Re:The Unexpected Elegance of Irrigation Systems from Above
by gorgoiler on Monday August 31, 2020 @12:15AM
(#24328446)
A more humble observer would draw a different conclusion about the economics of large scale agriculture.
Farms must clearly place a much higher value on having straight paths between fields than the the value of optimizing the packing of irrigation units. Packing irrigators into a grid gives two orthogonal directions where you can drive in a straight line.
One might suppose that early experiments in hexagonal farms wasted a lot of land on the turning radii at hexagon edges (for heavy machinery to make the corners) or spent a fortune on annual downtime to replace the steering bearings in the tractors.
Farms must clearly place a much higher value on having straight paths between fields than the the value of optimizing the packing of irrigation units. Packing irrigators into a grid gives two orthogonal directions where you can drive in a straight line.
One might suppose that early experiments in hexagonal farms wasted a lot of land on the turning radii at hexagon edges (for heavy machinery to make the corners) or spent a fortune on annual downtime to replace the steering bearings in the tractors.
Or they got carsick a lot.