A thousand-year communications project supported by its own city.
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When asked to think about a buildings that might last 1000 years, Tom came back with a quest rather than a structure.
Taking inspiration from the Clock of the Long Now, Tom investigated long and slow communication systems.
If we were to find alien life forms it would take us 1000 years to be able to communicate with them via the SETI project. Thus the proposal for a city as living support for a technology system.
The SETI project requires a tremendous time-frame - radio signals crawl along at the speed of light, and our own galaxy is over 110,000 light-years in diameter. If ever communication was established, operation would be required on a nearly continual basis. This is the only economical way to make use of a communication system that is more akin to a message in a bottle than a telephone relay.
Beneath the protective steel grille of the dish, life flourishes, while researchers suspended from the gantries and cabling high overhead continue their search for life outside of this hermetic bubble we call Earth…
The dish must be - at the very least - a thousand year project, a millennial endeavour. The vast capital costs inherent in its construction are defrayed by its role as a substructural element in a nascent megastructure - the conduits and servitors of the dish are utilised by a dense, symbiotic city-scape.
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