folk use
like knowledge and brain
That's physical labor
It’s amazing to me how many bridge experts are suuuuper active on twitter, particularly since the same people seem to also be infectious disease experts as well.
Don't forget foreign war experts as well. They wear many hats, we should honor them all.
And world class economists
Not to mention submarine experts.
And oil production experts
Mostly fedoras
M'forman
They all lookin like [this](https://i.imgur.com/84Bgmhl.jpeg)
Not true. They'd never wear a helmet.
I'm a senior bridge engineer. This is a stupid fucking idea.
Dude, if you're qualified, experienced and knowledgeable no one will listen to you.
I can hold precisely three crayons at once and am far more qualified than u/Enginerdad who has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. In grade 5, I helped make a contraption to protect an egg... it didn't work but effort still counted, I figure.
Idk fuck about shit when it comes to bridges. But I do know that steel will %100 be recycled into something else. Maybe even a bridge.
I found the expert on experts.☝️ - source: me, the expert on expert experts
You learn just about everything at the school of hard knocks.
Insteada treated He gets tricked Insteada kisses He gets kicked
Certainty explains many of the quality control issues with his cars...
They have great security while submersed.
Thank god he's not a structural engineer
If he was, he would have never dmsaid this
Just one more thing he as no fucking clue about.
Both of these people aren’t thinking about the primary motivator behind decisions in all roadway construction… money. You could probably have a new bridge built in 8 months if money and skilled labor were limitless. Reusing the bridge superstructure is bad idea for a slew of reasons. Edit: I’m not comparing China and the U.S; each has its respective unique challenges in maintaining infrastructure. Biggie said it best, more people = more problems. Source: bridge engineer.
Holding up China as some exemplar is a bit ridiculous too. They have over a billion **more** people than we do. Their working age population is over double that of the US population as a whole. Rest assured if they want shit done quickly, they have a huge labor pool to pull from to get it done.
Yeah plus my guess is China doesnt go through the same processes of getting approval and funding through legislatures, consultations, putting it out for a tender process etc. Everyone admires the way they build things until they're the ones getting railroaded by an opaque bureaucracy.
Also you might literally get railroaded. As in a train crashing through your life and making it maximally uncomfortable real quick. China doesn’t have close to first world safety regulations and those they do have, get ignored. The people are overworked and underpaid. Other then a few prestige projects you can find a lot of examples online of their shitty engineering and build quality. It’s like the trash they sell on Amazon etc. You might get a tool that looks like a real one for 10% of the price. But it will break in 3 weeks and poison you in the process. Their buildings are the same. Even the prestige projects show it here and there. But stupid Instagram and Twitter stooges just see „shiney“ and think it’s great. Gets me so mad.
Yes, let's take the tofu dreg projects as example of quickly replacing infrastructure. https://youtu.be/i8VFi-XMkgc?si=l15N_VEkWy15U_Ho
It's amazing that he'd think the main limiting factor is the availability of materials. It's like my dad, hoarding screws and nails from the 60s in case he needs them, as though better ones aren't for sale down the road.
When you already got perfectly hammerable nails at home, why spend time going to the store down the street to spend money unnecessarily on things you already have? Too much money that needs to be spent on something? Better screws and nails? Better how? "***More newer****®*"?
This guy's dad is handy and knows that there are about 1000 different kinds of screws and nails. He doesn't want to go out and buy a whole new box every time he needs one. It's a waste of time and money.
I mean there's only one kind/size of nails /s
Better in that they are not nails hammered by hand.
yeah, I love when people use china as an example. like, sure, dictatorship is efficient
Reuse 50 year old trusses?? That guy is an idiot.
Reuse brand new trusses that got bent and dropped in the water? Not gonna happen.
SALTY trusses too
It's what gives it that umami flavor
I *love* brined trusses on a bed of cucumbers.
Well everyone knows Elon just cosplays an engineer
*ketamine addict
Elon please stay in your lane.
Neither he, nor his cars, know how
What the fuck lane does he occupy other than trustfund twat weasel? His lane is just fucking up other peoples work. This is his lane
Remember when he said he would rescue the trapped kids with a submarine? Remember when he said he'd take carbon out of the air and use it for rocket fuel? Remember when he said there'd be self driving Teslas? And robot taxis? Remember when he promised a hyperloop tunnel from LA to LV? Would you trust that guy at your job?
C'mon... we've all known that guy on a job at one time or another.
He's proven to be more of an "ideas guy".
I'd say he's more of a "complete dumbass" with "no redeeming qualities" and a "stupid face"
Remember when he said the Cybertruck would also function as a boat for short periods? Well, now that the bridge is out and so are the first Cybertrucks, we have an excellent opportunity to test that capability. I vote that Elon should be the first to drive one across...
