loved the cameos.
My pessimistic side says that no funding will materialize, and only the "it's going to break next week" bridges and dams will get a band-aid emergency repair, over and over, until they eventually collapse or close.

I've seen a road that got a giant sinkhole, and rather than fix it, they put up a few concrete barriers and 2 stop signs, basically making it 1 lane at the part where the sinkhole is.

I've seen bridges that were closed for years because they were deemed unsafe.

Another problem is that road materials exist that will last 8 x longer than asphalt, but they cost 2 x more. These were proposed, but guess what? The highway works union lobbied against them because it would mean fewer jobs for them.

Something about 1:21 - 1:24 is beautiful and yet creepy at the same time. It's amazing how nimble and sure footed this thing it. The way it recovered on the slippery asphalt was incredible.

I could say with the Hawaii case that it may not be what you think it is, at first. First, find out if you are on or near one of the very active volcanic regions in Hawaii. Then find out where the last couple of (and possibly even lava flows going back decades--as you never know what they plan to do with some of those roads) lava flow where.

If any of them came close to the road you were on, you have your answer. The road MAY have used to look far different in the past--possibly being four lanes, or even shifted 15-20 feet in another direction, etc... Then the lava came, covered some of the road here and there (after some time plants grow on it, as it is very fertile, and you have no idea you are driving right through a gigantic lava field/flow).

They may come back and put some asphalt down to allow residents and others to still get to various places on the island--but, they may not redo the lines and other things because the risk of the lava field increasing and further burying the road is fairly high. So they just leave the road as is, essentially a make-shift emergency road possibly not created for a long-term outlook.

But, that is just one guess. As for the video above...Narcolepsy? I have no idea what happened there (or why it would stay that way, unless the road is in an area like what I described and it is more of a "make-shift" road...as you DO see the road break up and start to disappear at the end, so it is possible).

I love the explination that it can't work because eventually the hexagonal pads would create uneven roads due to the material below them eroding away, then goes on to explain that asphalt does a fantastic job of A) Creating a uniform surface to drive on, and B) it's durable.

...Why wouldn't we just put the Hexagons over the asphalt then?

Asphalt may be petroleum based, but it's also one of the most recycled products ever...around 99% of all asphalt is recycled. The increasing cost of petroleum will take decades to make this a cheaper alternative.

It does -nothing- for electric vehicles, or for snowplowing. Those claims are nothing but the purest bullshit. The amount of electricity needed to melt more than a trace of snow is utterly prohibitive. Which is why you don't see heated roads...or any of the others that this video "addresses" (without providing any actual facts, of course).

you're not wrong that rooftop solar panels would collect more energy. but this also kills many birds with one idea/stone. since asphalt is petroleum-based, the costs for roads is constantly going up, this solves that. this solves a lot of issues with electric vehicles, and snow plowing and many others that the video addresses.

but hey, even if this idea ultimately doesn't work out. any work done on this project can be spun off into a new project that could benefit us greatly.

so I've got zero problem investing in this, even if it ultimately it doesn't pan out, because this work will ultimately benefit someone else's work.

Part of the premise when this first surfaced a few years back is that solar panels are getting cheaper and cheaper to produce whereas asphalt, being a petroleum product, is getting more and more expensive.

It's only a matter of time before the upfront costs of this are cheaper before you even consider the returns.

Progress has a sense of humor. Awesome. Of course these guys would like to see every square foot of north american asphalt replaced with this stuff, but I think that they are smart enough to know that that isn't going to happen any time soon.

What could happen, however, is that we all gradually adopt the technology. First we start with with the densely wealthy liberal eco-conscious places that have a cultural incentive to swallow the initial economic hurdles and lower overall manufacturing costs to a point where it starts to make sense to the wealthy conservative gas guzzling folks, and then slowly expand from there.

The concept is sound. At some point the hardware might just become cheap enough to be viable - it's an option worth exploring, at the very least.

And if you think that making really long roadways out of relatively expensive tiles is impossible, try telling that to the ancient Romans.

What the...I always thought those were giant asphalt peel and stick letters.

I haven't seen it quite like this, they say that's clay in the description there. I was expecting when they dug into it that water would start pooling in the hole...kinda weird.


But I've been on job sites where the ground looks damp at most and the more you drive, walk, whatever over it the water just starts to pump up to the surface and it becomes a total mess. It's why you try not to park machinery anywhere near where you're clearing because you might come back to a machine that once it moves will literally be stuck in something like quick sand.

What I've always been told is that when you prepare a site for something like a walking/driving surface, you have to consider the size and weight of things driving across it. And you install stone in an appropriate size and depth to create ......sort of a locked together surface where all the edges of the rocks form kind of a linked bridge that provides stability over the dirt below it. So the final asphalt/concrete won't break apart because of too much sub-surface movement. And the stone also allows water to drain away into the subsurface or from under the asphalt/concrete so it won't freeze and bust the ground from below.


So I think what the description is saying is that this ground has reached some kind of perfect saturation point. Probably once it takes in so much water it probably fills the clay and the pool structure below it, and then the water has to flow elsewhere.

