EPIC, Community, 3, Infrastructure, 7/31/17

3.1 The living area of the Epiccissian community is a park like setting with trees and flowering bushes dominating the core of the community and pleasant walking paths twisting their way among cottages and open air shelters. Surrounding the living areas are the sports fields, swimming areas and a lake for boating. Further beyond these activity areas, lie fields of crops and pastures for sheep and dairy cattle as well as a field for the chickens. At the hub of the community is the Agora which is an open area that encompasses meeting and performance areas as well as the baths and dinning areas.The overall impression is one of an environment where animals, plants and people coexist in a synergistic relationship of tranquil harmony with nature.

3.2 However, underground everything is different.

3.2.1 Tunnels: The transport of all goods and materials within and between communities are done via a vast network of tunnels. Every house, facility and various points within the community are connected with tunnels, which allow the service bots to rapidly move through out the community without and disruption or even notice by the Epiccissians. The tunnels are the result of a technology focus that was started by Elon Musk at the end of the 20th century teens. The machines developed by his Boring Company have evolved to a point of sophistication that, given a free source of electricity, the time and cost required to bore tunnels make them far more efficient that any transportation by land, air or even water.

3.2.2 The tunnel boring machinery is totally automated and employs a continuous boring process that uses lasers to melt and fuse the material being bored into the creation of the external walls of the tunnel. High frequency sound waves that are tuned to the resonating frequency of the atoms of the material being removed shatters the material into a fine powder that is removed through vacuum hoses. By creating the tunnel walls out of the local material, and with power supplied by cables and material removal through vacuum hoses, the entire process can be continuously operated by adding cable and hoses via reels at the tunnel opening. Since neither the lasers nor the sound frequency generators have any direct contact with the material being bored they are not only efficient but durable. The average tunnel can proceed for at least 25 km before another entry point is required. Distances of 50 km can be achieved by starting the equipment from respective ends and meeting in the middle. With 50 km as a comfortable range, an entire region of 10 by 10 communities can be tunneled by four machines, with one each on the north, south, east and west sides.

3.2.3 The primary tunnels are 3 m in diameter and house electrical, water, and fiber optic connections plus the maglev transport system. The tunnel boring head, in addition to fabricating the tunnel walls and pulverizing the center material for vacuum removal, also pulls the electrical and fiber optic cables as well as the water tubes into the tunnel. Consequently, when the two machines meet up in the middle all the connections are made within minutes that complete the tunnel. The maglev transportation system follows the boring machines and once the two boring machines meet they disassemble themselves and take up storage on their respective maglev platforms as the two maglev tracks are joined. Once the maglev track is complete the maglev transporter carries the boring machines back out of the tunnel and at the same time pulls out the vacuum tubing, thus leaving a completely functional tunnel constructed within about two weeks.

3.2.4 A set of four regional primary tunnel boring machines completes a regional grid in six months, which provides the infrastructure facilities for 100,000 Epiccissians in a region of 100 communities. Over a five year period one set of four boring machines can construct infrastructure grids for 1 million Epiccissians. Two hundred fifty sets of boring machines over a period of twenty years, after the Singularity, constructed all of the permanent communities to accommodate 1 Billion Epiccissians forever.

3.2.5 Primary tunnels that connect regions are run under lakes, rivers and mountain systems. This capability enabled the abandonment of the previous transportation system of roads and bridges and further enhanced the isolation of Epiccissian communities from the historical communities during the time of transition.

3.2.6 Once the core tunnel grid was established, smaller machines constructed the secondary tunnels that fill out the web of connections to all of the areas within each community. Secondary tunnels are 1m and 2m in diameter. All bots are designed to be accommodated in a 1m tunnel.

3.3 Support facilities: In addition to the tunnel system, large rooms for the support facilities are constructed under the communities. Support facilities include hydroponic gardens that supply all of the vegetables for the community, food prep and cooking, laundry, 3D printing, tailors, waste treatment and recycling. Two main meals are prepared every day with on demand snacks available through out the day. Each meal is customized to the tastes of the individual. With portion control and vitamin and mineral supplements, each Epiccissian receives an ideal amount of food for optimum functioning. Each morning a fresh set of clothes suitable for the intended activities of the day are provided next to each person. All bedding is changed each day by the service bots. All food, water and waste materials are recycled. Any required physical item is manufactured with 3D printing.

3.3.1 The underground bot system provides a total support system for the community that for the most part is unseen. Massage bots in the baths do have direct contact with the people and farm bots are seen tending to the animals. The fields and orchards are, however, worked during the night since bots use sensors rather than vision. Consequently, the support system is very unobtrusive and the Epiccissians are left to focus totally on their development.

