What would be less expensive to build: a thousand meter high mountain or a thousand meter deep valley?

Asked by rebbel (35553

) October 5th, 2011

A Dutch journalist/semi proffessional cyclist came with the idea to build a mountain, a thousand meters high, so all kind of Dutch athletes (alpinists, cyclists, mountaineers, etc.) could use it to train on it and possibly win medals in their sports in major sport events.
If you climb a mountain there comes a point that you’ll (have to) descend it.
Turn the mountain upside down and you’ll have the same only now you first go down and then up.
Would one of the two be cheaper to make?

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4 Answers

Make one and you’ve pretty much made the other, I would think.

In any case, building the mountain in the Netherlands should be “cheaper”, because you wouldn’t have to worry about constant pumping of groundwater from the excavation. (Controlling runoff and erosion would be a concern, however.)

CWOTUS (26102

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Actually they would split the cost if you made them both at once. Take the material from the valley to make the mountain.

WestRiverrat (20132

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Yup. Build a 500m mountain, with the material from your freshly-dug 500m valley, and you can ride the total of a 1km hill!

dappled_leaves (15898

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It’s already been done. http://www.kennecott.com/visitors-center/amazing-facts/ The mine is 2–¾ miles across at the top and ¾ of a mile deep. Since a mile is 3960 feet, I think we have you covered and then some.

snowberry (27929

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