I ain't knowing nothing about the design of tall buildings, but if it's a fantasy novel, shit, make it created by a magic spell. Problem solved!
Does concrete exist in this fantasy world? If not, you're in trouble. How about lasers? High rise cranes that lift themselves? GPS? Seismic computer modeling? Oh, yeah, is your fantasy building in your fantasy world located on a fantasy earthquake fault? Better check them geologist records at the nearest county building permit office.
I know... Say it was a big piece of stone, and slaves carved the building out of it!
I know "magic building" is the easy way out but there's a reason I can't go that route. At least not for the building itself.
"Magic elevators" I'm not exactly opposed to however.
There are details I'm purposefully keeping vague. So, don't go thinking everything you need to know is contained in the smattering of sentences I wrote on the front page. This building is very important to the plot of my novel and I want to keep it under wraps.
So, if someone is interested in lending a hand, I'll pull back the curtain for them and them alone.
Have the building made by some kind of giant insects. A honeycomb structure and spider's silk might just be able to support a building of that size, and using the insects removes the "how did they get bricks 7000 feet in the air?" problem.
7000 feet is about a mile and a quarter, maybe 2 kilometers. That's enormous. You might want to Wikipedia up the Burj Dubai, which is a building they're putting up right now in the UAE that's going to be the tallest man-made structure in history, although it will only be about 2000 feet high and thus will be tiny by comparison to what you're suggesting. Still, it may give you ideas. Usually such tall towers have a huge issue with wind sheer. Usually, they're built in sort of cylinders, kinda like cigarettes sticking out of a pack, and they of course get narrower the higher you go. At 7000 feet, you also will have a question of how breathable the air is--people can start getting altitude sickness (sick due to lack of oxygen because the air's too thin) as low as about 8,000 feet above sea level, so if the base of your tower is at sea level there's probably no huge issue, but if it were built in, say, Santa Fe New Mexico, which is already about 6,000 feet above sea level, then people in your building, especially any construction workers or people who have to work outside, could have a serious problem, and you'd have issues with wanting to keep air pressurized somehow on the upper floors at least for comfort.
How about if it always existed and the oral tales handed down from the dark era mentions 5 different ways it was created, thus nobody really has any idea how it was built?
OK, since no architects seem to be responding, here's the best I can come up with.
First, it has to be built in a place with a solid bedrock foundation, and you will want to drill down several hundred feet into the bedrock to anchor the thing.
Second, you'll need it to be made of some believable material that has the elasticity and strength necessary to build something that tall. In today's technology that's steel, with carbon fiber materials coming along fast. I don't know what your limitations are, but you can always use some combination of technology and magic, perhaps by having a material that "grows" and forms a solid molecular bond throughout it's length. If you want to use some sort of rock, you could go with some novel crystal structure with a carbon lattice involved.
You will have a problem with getting things up and down the building. One of the greatest limiting factors for tall buildings is how much space they have to use for elevators. If you can come up with some fantasy solution to the overwhelming need for infrastructure to lift elevators up mile-long tubes, that would be a good thing. I could recommend self-propelled elevator modules that don't require cables so that you can have more than one operating in a shaft at a time. You could have them "dodge" each other by having them move sideways when needed to allow another car to pass them.
You are going to have to have a believable means of dealing with all the human (and potentially other sorts) waste that is generated. That also takes up space in skyscrapers. You have to pump water to the top and drain waste from the building. You might be able to have water from condensation or constant rainstorms help with that, or even have magically generated rain that allows the top of the building to have water, but you have to get rid of all that waste somehow.
Depending on the ground elevation and the world you are in, you may need to have the top of the building sealed so that people can live and breathe comfortably in them.
If it were me, and it were a fantasy setting, I would probably have the building set up with its own ecology and economy. You could have large sections of the side of the building set aside for hydroponic farms of some sort, or even have terraces where people can grow plants and raise animals so that they don't have to go up and down the building all the time just for basic human needs.
That's about all I can come up with in five minutes.
I'm not an architect, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
Barrage Balloons during World War II flew as high as 5,000 feet. I find it plausable that you could build a sufficiently large balloon (perhaps close to Cloud 9 scale) could support an inhabitable tower.
Your tower would probably take a stalagmite/stalagtite structure, with a conventional skyscraper rising from the ground and meeting another building dangling from the balloon.
You'd need a flexible construction in the middle and mooring cables at several altitudes to stablize against cross stresses.
Another thing to look at would be offshore oil platforms, which can rise several thousand feet from the sea floor.
Every single thing you're brining up has been addressed already by me.
I know how the material got up there.
I know how people breathe up there.
I know how it stays up when dealing with wind.
I know who built it (not insects).