A Leopard 2 can reach 100+ km/h on asphalt if you bypass the rev limiter, but steering becomes tricky and the noise unbearable. That said, both Leopard 2 and Marder (IFV, like a Bradley) regularly exceed 80 km/h at the nearby training grounds -- offroad, across muddy fields.

I want an asphalt-ready snowmobile!?? WTF?!!

...thought they only worked on snow w/henchmen with machine guns-

This unfortunate story states that these things can go over 160mph, but that's for $40,000 models that run on asphalt with wheels. http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/04/man_killed_in_cicero_snowmobil.html

Here's the thing. What people are upset about is the fact that the video states "22 Dead" right in the title. Test yourselves out honestly. Would you have watched it if the video had a different title? Something like, "Terror on the Russian roadways! Don't go when the light is Green!!!" I don't know if anyone remembers really the faces of death/red asphalt videos, but there was no "evidence" of death (brains, blood, pools of liquid, dropped health packs...) here.

Recycled mix (using old asphalt with other "stuff" that can be put into mix to get rid of it..like rubber tires) doesn't lay as well as new asphalt mix or hold up as well.

Since old mix uses old asphalt, it typically has oil, gasoline, diesel, etc soaked into it. All of these substances degrade/eat asphalt over time. It's why they don't use asphalt around fuel pumps, because all of the constant and pure spillage would eat holes in it. Turns the asphalt gummy...goes right into it and sometimes thru to the sub-grade rock and then soil. Also motorcycle kick stands don't do well on asphalt, contaminated or not..especially on hot days. Asphalt will become pliable on really hot days and a focused direct pressure like a motorcycle kickstand can punch a hole into it that be deep enough to let the bike tip over. Use a wood block or piece of plywood to fix this and spread the pressure.

I used to work in the asphalt business, mostly rolling it. My dad worked in it more substantially than myself working on airport jobs, highways, etc. Many of those jobs won't allow old asphalt to be used in their mix. And they are big enough to force plants to switch over from remixed (old and new) to all new mixes. You'll notice that jobs done with the new mixes hold up much longer, look better, lay better, hold their heat better during the laying process, and come out much smoother looking and less "dirty looking" upon finish. I am guessing at this, but I believe it to be because the asphalt has more tar and less other chemicals and the tar is able to absorb any dirt you might pick up when you move to existing surfaces onto the new asphalt. Where the remix (containing old) has gasoline, etc breaking down the tar and less fresh tar to begin with, so that little bit of dirt you pick up transfers to the remix asphalt like a magnet.

Highways probably won't have as much surface area covered in long term spillage as stop and go traffic where it will be focused at the lights, stop signs, along edge of the streets where people park. But the highway will have big sections of highly contaminated asphalt where semis flip, car wrecks occur, etc. So these same sections if they are remixing it on the go, will end up with a bunch of really bad asphalt on or just after it if they don't throw it out.

And to clarify a few things upon incase people are unfamiliar.

Asphalt plants are usually multi purpose. They are usually a stone quarry with an asphalt plant situated somewhere on site. They filter and crush the stone into piles for sub grade work of various needs. And they draw from these piles to feed the asphalt plant. They do new mix and recycled mix (old mix) which I'll explain below. They also often times have sealer (the black coating you put on parking lots and driveways), I'll explain it below. Roofing tar, regular/asphalt tar, and crack filler..and I'll cover these below as well.

The plants have some human guesswork involved, they have to estimate tonnage and how much tar should be added. They screw up pretty often. It wasn't unheard of for us to get super tarry asphalt mixes where it was like goo coming out of the truck. Or no-tar mixes where it was just slightly black painted rocks. Or mixes where we called them "burnt" where they pumped in their cleaning mixture into the mix and it was breaking down the mixture to help get it out of the hoppers of the plant. These were usually people being trained who hit the wrong button without realizing it.

The plants have to clean the mixtures out of the hopper (where they dump it into the truck) to cycle over to a new mixture they keep in on-site silo looking things that stir and heat it. Which the silos also have to be cleaned at the end of the day or heated all night lest they hardened and stop up the whole thing. They usually stop heating all night as it gets closer to winter season because they don't do enough business to make it worthwhile.

Ok mixtures:

I didn't mention base mix anywhere...but it's why they typically have to switch over to different mixes, because places need base mix instead of finish layer....the layer you see when finished looks less rocky than base and is pliable.

Base mix = larger aggregate rocks, much more rocky. Doesn't have much fine rock in it. It's meant to be something you can quickly lay that will hold up the weight of heavy vehicles right away. Usually this is only used on fresh roadways where they are laying directly over rock sub-grades. It makes it easier to lay the finish layer smoothly, makes for a cleaner looking job by locking the rock and it's dust in...and is cheaper than using all finish. You can almost go from laying base mix to laying finish layer right on top of it with no delay. You can't do this with two layers of finish, because it's too pliable and it has to cool down for the heavy vehicles to drive over it without squishing it out and messing up the layer you just laid.