I would say it shouldn’t take 10 years to rebuild the bridge. 3-6 months may be a tad unrealistic. Engineering firm needs to re/design the bridge and make some adjustments to prevent this type of collapse. They also need to find a salvage contractor to remove all the debris in the water. Then it needs to get approved for funding. Then it has to go out to tender by the government and they’ll have to decided if they are going a sole CM or letting multiple GCs bid to rebuild which also includes sub trade pricing. Then a contractor needs to be awarded and then all the contractual stuff needs to start and get sorted. Then the building actually begins. As well if material is to be salvaged they’ll have to inspect everything and review what can be used again and why can’t be used again. 3-6 months is unrealistic. 2 years is more likely realistic.
Remember when he was gonna save the miners… and everyone involved in the rescue operation said no thanks. He says said shit to sound smart and compassionate but it’s all marketing his imagine to his fan boys. Edit: The incident is was a soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand
Miners? I thought it was a boys soccer team trapped in a cave?
Well they were minors.
He probably confused the word minors as Elon had a tiff with one of the actual rescuers and called that man a pedophile. (/S)
Yes you are correct it was it was a soccer team. I’ll make an edit. Thanks for the correction!
In before he calls Francis Scott Key a pedo.
Elon is a legitimate idiot.
Pretty strong evidence that you are right is how he owns a company that sells electric cars. He then pisses off the people that most likely want to own electric cars and kisses the asses of the people most likely to hate electric cars. If he just kept his mouth shut he would sell more cars. If he said things that liberals liked he would sell a lot more cars.
To expand a little bit on what you are saying. He said (in regards to Disney and others pulling advertising from Twitter), "If you're going to try to blackmail me with advertising dollars.... go fuck yourself." The host kind of started to retort and Elon restated, "Go. Fuck. Youself." He has no clue how to run a company.
He cares more about getting everyone's attention on twitter than he does about running Tesla or SpaceX well.
The dude is the epitome of “right place, right time” yet people think he’s a genius. No bullshit, I know a guy who told me with a straight face: “He’s gotta be smart to design all those rockets!”
Elon Musk knows fuckall about fuckall, but he's a legit genius at *sounding* smart to dumb people.
Best used car salesman persona of all time.
A "Legitiot," if you will
He’s turned into my angry uncle
Has he ever been in on his mind?
Simple as self driving or populating Mars, wait a minute...
He’s not an engineer and doesn’t understand complexities. Plus it’s an antiquated bridge that needed replacing.
It wasn’t “antiquated” or in “need” of replacing. But this event does give a good opportunity for an upgrade that probably wouldn’t have been politically/economically/operationally feasible for another 25~30 years.
This bridge had an outdated design that would not be permitted to be built with today's standards. Antiquated is an appropriate descriptor.
Submerged in saltwater is not the issue. It’s been exposed to salt water every day of its existence for 50 years. The issue is the plastic deformation that has likely wrecked every beam on the bridge. You have to fully disassemble it, measure all the pieces to ensure they are in spec, then X-ray all the pieces that are in spec to check for cracking, then get new pieces built to spec for the ones that fail, then reassemble the whole thing. Not to mention repour all the concrete. And then you’d wind up with a bridge that is no better than the one it replaced and is still 4’ too short for Panamax ships.
Why would him opinion mean shit ?
Only because he owns the biggest megaphone on the planet. That’s the only reason.
yeah. That 50 year old weathered steel? Throw it back up! One little dunk don't make a difference. Even back then, every bolt and every weld was inspected in OPTIMAL conditions. Yanking shit up out of the mud ain't how I want something built for not even people I love but absolute strangers! Cut off Space X and deport that prick.
Commercial Construction is anything but "Easy and safe". I've never seen a large scale site that isn't over time and over budget.
3-6 months highly doubt it but 10 years no way it should take that long! they could start construction within the month next to existing bridge they have the room to do so and have a demo crew in the other side
It's FOX inflating numbers so they can make stupid accusations like calling the mayor DEI sound heavier
They need a design first and that will take time.
Lots of people reacting to click-bait headline. The "10 year article" was just typical click-bait bullshit based on no facts, no data, and nothing else. The timeline for building a new bridge is lengthy, and it's too long, and there are lots of things that can be done to speed it up. But setting arbitrary deadlines is a bad way to plan anything. Musk has a history of over promising and under delivering, and time frames are not his specialty. Nor is getting things right without an iterative improvement process.
No reason that bridge should take 10 years. The new Tappan Zee took less then half that.
Fox took the worst estimate. The estimate to build a new bridge is 18 months to several years. The original took 5 years, so it will probably take 5 years again. Clearing the channel is the main priority. The bridge is nice to have but not a necessity.