I know why it was built.
I just need some help with a few "hows." And you're not going to be able to give me a useful "how" unless I tell you the answerers to the five "I knows" above.
Really, I appreciate the effort but unless you really might know what goes into erecting a 7,000 foot tall tower, you probably can't help me.
One thought. Modern skyscrapers are usually built using a self-lifting crane. The crane pulls up materials and builds its own track that it then cranks itself up to build the next level. The crane itself is then dismantled and lowered when the building it finished. This means that buildings are designed to be built that way, it does force certain design decisions for the crane to build its own track.
Now 7,000 feet is a tall building. That tall may be beyond modern crane technology to lift materials (in part because the cable itself becomes incredibly heavy). However, you can get around this if you build two towers, one half as tall as the other one. Then you can always dismantle the second smaller tower if you want to later.
In a fantasy world, I'm not sure if the same things apply. But the concept of a self-lifting crane could be applied to a self-growing matrix as well.
My only suggestion would have been to start with a granite mountain or dead volcano, and then have the civilization carve away the parts that aren't tower over a few generations. Think Devils Tower.
Kevin, dude, you can't demand of the world -- much the less the motley crew hanging out here New Year's Eve! -- that it "know what goes into erecting a 7,000 foot tall tower" when nothing even close to that has ever been erected!
I mean it would make a very good, arch joke for you to take that attitude, but while you can be funny you are not that arch!
hm...arch; how about the St Louis arch? Not nearly tall enough, but the wierd construction -- it is not particularly solidly fixed (sways big time), weight is very low compared to other standrd building of similar heigth, the carraige to get to the top is neat.
Well, not to be too snarky, but it is hard to come up with a "how" if you won't tell us any "whats."
A fair criticism but you seem to miss what I've said again and again:
I need to hear from someone that actually has experience designing tall buildings. Questions I have only they can answer. I was hoping a reader here might have that experience.
I'm not telling the "whats" because they're important to the plot of my story. I don't want to let them out for everyone here to see.
I'll tell the "whats" to someone that has the qualifications I need.
Again, I appreciate the efforts from everyone here but I cannot give out the information you all here rightfully should have as it would reveal plot elements I want to keep under wraps.
If you are, or know someone who is, an architect or have considerable knowledge of structural design, I want to talk about this privately to protect my unique intellectual property.
It's nothing personal. But to tell you all what you need to know will let a rather big cat out of the bag. I can't to that.
It would be impossible on our planet, given current technological limitations, and maybe impossible period given the physical limitations of our planetary forces; gravity, atmosphere, spin, etc.
However, to give you some clues, it will of course have to address every problem mentioned thus far. Including atmospheric ones such as, no atmosphere worth mentioning. It would also be partially exposed to stellar radiation so compensations for that would have to be made.
This means gravity would have to be different (very different planetary conditions), as would mass to weight ratio, as would the building materials and molecular structures (the best way to construct such a building, if possible at all, would be to grow it, crystalline like, not build it, or as has already been suggested, spin it with a composite material which is possibly partially bio-organic). Magic would still need a means, a material(s), and a method(s). So you've got to address those problems scientifically, meaning you have to construct the basic properties of the materials employed and the means and methods used. But once you have that they should answer most of your other questions through a chain of procedural logic.
For instance, you might could obliquely shear gravity, dispersing pull and tension in a sort of rosining effect which runs laterally down along support structures and then back upwards along the outer skin of the building proper so that the outer edges of the building would effectively push back against gravity. This could be achieved in one of the following ways, a counter-gravitational field, a technological compensational field (which would require a huge amount of energy), imaginary materials which possess this effect inherently and statically, or once energized by magic, or through some combination of means. The bets way of course is to make the properties of the structure an inherent aspect or manifestation of some material or energy or operational effect of the planet itself. For instance it could be a spot where gravity relaxes or operates counterintuitively/counterpurposely, where magic of a certain type or effect concentrates (likely upwards), where a force is attempting to escape that world, where energies such as gravity from other worlds or moons are spot-fixed, like a surface point concentration, an expression of some living force or complex of forces, or a specific concentration of a type of matter or structure that renders normal physical and environmental effects null and void, or at least greatly mitigates them.
Another thing you might consider is simply this, the lower reaches of the building are in a tremendously deep trench, say two thousand feet or so below ground level, or the underwater to that depth (you're already into impossible boundary conditions anyway for known physics), or simply that the building starts at a mountain which is, lets say, four thousand feet tall from sea level or ground level, extends upwards another thousand feet from the summit, and the rest of the building is within the base of the mountain and extends below ground level to make up the difference (the mountain itself then becomes bracing and support material). The total combined length would produce a 7000 feet tall building. You could also make part of the building angled obliquely underground like a slanted drill formation, making it two to three thousand feet above ground level, the difference sloping underground. It would still be seven thousand feet in total length.
