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Comment by howlin | Hacker News Reader

The 1950's were an interesting time for grand "mad science" engineering projects. Anyone in the Bay area should make an effort to see the Bay Model museum in Sausalito. It contains a huge model of the SF Bay and the local watershed. While this is interesting, it is more interesting to hear the story of why it was made. It was intended to vet a plan to dam the bay to turn it from salt water to a huge freshwater lake. Fortunately they decided it wasn't feasible.

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Not exactly "mad". The Netherlands have dammed the sea on that scale.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afsluitdijk

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r6zcMl2Xmw

The inland sea in the netherlands was turned into a fresh water lake using a huge dam. I dont think its very mad science at all.

All ambitious projects that don't come to fruition are mad, and obviously were impossible from the start.

That's quite a sweeping statement! I'm sure there are many ambitious projects that weren't mad but were cut for, say, funding reasons, and many projects that fail for reasons other than being impossible.

(My comment was sarcastic.)

/whooooosh

Sorry!

And a whole province was erected where once was sea!

"God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands"

How bout turning part of the Sahara into an inland sea?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

That‘s still harmless compared to the Atlantropa project...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa

More recent variation, building giant reservoir in Czechia: https://ceskaprehrada.cz/en.html

Exciting scale. Some people might come back to the idea now that sea levels are about to start rising dangerously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_European_Enclosure_Da...:

“The Northern European Enclosure Dam (NEED) is a proposed solution to the problem of rising ocean levels in Northern Europe. It would be a megaproject, involving the construction of two massive dams in the English Channel and the North Sea; the former between France and England, and the latter between Scotland and Norway.”

The authors know that plan is ‘a bit’ ambitious, though. That page continues:

“The concept was conceived by the oceanographers Sjoerd Groeskamp and Joakim Kjellsson. As of 2020, the scheme is largely a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the extreme cost of engineered solutions to the effects of climate change.”

Indeed, the 1950s saw the beginning of some ambitious projects. One in particular was the US Interstate Highway System, launched in 1956 under president Eisenhower. It wasn't completed until 36 years later in 1992.

The system cost $114 billion, equivalent to $521 billion in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System

Army Core of Engineers had a grand plan to fill most of the bay and build housing on it. People put their foot down and it didn't happen.

It wasn't just people disliking it, it was actually a terrible plan AFAIK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw

Awesome that they went through the trouble of building the models and doing the tests. Resources well spent!

Sort of. The CoE + developers wanted to fill in the remaining 2/3 since 1/3 was already being used as trash dumps. [0] And now, large chunks of bay cities are built on top of the former dumps. It's one of the reasons why there are dozens of ships buried under the SF Financial District. [1]

[0]https://blog.savesfbay.org/2013/04/trash-dumps-and-the-hidde...

[1]https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-americas/ghos...

Reclaimed land does amazing things in earthquakes. The plan coming to nothing may have been for the best.

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