Short Distance Vertical Transportation

Jump! ;->

What is stopping the building of the FrankLloydWright dream, the Mile-high skyscraper?

See what the limits are... You can plan your own elevator project at http://otis.com/otis/1,1352,CLI1,FF.html

Once, when I was in a store, I was talking to the techs about how my computer overheats when there is too much stuff in it. They said, "You need an AMD." A what? "An air moving device." Do you mean a fan? A goddamn fan?

Don't you mean an elevator? A goddamn elevator?

The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.

Several problems for a mile high building: 1) Intolerable swaying at the higher levels, 2) Fraction of floor space devoted to elevators increases as building gets higher.

Not to mention the transportation and parking problems at ground level. Remember that you have to fill and empty the building twice a day (commute times and lunch). With the rise of the suburbs, downtown high-rise buildings become less economical.

Is this true? Suburbs transfer the problem to traffic at RushHour?, as well as approaching a PaveTheEarth condition. --PeteHardie

If people both live and work in the same building, you don't have to "fill and empty the building twice a day". LarryNiven and JerryPournelle explored this concept in OathOfFealty, which was set in a 2 mile x 2 mile x 1000 foot high "cube". Their society ran into the following problems:

1. The high population density required a huge power supply. This power supply could be cut off (from the outside) or blown up (from the inside). Water input, sewage output, and food supply were similar issues.

2. The building required innovative structural engineering, to support the weight of the upper floors.

3. Balcony, roof, window, and other exterior space was limited. This required large atria and the development of thin-screen videos for use as "windows". Even so, access to a good view became a major status symbol.

4. The large population (250,000) required a substantial government, and strong trade ties with a surrounding megalopolis.

5. Emergency exits were not discussed.

BuckminsterFuller took a stab at something like this with his "Old Man's River City" project concept. Quoting from http://www.cjfearnley.com/fuller-faq-5.html#ss5.7 :

"It is moon-crater-shaped: the crater's truncated cone top opening is a half-mile in diameter, rim-to-rim, while the truncated mountain itself is a mile in diameter at its base ring. The city has a one-mile-diameter geodesic, quarter-sphere transparent umbrella mounted high above it to permit full, all-around viewing below the umbrella's bottom perimeter. The top of the dome roof is 1000 feet high. The bottom rim of the umbrella dome is 500 feet above the surrounding terrain, while the crater-top esplanade, looks 250 feet radially inward from the unbrella's bottom, is at the same 500-foot height. From the esplanade the truncated mountain cone slopes downwardly, inward and outward, to ground level 500 feet below.

The moon crater's inward and outward, exterior-surface slopes each consist of fifty terraces - the terrace floors are tiered vertically ten feet above or below one another. All the inwardly, downwardly sloping sides of the moon crater's terraced cone are used for communal life; its outward-sloping, tree-planted terraces are entirely for private life dwelling."

Looking at the model, there is space for everyone to have balconies, and plenty of interior space for shops, transportation (vertical and horizontal), and rather pretty. Given composting toilets, sufficient greenhouse and garden space using Biointensive techniques, and LivingMachine? systems in the interior to reprocess sewage into drinkable water (possible augmented by hydrogen-fuel cells), most of the "external output" issues can be handled.