That being the case, if it were properly sealed, hermetically in some areas until needed, then you could have huge underground storage areas for compressed gas and atmosphere, then shunt those upwards through sealed pipe or air ducts until dispersed at the top floors to provide a denser, breathable atmosphere. The circulation rates would have to be enrnormous unless the top floors were entirely sealed, and atmospheric recycling would have to be constant regardless of other conditions. The atmosphere below would need to be heated, and it would rise quickly through pressure change and excitation, and then as it cooled and condensed again it would fall through outlet ports towards the base of the building again. Of course temperature regulation would be a terrific problem at certain key points of gas exchange. Bu all of these problems, and there would be many, would make the building that much more interesting to travel through. I would exploit both the advantages and disadvantages posed by such a structure for maximum story benefit. Some areas would be positively lethal unless explored carefully and properly.
When you're talking about such extremely fantastic structures, and the forces which would be operating not only against their construction, but against their maintenance and continuation then you will need not just means and methods and materials but a constant set of compensating forces to counter the shearing and other stressors which will chronically operate to ruin and collapse the structure.
So it won't just be how built, but how maintained, and by what counteractive forces?
A building like this will require you to answer, at the least; who built it (for yourself, even if it is never directly revealed in the story), what methods did they employ, what materials used (no known materials would enable such a structure now- not unless you greatly modify the definition of what a building is), when was it built and under what conditions (did conditions vary at time of construction which made construction feasible then and would make it impossible now?), where was it built (does geographic locale offer advantages and capabilities not available at other locations), and how (what method or methods were employed). What you are describing would be impossible under normal conditions on this planet anyhow, so this how will depend upon alien or otherworldly conditions and capabilities, something far beyond current technological and engineering capabilities. Meaning you're gonna have to answer those questions yourself.
I can however suggest the following courses of action.
1. Go to a local university and find their engineering/architectural department. Find someone and ask how they would go about it. They will tell you it is impossible practically but then say, "yes, but if it could be done, what would it take? What kind of materials, what kind of locale, what conditions, what methods, etc?" Once you get them speculating take note son their best estimates and ideas.
2. Talk to an architect who has built high rise buildings. Get ideas, same as above.
3. Study the construction methods of ancient architects and buildings, such as the Lighthouse of Alexandria for ideas.
4. Go and explore some high rise buildings for ideas, as well as some ruined buildings, especially mutely-story ones. Do a little vadding on your own. Take a notebook and camera and tape recorder for ideas that occur to you.
5. I can suggest a series of fantasy books to read which often include monumental structures erected and maintained by a complicated set of magical counter-fluences. "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant," by Stephen Donaldson.
6. You might also try reading something like Ringworld by Larry Niven for ideas. You don't necessarily have to make the building seven thousand feet long linearly. It could posses a strange shape, a unique or even magical geometric profile, or it may exist it different tiems and places in different ways.
5. I can suggest a series of fantasy books to read which often include monumental structures erected and maintained by a complicated set of magical counter-fluences. "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant," by Stephen Donaldson.
No! No you can not!
Because of you I listened to that very, very good lecture at The Modern Scholar: Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature. And because of that lecture I've purchased The Earthsea Trilogy (one volume that collects books 1-3 but not 5-6) and the His Dark Materials trilogy. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is too much I tell you! Too much!
Talking to someone at a university is a good call. I'll have to do that. The University of Michigan and Easter Michigan University are not but 20 minutes from me.
Thanks, Jack! You've been a bigger help then I could ever ask for.
Ok, I know... It's prefabricated (built) in space, with zero gravity, then lowered onto the planet! Perhaps its sections are shot into orbit using a rail gun, then assembled, then placed back down on the earth.
I need to hear from someone that actually has experience designing tall buildings.
I can put you in touch with one of my clients, they only bill about $150 an hour for consultations.
Kevin, unless one of them is already your friend, don't hold you breath on that. A lot of these guys do in fact charge fees to consult, and you're asking for a nice chunk of time and expertise.
Sorry to appear to be beating a dead horse, but I think you are constraining yourself to an insoluble problem. If you want a "building" of that size you are going to have to redefine building as something other than a rectangular box. A dome, the St Louis arch, something with over 1/2 of it underground, a series of small structures tied together somehow. Any architect is going to be constrained by experience and what is physically possible. Although I'm not an AE, some simple calcs tell me the mechanics and structural materials won't handle the dead weight or live stresses in a conventional structure of that heigth.
