I am just a random guy and even I know that reusing 50-year-old materials that were bent and submerged in salt water is probably not a good idea.
You are correct. The bending changes the microscopic crystal structure in the steel and would be a weak point. You’d have to completely redo the heat treatment to get it back to normal and at that point you’re essentially scrapping the bridge and using new steel, which is exactly what they’re gonna do because they’re not idiots like Musk
Ah my favorite part of the US. Instead of just rebuilding it using some kind of federal construction group for the common good, you must go through a commercial bidding process and offer “massive incentives” to get the same work done at greater cost. This is the efficiency of capitalism.
Lesser work at a higher cost tbh. Theres a bridge they built in vancouver that they just didn’t take into account ice building up and falling on cars. Western engineers leave a lot to be desired lmao
Oh for fuck’s sake.
I’m nowhere near anything to do with engineering but if you’ve had a major structural failure then the absolute last thing that you want to do is to reuse that same structure because you just aren’t going to be able to account for all of the potential consequences of the failure.
Steel is entirely recyclable. There’s no good reason why they couldn’t recover the steel from the trusses to recycle it, at least in a hypothetical situation.
I really struggle to imagine how the bottleneck on rebuilding this bridge is going to be the lack (?) of steel trusses, or how the additional requirements of extensive testing to ensure the safety of reusing the current trusses would alleviate the time it takes to rebuild the bridge.
Idk I’m no engineer but Musk’s hot take here feels like the civil engineering equivalent of taking a cracked bicycle helmet, slapping some tape over it, and calling it good. I just can’t imagine any engineer who deserves to hold a license that would want to touch this idea with a 10ft pole.
the additional requirements of extensive testing to ensure the safety of reusing the current trusses would alleviate the time it takes to rebuild the bridge
“Why would you have to do that? If it looks good, use it.” - Musk, probably
Tbh with how bad things are going with Tesla fulfillment I feel like Elon Musk’s “Don’t worry, it’ll buff out bro” attitude is a bad angle to take PR-wise.
But if it hurts his bottom line, or that of his companies, then I’m here for it.
Steel is entirely recyclable. There’s no good reason why they couldn’t recover the steel from the trusses to recycle it, at least in a hypothetical situation.
there’s no way welding back together and straitening out a fat piece of metal would be faster or more efficient than melting the fucker & reforging it, is there? nevermind the safety i can’t believe a team of welders reassembling metal jigsaws would beat the machined processes of a rolling mill
It would be hard to imagine a scenario where having a team trying to rehabilitate the damaged trusses and to (attempt to) get them to fit fairly narrow tolerances would be quicker than starting from scratch.
Not to shit on skilled labourers but I’d also expect this would demand a pretty uncommon skillset too - yeah, it might take at least a few weeks to get your new trusses forged and shipped to the location but are there really a dozen+ people with the right skills to be able to refurbish the current trusses who are currently unemployed and ready to fly out to Baltimore to start work tomorrow?
On top of all of that, I wonder if there are better construction methods available now that weren’t at the time the bridge was constructed 50 years ago or if it would be considered viable to build something to meet the current infrastructure needs of the surrounding area - both possibilities would be ruled out if the only goal is to rebuild the exact same bridge asap using refurbished parts from the original bridge wherever possible.
It just seems so impractical from so many different angles and I’m not even close to being an expert on this.
man who doesn’t understand corrosion on cybertrucks tries to build a bridge out of corroded metal
You’d think a guy that has become the poster child for the tech industry would be a bit more STEM-literate.
Like, he programmed a lot as a kid, has a degree in physics and was accepted for a PhD in materials science. So really, what’s his excuse?
I thought he in fact had a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in science?
His excuse is that he’s bad at science and his dad paid for the degree. Apparently his code was terrible too.
His only actual skill is being in the same room when Peter Thiel bought PayPal, and it was daddy’s money that got him into that room.
The Musk family is a wealthy family of South African origin that is largely active in the United States and Canada. The Musks are of English, Anglo-Canadian, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Swiss descent. The family is known for its entrepreneurial endeavours.
English, Anglo
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
“if i was rebuilding the bridge, i would simply build it faster. but darn these pesky regulations!”
