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FrozenGate by Avery

12 mile high spaceport!

Pi R Squared

Pi R Squared

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I have seen this in the news several times in the last several days, it looks like they are serious about this and claim it can be built for only about $5 billion dollars. They want to do a one mile high demonstration tower first to prove the technology, maybe in only 3 to 5 years.

You may ride an elevator into near space by 2025 | Computerworld


It sounds like a great idea if it can really be done. What are your thoughts on this? Would you take a one hour elevator ride in this thing?

Alan
 





$5 billion dollars? That'd mean we could build like 15 of those things across Europe if we didn't have to spend that crapload of money on Greece who will never pay it back anyways.

On a side note. Impressive, although I doubt you could make a tower like that stable enough for spacecraft to take off of at that height.
 
They tried this before, it was called the Tower of Babel. We all know how well that turned out.
 
Mabey but I think 3 to 5 years isnt enough. A little off the cuff of this thread but in the early 70.s they built the 60 story John Hanncock building in Boston. The outside was all glass and the building would sway a couple ft. from side to side, and the glass panels were falling off but thank God they falling into the building, mabey a few fell out. I was amazed how crude but effective the solution was to save this billion dollar project. By now its known to all but who remembers how? They used some of the top floors to build a huge steel pendulum system that I guess went with the flow?
 
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gozert said:
$5 billion dollars? That'd mean we could build like 15 of those things across Europe if we didn't have to spend that crapload of money on Greece who will never pay it back anyways.

On a side note. Impressive, although I doubt you could make a tower like that stable enough for spacecraft to take off of at that height.
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I thought the same thing, how would they make it stable? I can only think of two things that might work but I won't bother, that is an engineering detail best left to those who know more about it. They still have to build the 1 mile high tower first to prove the technology. I hope I at least live to see that one built. I won't live to see the big one built.

Trendkilla254 said:
They tried this before, it was called the Tower of Babel. We all know how well that turned out.
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Hopefully Babylon 2.0 will turn out better. I am not sure I would live near that thing though.

GSS said:
Mabey but I think 3 to 5 years isnt enough. A little off the cuff of this thread but in the early 70.s they built the 60 story John Hanncock building in Boston. The outside was all glass and the building would sway a couple ft. from side to side, and the glass panels were falling off but thank God they falling into the building, mabey a few fell out. I was amazed how crude but effective the solution was to save this billion dollar project. By now its known to all but who remembers how? They used some of the top floors to build a huge steel pendulum system that I guess went with the flow?
Click to expand...

There is a building in NYC originally the Citicorp center, I don't know what it's called now, but back in the mid 1980's it was the 10th tallest building in the world. It has one floor near the top that has a huge weight, I think it's 400 tons that is constantly moved in different directions depending on how the wind is blowing.

Alan
 
no material is strong and light enough to support the weight of an SSTO and still stand as a 20km tall structure. it would collapse under the weight. also, 20km would not really make a difference: half of getting into orbit is achieving the altitude, the other half is reaching orbital velocity, so this would not cut down on fuel use enough. this also isn't a space elevator, its not tall enough to be a space elevator.

it would be sick if they built a 20000 meter tall building, but it would have no use and would probably collapse.
 
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It would be better to build a huge Zeppelin with a flat top. Float it up launch your shuttle, then bring it home
 
trussmonkey25 said:
You could make it a luxury liner that just floats around the world. Sell tickets to offset the cost. Ha ha ha
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lol, im sure people would love being in something that flies and is subjected to insanely high temperature rocket exhaust repeatedly XD
 
trussmonkey25 said:
It would be better to build a huge Zeppelin with a flat top. Float it up launch your shuttle, then bring it home
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That's an interesting idea but I wonder how large it would need to be, if it were a mile or more in size I am not sure I would like the idea of that thing flying over me.

After 911 happened, for a couple of years I didn't like hearing jet aircraft fly over, they don't bother me now, and where I live they fly directly overhead all the time. I lived in NYC for 3 years and I used to pass through the WTC all the time, it was a major big transit center, there were also places in the area I would go to often and I had been up in one of the towers at least 3 or 4 times including on the roof. Then a few years later in Everett Washington I get up at 5 or 5:30am and sit down to watch the morning news while I drink 3 cups of coffee as I used to do back then and I saw it happen live, it was disturbing to see that happen where I used to come and go all the time.

micheal rosen said:
lol, im sure people would love being in something that flies and is subjected to insanely high temperature rocket exhaust repeatedly XD
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And also what about the radiation? I heard or read somewhere that just flying from the west coast to the east coast of the U.S. you get the equivalent of 2 chest X-rays. What if you worked full time at more than twice that altitude? I wonder if you may end up in a few years getting cancer or some other fatal health problem.

Alan
 
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