All of this "It can't be done on earth" talk should look at some of the beanstalk research that's been done. There are a lot of very smart people who think such structures are not only possible, but inevitable.
No doubt you found this already, but here's a website dedicated to building a mile-high structure that seems to have some thought behind it.
Here is a link to a Wikipedia article on a Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned mile-high building. So Mr. Wright apparently thought such buildings were possible with what is now 100 year old technology. With newer materials it seems that going to 7,000 feet should be possible.
There are BIG issues you have to deal with for such a building, and then there are a lot of little issues (such as waste disposal). The big issues are:
1. How do you handle the stress of the weight of the building itself?
2. How does the building react to the stress of wind and weather?
3. How does the building react to the stress of earthquakes?
4. Do you need to take into account any forces due to the earth's rotation? Off the top of my head I would say "no" but I could be wrong. A 7,000 foot tower's top would be less than 2 hundredths of a percent of the radius of the earth higher than the base of the tower, so I think it unlikely that any consideration would need to be made, but if you wanted to look really smart, you could put something about compensating for the planetary rotation into the mix.
Once you have a design (and I think the "trumpet horn" design is good from a literary perspective whether it is necessary for technical reasons or not), the materials and all the "whats" you won't tell us worked out, then you can work on the other details like how to move around the building, how to pump water, remove waste, etc.
Hope this is helpful, at least it's some architectural information once removed...
Daniel Keyes Moran's SF novel The Long Run has spacescrapers in it. Googling that term pulls up this entry at Halfbakery ("Eureka! Keeping naked people off the streets since 1999.")
Personally, though, I'd just make it a parked megastarcruiser with sufficient gravity control to be safely moorable in a planetary gravity well. I like that twist.
No doubt you found this already, but here's a website dedicated to building a mile-high structure that seems to have some thought behind it.
Here is a link to a Wikipedia article on a Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned mile-high building. So Mr. Wright apparently thought such buildings were possible with what is now 100 year old technology. With newer materials it seems that going to 7,000 feet should be possible.
Sean, I'm not trying to be argumentative, but, there are also websites dedicated to communicating with aliens from Venus, how a US-Jewish conspiratorial complex brought down the World Trade Center, and about perpetual motion cold fusion you cook up in your bakeware and keep secret from your neighbors.
Having an idea that something is possible, and actually doing it is another matter.
As for Frank Lloyd Wright, personally I think he was the greatest architect this country ever produced, as far as making real pretty buildings.
Making them pragmatic, easy to maintain over time, and not in need of constant repairs, that's another matter. Especially his big ones. Wright envisioned a lot of things nobody wanted to touch. Sometimes just for cost, sometimes for far better reasons.
Now let's say you build a building that big, it's not just how do you do it, but how do you maintain it?
How do you service it against storms, electrical bombardment (and it will get some eventually), meteorological stress, exposure, earth tremors, and so forth? And say you gotta a problem, a real one, what's your evac plans? If it's a real building and something really goes wrong then you got one tightly focused death trap. Because that's a lot of material and wasted space unless it is actually used (doesn't mean you gotta use the whole structure for occupancy, but that space has gotta be occupied to build and maintain it). Most importantly how do you pay for it, aside from totally draining your treasury in construction, how does it make money for upkeep? You build something that big, and it being a real building, not just a monument, and it has to do something for upkeep. This ain't a pyramid or a ziggurat. That's a long way up against all kinds of forces that would beg to argue differently. Especially over time. There is no unsinkable ship and no unbreakable building. Except in fiction, and in the imagination.
I'll bet, dollars to doughnuts, that aside from sci-fi and fantasy and surrealistic novels nether of us, nor our children, nor our grandyoungins are ever gonna see the average 7000 foot tall building. It just has no real viability, no real reason to exist. Not in this world. There are a lot of much easier ways to solve the problems that would make such a structure viable than to build such a structure as a solution to those problems. The cost of solving any problem has to be less than the cost produced by the problem, or you're bleeding out resources from the start of your enterprise. And nobody and nothing bleeds forever. Sooner or later you bleed out. I suspect anybody attempting this would bleed out of funds and labor long before they ever reached that high. In real life anyways.
Say for instance, and this is a deductive assumption based on what I know of Kevin and what has been implied about this already (and I could be wrong too, but the example will serve), that men wanted to build something like this as something like a Tower of Babel in his story. Well, anybody who could really do such a thing already probably knows enough about science (or whatever their equivalent is) and force and matter control to realize that there are much simpler ways to go about it, or that it isn't likely to work in the way speculated. That is they will probably know the difference between theory and what the theoretical objective is likely to really produce. You go up so high and then you start to recognize that going up higher ain't likely to meet your real goal. That you can't get there from here in that way.