New mix asphalt = Tar mixture with aggregate like fine almost sand like rocks along with larger rocks to give it stability larger rocks are maybe the size of your pinkie nail at the largest. Tar is mixed throughout, the whole mix is constantly stirred and heated inside the plant, drawn into the hopper and dumped in a truck that pulls underneath. I am told that this mix used to be even better in the past, but now air regulations require them to "inject" their dust from rock crushing into the mixes so again this can cause the mix to be less tarry due to the dust being absorbed and they can completely ruin it by injecting too much.

SCAM ALERT: Look below remix as it pertains to both.

Remix (old and new) asphalt = Very similar to new mix, except they grind up old asphalt that they have sitting on-site in the stone quarry congealing into a big pile depending on it's contamination. This will depend on percentage they are legally required/allowed to put into these mixes. Less of the remix in the mixture, the better it is....less contaminates. Sometimes they even put rubber tires and other rubber products into the mixture. Although they don't do that much here. SOMETIMES it is desirable to have rubber in the mixture like running tracks, where they are springy. This is a special mixture, and it's a massive PITA to lay because it's really gummy and sticks to everything along the process.

SCAM ALERT: They typically do this to older people. But someone will stop and tell you they are working on a big site close, and they are going to have some extra material at the end. Usually you would dump this at the plant or somewhere you have set aside. They want to help you get a new looking driveway. They will lay the asphalt less than an inch thick. It will look really good when they finish. A year later it will be broken apart in most cases. Because they didn't tar, and they laid it too thin. You can lay asphalt thinner if you tar really well....but you want to lay it at least a inch and a half per layer or so. Sometimes you have to lay it thin near man holes and drains to not block water. So don't go crazy on somebody because of this if you see them doing it in certain places. Generally they try to average an inch and a half across a job per layer on finish. Thicker on base mixes since it has larger rocks in it and it has to be at least as thick as the biggest rock in it.

Sealer (the black coating you put on parking lots and driveways) - This is almost like a black paint in some circumstances. Some of it has chemicals, I think creosote, which react to the sunlight and cure it to seal it to the asphalt. Depending on what you buy, you may have to mix water into it to make it suitable for the task. Some come pre-mixed and you just have to stir. Usually you put two coatings on new asphalt, one coat if it's been sealed before. Sealer WILL NOT make your driveway last longer by any noticeable degree. It will make it look dark, and repel chemical spills to some degree. However chemicals will still penetrate as you can't clean up everything that drops. ALSO, sealer makes your driveway much slicker. This is why they don't use sealer on roadways, if they are using some kind of treatment it's something else because sealer fills in all of the fine holes in asphalt and makes it more slippery because of this..especially in the rain. Sealer has to cure for a couple days, you can't drive on it and it can't get wet. So listen to them when they say they don't want to seal it due to weather. Don't let them seal it in the spring or fall. Do it in the summer so it's nice and hot and not much moisture. Sealer looks more brown going down than black. But it cures to black.....it almost looks like chocolate cake mix. Dunno if they taste the same.

If you are sealing your own driveway, do not get it on you. It burns like a mother, I've gotten it on myself and if you don't clean it off right away it will burn you like a really bad sunburn after being exposed to sunlight for awhile. Some people are not bothered by creosote (if this is the correct chemical in sealer)...but better to not find out..because it hurts if you are.

SCAM ALERT: People will seal your driveways with motor oil or even too watered down sealer. They look very similar going down. There is no easy way to tell the difference besides knowing what they smell like. The first rain will turn your motor oil covered driveway into a mess. We have gypsies in the area pretend to be local businesses and pull things like this, it's bad. They disappear at the end of summer and the businesses are left with people pissed off.

Roofing tar - Runnier and less thick than regular tar. It's meant to be pumped onto roofs and run down to fill in holes and places water can get in. If you use this on your driveway, you're pretty much going to end up with a huge mess for years. Because it will continually heat up in the sun and liquify again being tracked into your house over and over and over.

Regular/asphalt tar - Use this, like in the video, along curb sides and between old and new layers to help seal out water and keep the layers sticking together as you put down the new layer. You wouldn't need to tar between a base and finish layer if they were laid a day or two apart because the base layer would heat up again from the finish layer and stick. However if the base layer is older..like a couple weeks or a month. You would probably tar between them. Anything else..you tar between...concrete, old asphalt. The only exception would be sub-grade rock, however sometimes you even tar this, especially if it's in a grade critical location...where you can't have the asphalt humping up even a little. But on a typical driveway, the rock layer has enough jags and spaces that a layer of asphalt will cling to it just fine.

Crack filler - You would use this before sealing your driveway, not after. You can also use it alone to fill in gaps in your driveway and try to seal out water. So it doesn't get into the crack, freeze and blow your driveway up. The best crack filler is rubberized, so it will expand and contract. Plus it also isn't as prone to liquify again in the heat and stick to your car tires and shoes. It has to be heated up substantially to liquify, but I've seen non-rubberized begin to liquify in direct sunlight on a 95+F degree day. I try not to step on the cracks on the really hot days, as I'd rather not find out if it's going to stick to my shoes.