> Can you name any new major civil engineering project in the US in the last fifty years?
Most of the interstate highway system, any number of lakes, many major bridges, the completed portion of the superconducting supercollider underground chambers, the brilliant Alaska pipeline pylon system, Florida's long elevated marine highways, the Norfolk (?) tunnel, the NYC aqueduct, most major airport runways.
What man has done he may aspire to do again.
These things move in cycles. Political patronage projects currently are in vogue, but their star is falling. You cannot credibly claim that unions will make any LA-SF project cost $100B, because Mr. Bond Market is about to have a mountain comes to Mohammed moment. At some point the market for rational projects will reopen for a few decades, like it does from time to time.
Elon Musk is just the man to make it happen. He already killed the Space Shuttle program and its standing army of $1B/yr payroll patronage jobs. Extending that to other projects is a matter of will and personality.
> [Elon Musk] already killed the Space Shuttle program and its standing army of $1B/yr payroll patronage jobs.
What did Musk have to do with Space Shuttle program cancellation? I thought it collapsed under its own weight - disasters, costs, slowness etc. Please provide links if any.
SpaceX was running an entire rocket development program for the price of one Shuttle launch. When they kept hitting their performance/schedule targets, the Shuttle lost all credibility within NASA. It's hard to predict a past that did not happen, but the Shuttle would probably have been kept going for longer if there has been no alternative waiting in the wings.
The Florida highway through the Keys dates to the 1930s and the NYC Catskill aqueduct to roughly 1916 - those are certainly great projects but aren't the last fifty.
Largely agree with the rest of your comment though :)
Also, the highway through the Keys has seen very large infrastructure improvements over the last few decades, so while not a new project it is a significant civil engineering effort.
Most of the interstate highway system, any number of lakes, many major bridges, the completed portion of the superconducting supercollider underground chambers, the brilliant Alaska pipeline pylon system, Florida's long elevated marine highways, the Norfolk (?) tunnel, the NYC aqueduct, most major airport runways.
What man has done he may aspire to do again.
These things move in cycles. Political patronage projects currently are in vogue, but their star is falling. You cannot credibly claim that unions will make any LA-SF project cost $100B, because Mr. Bond Market is about to have a mountain comes to Mohammed moment. At some point the market for rational projects will reopen for a few decades, like it does from time to time.
Elon Musk is just the man to make it happen. He already killed the Space Shuttle program and its standing army of $1B/yr payroll patronage jobs. Extending that to other projects is a matter of will and personality.