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A comment on Nothing like this will be built again (2002). Parent comment

Re:Nothing like this will be built again (2002) by valarauko on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @01:08PM (#29895225)
> That said roman concrete is a thing they've been chasing for a while

Roman concrete isn't some magical substance that we're hoping to replicate - we already know how it works - it just would really suck for the type of building projects we have now.

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Re:Nothing like this will be built again (2002) by grogenaut on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @03:11PM (#29897136)
Aah, I thought we were trying to replicate it or one of it's properties still, maybe in the context of modern concrete. Would love to know more.
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Re:Nothing like this will be built again (2002) by valarauko on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @04:37PM (#29898339)
Unfortunately a lot of the discussion online regarding Roman concrete veers uncomfortably into a rather, shall we say, "supremacist" angle. For a level discussion about Roman concrete, I found this to a nice place to start.

http://engineeringrome.org/understanding-roman-concrete/#Anc...

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Re:Nothing like this will be built again (2002) by elihu on Tuesday January 11, 2022 @06:50PM (#29900172)
In my (probably flawed) understanding, I think the drawbacks of Roman concrete in a modern setting is that it takes a really long time to cure (like a year or so) and it uses salt water, which would not interact well with regular steel rebar.
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