3.4 Power Grid: Adjacent to one corner of the region is a 4 km x 4 km area bounded by woods and vegetation that contains the microwave download antenna for the solar power satellite. The antenna is constructed of a simple wire mess on pilings about ten feet from the the ground. The antenna covers 10 square kilometers and down loads electrical energy 24/7 that is more than adequate to supply the region. A by-product of the microwave download is a slight warming of the ground directly under the antenna. This warming provides an additional area for raising crops with a temperature sensitivity.  (Everything that you did not know about solar power satellites) Additionally, the site has underground storage for banks of batteries that can augment peak demands or supply emergency power. It is extremely rare that either of these are ever needed. All of the electrical energy used in the Epiccissian communities is DC which improves safety and compatibility with the battery storage systems. As a tertiary back up, all of the regions are also linked to a continental back up grid system that allows both sharing of regional power and as a final fail safe, a connection to the continental hydrogen fusion reactor. The hydrogen fusion reactor is also a secondary back up to power requirements in the uninhabited regions of the world above and below 40 degrees north and south latitude. The uninhabited regions only require power for telepresence bots and monitoring systems which use solar cells and long term battery storage as their primary power source.

3.5 Transportation: Pre-Singularity modes of transportation have been eliminated. Roads, highways, railroads, airlines and shipping no longer exist and all of their infrastructure has been recycled into basic raw materials. All of the pre-Singularity construction, cities, factories and homes have been recycled into basic raw materials that will last essentially forever. Given the high rate of recycling in each Epiccissian community there is a decreasingly small amount of raw material required every annual cycle. Also, with the ability to create material at the molecular level and 3D printing, this further reduces any requirement on the stockpile of material. The recycling of the pre-Singularity infrastructure in addition to providing vast quantities of raw materials, especially in metals, has also allowed those spaces blighted by the human inhabitation to be returned to their natural forms. With the Epiccissian communities being highly integrated into their local environments and other than energy being self-sufficient the bounty and balance of nature has reestablished itself to pre-human levels.

3.6 Hyper Loop Maglev Vacuum Tubes: Anything that requires transportation between regions is moved in capsules in the Hyper Loop system. Raw materials for the 3D printers and some food items such as grains are the primary items transported between regions. Due to the self- sufficient nature of each Garden Community this level of the system is used infrequently.Solid physical objects are placed in capsules that are precisely engineered for a minimum clearance with the carbon fiber walls of the tubes. Each tube size has a send tube and a receive tube. Movement through the tubes is accomplished by pressure differentials from three systems. Large fans create a negative pressure on the receive side and a positive pressure on the send end. Other fans are spaced along the tube length that suck air out from the tube in front of the capsule and force it back into the tube behind the capsule. The third system is a series of compressor blades similar to a jet turbine but reversed to move air outward rather than inward that remove air from immediately in front of the capsule and channel it between the walls of the tube and the capsule. This creates a boundary layer of air that prevents contact between the tub walls and the capsule. Sensors in the tub walls constantly monitor the clearances for movement in the tub walls so that maintenance can be performed to prevent any contact of the capsule with the tub walls. The Mag Lev system supports the capsule so that there is no physical contact between the capsule and any surface. The pressure differential provides the driving force for the capsule. Capsules can reach speeds of near 700 mph.

3.6.1 Besides physical objects liquids can also be sent through the tubes with one capsule pulling the liquid and the second capsule pushing it. Water is the only liquid that has ever been needed to be supplied in this manner and that was in a rare situation of a major drought.

3.6.2 Within the region and each community a simpler system of directional force is used with fans at both ends and the mag lev to lower or raise the tube pressure. The shorter distances do not benefit from the sophisticated systems used on the longer high speed tunnels, The predominant usage of the system within each Garden Community is to move food, clothes and bedding materials much like it would be in a resort hotel.

3.7 Drones For shorter distances drones are used to transfer items between communities within a region. Given the high level of self-sufficiency of each community this capability is rarely used.

3.8 Telepresence Bots In order to explore physical sites around the world an individual or group can reserve a telepresence bot located in the area that they wish to explore. The majority of these areas are restricted to human direct contact and protect nature from the impact of human contamination. The telepresence bots come in several forms, from the aerial view provided by a drone, to a down and dirty humanoid bot that can walk the fields and climb the trees.

3.8.1 The humanoid bots are equipped with a wide range of sensors that can be directly fed into the senses of the individual and/or the group. Visual sensors are essentially equal to that of an eagle with five cones that allow for the distinction of several thousand shades of colors and a 20/2000 acuity, that allow for seeing a rabbit move at two miles. The visual sensors also enable a much broader spectrum of light usage that ranges from infrared to near X-ray. The hearing sensors beyond the human range of 64-23,000 Hz of a human to the 16 Hz of an elephant and 123,000 Hz of a beluga whale. The sense of smell is also modeled on that of the dog with molecules collected and accumulated that generate knowledge not only about an item but also its history. An example here is a rhinoceros smelling a dung pile (Ok, so this is a weird example) is the same as a human reading the local newspaper as to who and what happened during the week. The sense of touch through haptics is at a level of fine detail that exceeds human capabilities. And rounding out the major sensory organs, the sense of taste is equal to that of what were the best wine sommeliers. (smoking, alcohol and drugs no longer exist)

3.8.2 Beyond the five major sense groups the humanoid bot reflects the 16 additional physical senses that humans experience. Link

3.8.3 And beyond the physical senses are the mediative senses of which the Epiccissians are masters.