It's an interesting idea and theory, it's a great story device, but at what cost in the real world?
I'm betting nobody you know, nor anybody else for that matter, thinks it worth what it would really cost.
Not that that matters cause the technology and materials simply don't exist. They may very well at some time in the future, but would people decide that's the best way to employ such materials and technology? Wright aside, I kinda doubt it.
But that's just me. We'll see if somebody actually tries it.
Kevin, unless one of them is already your friend, don't hold you breath on that. A lot of these guys do in fact charge fees to consult, and you're asking for a nice chunk of time and expertise.
Well, you can't make friends with anyone til you talk to them first.
That's the first step.
And you can't get anyone's help til you ask for it.
But it's been my experience that if you ask in the right way then most anybody will help ya with what most interests them if they feel you are someone who shares their particular interests. If the professor won't, and one might not, another will, or a grad student certainly will. And the grad student will often say, "I'll talk to my professor and see what he says."
Or the professor or the grad student will say, "you know, I don't know about this but I do know who does." You'd be surprised how often I hear that and most of the time it's true, they might not know, but they know exactly who does and then I walk in to see that fella and say, "Hey, Professor Watson sent me to see you Mr. Holmes." And sure enough, with that kinda intro, Mr. Holmes will give me fifteen undivided. True, most of the time you gotta do what is convenient for the other guy, but networking is a lot like going to a party and striking up with the fella you most want to fish for information. You might not go straight at the fella, hammer and tongs, but warm up his friends first. Or you might warm up your intended by starting out talking about what interests him most first (and that's always a good play because most people's chief concern is what most concerns them - you'd be surprised at how many people never figure that out about the other guy), then moving him along slow and careful towards what you wanna know. But once you get most fellas yakking, ten to one he'll spill what you wanna hear soon enough.
So there's more than one way to skin most cats, if you're really determined to skin one.
But Ron is dead right on about this. Most fellas (and gals) are much more likely to be responsive if you are friendly and complimentary towards them. Like, "I here Mr. So and So that you are a real expert in this field. I have an interesting challenge and problem that I wanted your opinion on, if you can just spare me a few minutes." Then buddy up to the guy and work him real good and friendly. Nothing pretentious, just man to man. You'd be surprised how many friends you can make this way, in high places and low. in time he might become a real buddy, bona fide.
But also remember, the other fella usually wants something to. Always remember to say, "If I can ever do anything for you in return, I will." And mean it.
Cause you might need to return the favor one day.
Hmm.... so when someone asks for an architect's opinion on a mile-high building, am I more likely to listen to Frank Lloyd Wright or you? I don't think that's even close to a serious question.
Is it realistic to think that there will ever be an actual 7,000 foot tall building? That depends on so many technological, cultural and practical considerations that it is impossible to predict.
But I wasn't predicting it, I said that there are some who believe it to be inevitable, and I provided links to two serious sites that provide their own arguments for it. I was simply responding to Kevin's request about how it could be done.
As far as my own opinion is concerned, I do in fact believe that it is technologically feasible to build such a building. I believe we have the materials, the engineering skills and the economic might to build one, or more.
But we also have the ability to build supersonic commercial passenger airplanes so why don't we do it? Because although it is possible, it's not practical.
And that is probably true of a 7,000 foot tall building, at least with current people-moving technology. But that could change. Materials development is advancing rapidly and it will probably get easier and easier to build such a building for some time, until it becomes an exercise in undergraduate engineering courses to design one.
The cultural barriers to living and working in such a tower are probably far more difficult to overcome. However, this is a fantasy novel that Kevin is describing and in such a setting it could be easily explained as having religious importance. The "people" who live in the top 1/3 of the tower could live there for decades without ever setting foot on the ground again. Think of the tower as being a physical manifestation of a worldwide church hierarchy and the cultural barriers of inhabiting such a building are far easier to reconcile. This stratification of society would also make it less important for large numbers of people to move up and down the building, greatly reducing the need for devoting space to elevators, for instance.
It all depends on the things Kevin isn't telling us whether it is "practical" for such a building to exist. But to physically build one is not far-fetched in my opinion. It is certainly far less of a plot contrivance than the planet-wide miles-deep steel caves of Trantor, and nobody attacks Asimov for building an unrealistic setting.
It all depends on the things Kevin isn't telling us whether it is "practical" for such a building to exist. But to physically build one is not far-fetched in my opinion. It is certainly far less of a plot contrivance than the planet-wide miles-deep steel caves of Trantor, and nobody attacks Asimov for building an unrealistic setting.
That's what I'm saying.
Nobody builds that stuff, or a Ringworld or a Rama either.
I'm saying there is a real difference between the real world, and what people write about as what they'd like to see as a real world.