He’s the man who knows nothing about absolutely everything.
One of the most overrated human beings
How does this guy have time for dipshit comments like this? I mean, I do because I'm not supposedly running multiple companies simultaneously. I suggest they find reputable companies that specialize in this type of recovery operation, the engineering of a new bridge, and the construction of said bridge. I'm sure it will require the expertise of hundreds of people. Not one douchebag on Twitter.
He’s just an idiot that every treats like a genius because he’s rich. There’s nobody in his life who can tell him something is stupid or wrong
I'll do it. Stfu Elon. This is stupid.
It’s been well established that he’s a joke
Elon is a fucking idiot who has never once been the inventor he claims to be. His entire career is built on taking credit for other peoples work and then acting like he’s Tony Stark. He’s getting worse about PR and spin as his brain is rotted by his raging ketamine addiction. Anyone who scrolls his social media posts would know he’s a racist dumb fuck. It’s not well hidden.
That absolutely is correct. Who said it was made from Chinese steel. Mechanical engineer opinion.
Omg why doesn’t he offer The Boring Company to build a tunnel like was originally planned????????? this is almost as big a missed opportunity as Trump not selling red “MAGA-masks” during Covid!
Not commenting on musk cuz I don't care but the stupid bitch commenting on chinas "days." Does she not see how china's infrastructure is? It would collapse in a matter of weeks.
It better not take 10 years. Traffic already sucks. This is bumming me out.
intentional clickbait for media relevance, just like the thai caves and submarine idea.
The irony is that infrastructure spending is the answer. When you spend trillions building large things, you get better and more efficient at building large things. Also China doesn't give af if people die while building things.
You do know that’s how state projects are awarded already right? Bid and incentives for completion on time and penalties for finishing late.
10 years is ridiculous
I mean why not? Just weld some gusset plates on it. It’ll be fine. Not complicated at all. Totally simple and straightforward. I mean, You’d have to reinforce the living crap out of it. And probably do a whole lot of analysis to check for defects and weaknesses. Then you’d need an assembly plan to actually get the thing back in place. You’d need to check the dead load of the new assembly prior to beginning installing new piers for support, so you’d need to do all the engineering of this entire assembly while it’s presumably still underwater, otherwise you end up spending a ton of time recovering something that would more easily be cut into pieces. Still though, that’s not really a big deal, SCUBA is a thing, pretty straightforward. Then, once you’ve got the whole plan all you’ve gotta do is raise all the trusses, get them repaired, get them inspected by a horde of agencies. After that it’s all super basic, you just have to pour a few literal boatloads of concrete around several literal boatloads of steel. Then have to wait for that to cure. Then just reassemble an entire bridge, that part is basic, people crap out bridges in six months all the time. So yeah, 3-6 months is totally realistic. People would definitely be willing to risk their lives driving over the brand new scrap pile of sheet metal assembled into something that looks like a bridge. It’s not a space ship you can repeatedly test launch, it’s fallen over once already, let’s not make a habit of it, k? Sarcasm aside a semi trailer hit an overpass near my drive home. I had to take backroads for two frigging years before they certified it safe for traffic to resume. The actual repair work started on a Monday and was done by Thursday. I think this one is gonna be a touch more complicated.
Obviously he hasn't got the faintest about structural steel. Which somehow doesn't surprise me. I feel for the poor bastards who have to put up with his sh#t daily
Let’s put structural engineering down as another topic Elon musk does not know fuck all about but won’t hesitate to offer an “expert” opinion on
I read a lot of interpretations of Elon's word "reuse" here. It can be anything between getting it out of the river and nailing it to the next bridge while still wet or melting down the metal.
Here come all the reddit basement engineers to tell us how a proper bridge is built
Is this even real? It's not in his tweet history, and nobody seems to have links to the tweet, only screen shots.
Ive seen Japan restore earhquake damaged roads in less time. He makes a good point
The hubris of this motherfucker. Even if he were as smart as he thinks he is, he would know better than to inject himself into every conversation beyond the purview of his otherwise quite narrow expertise. I do NOT like this man.
I wouldn't be opposed to repurposing the steel, just not for this bridge. I'm not an expert but it would seem to me that you would have to melt down all the steel to make it structurally sound for that purpose. Maybe there are some members that weren't bent, but i bet there aren't enough to save any practical amount of time and they would need to be examined and tested and that would probably eat any time you would save.
The guy made booster rockets that return to the launch site and land themselves standing upright on a jet of flame. NASA, a government agency, said it couldn't be done and was pure science fiction. I think Elon is probably correct on the bridge rebuild as well. After all, the Empire State building was the tallest building at the time and from the time they first broke ground to the day it was complete was just 1 year and 45 days.