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[–] 22 points 5 hours ago (5 children)

Man owns company that tricks sand into doing math, convinces consumer market there is a supply shortage.

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  • [–] 10 points 5 hours ago* (4 children)

    Tbh there is kind of a sand shortage

    Or at least we are using it up faster than it is created

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  • [–] 9 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

    To be fair, that's referring to sand used for concrete, which needs to have a rough, jagged texture. Something that is largely achieved through water-based erosion and not wind-based erosion.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

    To be fair, you can use desert sand for concrete by reducing the amount of water

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  • You can't completely replace construction sand with desert sand but you can replace some if you also add fly-ash however this is mostly just lab studies as real life examples are extremely scarce.

    A cool thing is that you can create a type of concrete called Starcrete (https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/eng-2022-0390/html) that is 2-3 times stronger than regular concrete by mixing martian regolith and potato starch. If you lack potatoes you can also make a version of it as strong as regular concrete if you replace the starch with human blood.

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