Especially when it comes to monumental stuff.
But you don't have to take my word about Wright.
Just look up the maintenance costs for his big buildings. Most are real works of art. And also extremely expensive to maintain.
That's not because I designed em that way. It's because he did.
Although I do engage in architecture (not the actual building, and he oversaw a lot of the building), you don't have to be an engineer to recognize a trainwreck. Or a software engineer to know you got a buggy program. (I'm not saying Wright was a disaster, that's not my feeling about the man, just making a point.) Seeing the weakness in a thing doesn't take some sort of metaphysical expertise or a degree in know all about it. You just have to observe carefully what works and what don't. And what people can do and what they can't. And what they will try and what they won't. And why that is.
I think that's a real big problem with modern man in general. The assumption that expertise and experience necessarily makes you right. Or that a clever theory makes you more correct than the other fella. You might be right as an expert, then again you might just as easily be wrong. Time and your work and the way things really are will prove that out, not degrees and theories.
By the way, I'm not telling Kevin don't pursue your idea. I never said that, I said it's impossible for this world, and so he'll have to consider modifying the setting in which it appears in some way. But then again a writer shouldn't be limited to just reality as we know it.
It is after all a fictional idea, and fictional ideas can serve many more purposes that just mimicking physical reality. And they should serve more than one purpose.
I'm saying physical reality and how it really works, and a theory about how it might work, are two different kettle of fish.
One you can eat, the other might just eat you if you go swimming in that pot long enough.
Kevin- I'm an aero engineer, but I know my stress analysis. I figure the critical problem here is strength to weight ratio. This thing will crush itself if it's a box, so a taper is inevitable. Give me a few days and I could work out a shape that would give a uniform stress distribution from top to bottom. I also figure that it would have to be a bootstrap type construction process, where it's built one floor at a time, maybe with a crane in the center that's jacked up with each level. Depending on the interior structure, that could work. If you're willing to add gravity control tech, you can dodge the whole problem, though that could introduce dramatic plot issues, since it's such a major technology. Matter control is another option, though with similar, if not more difficult plot issues. If an engineer is enough, I'd be happy to help. Let me know.
Hmm.... so when someone asks for an architect's opinion on a mile-high building, am I more likely to listen to Frank Lloyd Wright or you? I don't think that's even close to a serious question.
You're right, it's not, because unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, Jack actually has no demonstrable bias on the topic of Frank Lloyd Wright. I would be shocked if any student of architecture disagreed with Jack's characterization of him. His buildings famously don't work, especially not the way he thought they were going to, if he thought at all. And we're talking now about the ones that, at least, did get built.
OK, first of all, the issue of maintainability was not on the table.
Second, if you intend to argue that Frank Lloyd Wright is still not considered one of the great architects of history, I don't know what you are smoking.
Finally, even if Frank Lloyd Wright is a terrible architect, his proposals for a mile-high building were taken seriously enough that people examined them and commented on them, and the end result of those comments were not "oh, that's IMPOSSIBLE" they were more along the lines of "Oh, great Frank, but who's gonna live there?"
I'm no great fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. When they had to repair his greatest architectural structure because it was breaking after only a couple of decades, I figured that Frank probably missed a few strengths of materials classes.
But he's an architect, and generally recognized as a great one. So his opinion is RELEVANT to the discussion. And the fact that a generation ago he was proposing mile-high buildings without getting laughed out of the engineering community pretty much tells me that most of the experts didn't disagree with the POSSIBILITY of such a structure, only the PRACTICALITY of one.
Anyway, it's clear that when RyanR says essentially exactly the same things that Jack G. and I have been saying but puts "I'm an aero engineer" in the message and Kevin says "Hey, great, call me" that Kevin's looking for more than good ideas, he's looking for some sort of resume. And I don't have the resume, so I'm off this issue. Have fun with it Kevin, and good luck with RyanR's weight/stress distribution model. Let me know how much it resembels the "trumpet" shape that was on that web page I linked for you.
Sean- FLW was known for ignoring the engineers. That's why fallingwater is fallingapart. So it's hardly unreasonable to suppose he'd proposed something that couldn't be built. And FLW didn't care about laughing engineers. He was an *artist* and the muttering of doubters was beneath his contempt.
Josh- 7000 feet isn't that tall. Nanotubes are great for a space elevator, but aren't required for a mere 7000 feet. At that altitude, the air has barely started to thin. For perspective, El Capitan is 3000 feet tall, and it's made of cracked granite.
If I may chime in here, the issue is a building 7,000 feet tall -- but I haven't read that it's a skyscraper. You may recall that one of the most effective and structurally sound engineering techniques is known colloquially as a "pile." The pyramids, for example, for all their engineering brilliance, are basically a pile of stuff.
