alt Hacker NewsModern construction firms would have no problem^ planning and building you a pyramid if you were willing to pay for it.
^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.
Modern construction firms would have no problem^ planning and building you a pyramid if you were willing to pay for it.
^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.
Sure, but no-one on Earth today is willing to pay for a pyramid - or anything like it - even with the convenience of modern construction.
I have a similar feeling looking at the great cathedrals.
These structures took up a huge proportion of the community's money, labour and talent, for decades on end. They're orders of magnitude bigger than any 'normal' building of the time or for centuries later. All with no prospect of any tangible return.
If we set out now to build the largest structure that the limits of our technology allow, designed almost purely as a work of art with little regard to any function, what would that look like? I don't know, no-one's done it for centuries.
The closest thing is the Eiffel Tower. It's a national icon, the wrought-iron equivalent of a pyramid - but it took two years to build, not twenty. What would an Eiffel Tower with 10x the resources look like? And that's more than a century ago.
It's not hard to believe that humans could build these things, but it's occasionally hard to believe that they chose to.