You could engineer a 7,000-foot tall pile using a variety of materials very easily. The building might be 15,000 feet at its base, but what the heck ... you want a 7,000 foot tall building, that's one easy way to do it with existing materials.
After all -- mountains are up to five miles high, and they don't need to be made out of special materials. Rock and dirt works just fine. If you tunneled out a lot of the mountain, you could probably create a lot of useful space.
There was an interesting show about "megastructures" on the History Channel a few years ago that they rerun occasionally. At least two of them would be this tall: a proposed massive tower in Hong Kong and a giant city-building in Japan.
As for the comment about mountains: the two big Hawaiian volcanoes are seven miles high when measured from their oceanic base to their peaks.
If 7000 feet isn't a magic number, it may be easier to build something much much taller in the beanstalk realm that is counterweighted in orbit than to build something massive enough at its base to support a peak that high.
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
Does concrete exist in this fantasy world? If not, you're in trouble. How about lasers? High rise cranes that lift themselves? GPS? Seismic computer modeling? Oh, yeah, is your fantasy building in your fantasy world located on a fantasy earthquake fault? Better check them geologist records at the nearest county building permit office.
I know... Say it was a big piece of stone, and slaves carved the building out of it!
Glad to be of help!
:-)
I know "magic building" is the easy way out but there's a reason I can't go that route. At least not for the building itself.
"Magic elevators" I'm not exactly opposed to however.
There are details I'm purposefully keeping vague. So, don't go thinking everything you need to know is contained in the smattering of sentences I wrote on the front page. This building is very important to the plot of my novel and I want to keep it under wraps.
So, if someone is interested in lending a hand, I'll pull back the curtain for them and them alone.
All those issues you bring up are being addressed.
As I said there are details I'm keeping to myself and I'll only share with whomever can help me with this thing.
I recommend you say it was built out of Legos. I can put you in touch with my kids for tips.
First, it has to be built in a place with a solid bedrock foundation, and you will want to drill down several hundred feet into the bedrock to anchor the thing.
Second, you'll need it to be made of some believable material that has the elasticity and strength necessary to build something that tall. In today's technology that's steel, with carbon fiber materials coming along fast. I don't know what your limitations are, but you can always use some combination of technology and magic, perhaps by having a material that "grows" and forms a solid molecular bond throughout it's length. If you want to use some sort of rock, you could go with some novel crystal structure with a carbon lattice involved.
You will have a problem with getting things up and down the building. One of the greatest limiting factors for tall buildings is how much space they have to use for elevators. If you can come up with some fantasy solution to the overwhelming need for infrastructure to lift elevators up mile-long tubes, that would be a good thing. I could recommend self-propelled elevator modules that don't require cables so that you can have more than one operating in a shaft at a time. You could have them "dodge" each other by having them move sideways when needed to allow another car to pass them.
You are going to have to have a believable means of dealing with all the human (and potentially other sorts) waste that is generated. That also takes up space in skyscrapers. You have to pump water to the top and drain waste from the building. You might be able to have water from condensation or constant rainstorms help with that, or even have magically generated rain that allows the top of the building to have water, but you have to get rid of all that waste somehow.
Depending on the ground elevation and the world you are in, you may need to have the top of the building sealed so that people can live and breathe comfortably in them.
If it were me, and it were a fantasy setting, I would probably have the building set up with its own ecology and economy. You could have large sections of the side of the building set aside for hydroponic farms of some sort, or even have terraces where people can grow plants and raise animals so that they don't have to go up and down the building all the time just for basic human needs.
That's about all I can come up with in five minutes.
Barrage Balloons during World War II flew as high as 5,000 feet. I find it plausable that you could build a sufficiently large balloon (perhaps close to Cloud 9 scale) could support an inhabitable tower.
Your tower would probably take a stalagmite/stalagtite structure, with a conventional skyscraper rising from the ground and meeting another building dangling from the balloon.
You'd need a flexible construction in the middle and mooring cables at several altitudes to stablize against cross stresses.
Another thing to look at would be offshore oil platforms, which can rise several thousand feet from the sea floor.
Every single thing you're brining up has been addressed already by me.
I know how the material got up there.
I know how people breathe up there.
I know how it stays up when dealing with wind.
I know who built it (not insects).
I know why it was built.
I just need some help with a few "hows." And you're not going to be able to give me a useful "how" unless I tell you the answerers to the five "I knows" above.
Really, I appreciate the effort but unless you really might know what goes into erecting a 7,000 foot tall tower, you probably can't help me.
The above post was written before Sean, Ron, and Maniakes posted. I just didn't click "Post Comment" right away because I had to run to the potty.
Well, not to be too snarky, but it is hard to come up with a "how" if you won't tell us any "whats."
What is the technology? What are the limits of magic? What are the tools? What is the purpose? How big (wide, area) is it? Who lives in it?
Etc. etc.
Thanks for the appreciative comments for the effort people put into helping you.
Now 7,000 feet is a tall building. That tall may be beyond modern crane technology to lift materials (in part because the cable itself becomes incredibly heavy). However, you can get around this if you build two towers, one half as tall as the other one. Then you can always dismantle the second smaller tower if you want to later.
In a fantasy world, I'm not sure if the same things apply. But the concept of a self-lifting crane could be applied to a self-growing matrix as well.
I mean it would make a very good, arch joke for you to take that attitude, but while you can be funny you are not that arch!
A fair criticism but you seem to miss what I've said again and again:
I need to hear from someone that actually has experience designing tall buildings. Questions I have only they can answer. I was hoping a reader here might have that experience.
I'm not telling the "whats" because they're important to the plot of my story. I don't want to let them out for everyone here to see.
I'll tell the "whats" to someone that has the qualifications I need.
Again, I appreciate the efforts from everyone here but I cannot give out the information you all here rightfully should have as it would reveal plot elements I want to keep under wraps.
If you are, or know someone who is, an architect or have considerable knowledge of structural design, I want to talk about this privately to protect my unique intellectual property.
It's nothing personal. But to tell you all what you need to know will let a rather big cat out of the bag. I can't to that.
However, to give you some clues, it will of course have to address every problem mentioned thus far. Including atmospheric ones such as, no atmosphere worth mentioning. It would also be partially exposed to stellar radiation so compensations for that would have to be made.
This means gravity would have to be different (very different planetary conditions), as would mass to weight ratio, as would the building materials and molecular structures (the best way to construct such a building, if possible at all, would be to grow it, crystalline like, not build it, or as has already been suggested, spin it with a composite material which is possibly partially bio-organic). Magic would still need a means, a material(s), and a method(s). So you've got to address those problems scientifically, meaning you have to construct the basic properties of the materials employed and the means and methods used. But once you have that they should answer most of your other questions through a chain of procedural logic.
For instance, you might could obliquely shear gravity, dispersing pull and tension in a sort of rosining effect which runs laterally down along support structures and then back upwards along the outer skin of the building proper so that the outer edges of the building would effectively push back against gravity. This could be achieved in one of the following ways, a counter-gravitational field, a technological compensational field (which would require a huge amount of energy), imaginary materials which possess this effect inherently and statically, or once energized by magic, or through some combination of means. The bets way of course is to make the properties of the structure an inherent aspect or manifestation of some material or energy or operational effect of the planet itself. For instance it could be a spot where gravity relaxes or operates counterintuitively/counterpurposely, where magic of a certain type or effect concentrates (likely upwards), where a force is attempting to escape that world, where energies such as gravity from other worlds or moons are spot-fixed, like a surface point concentration, an expression of some living force or complex of forces, or a specific concentration of a type of matter or structure that renders normal physical and environmental effects null and void, or at least greatly mitigates them.
Another thing you might consider is simply this, the lower reaches of the building are in a tremendously deep trench, say two thousand feet or so below ground level, or the underwater to that depth (you're already into impossible boundary conditions anyway for known physics), or simply that the building starts at a mountain which is, lets say, four thousand feet tall from sea level or ground level, extends upwards another thousand feet from the summit, and the rest of the building is within the base of the mountain and extends below ground level to make up the difference (the mountain itself then becomes bracing and support material). The total combined length would produce a 7000 feet tall building. You could also make part of the building angled obliquely underground like a slanted drill formation, making it two to three thousand feet above ground level, the difference sloping underground. It would still be seven thousand feet in total length.
That being the case, if it were properly sealed, hermetically in some areas until needed, then you could have huge underground storage areas for compressed gas and atmosphere, then shunt those upwards through sealed pipe or air ducts until dispersed at the top floors to provide a denser, breathable atmosphere. The circulation rates would have to be enrnormous unless the top floors were entirely sealed, and atmospheric recycling would have to be constant regardless of other conditions. The atmosphere below would need to be heated, and it would rise quickly through pressure change and excitation, and then as it cooled and condensed again it would fall through outlet ports towards the base of the building again. Of course temperature regulation would be a terrific problem at certain key points of gas exchange. Bu all of these problems, and there would be many, would make the building that much more interesting to travel through. I would exploit both the advantages and disadvantages posed by such a structure for maximum story benefit. Some areas would be positively lethal unless explored carefully and properly.
When you're talking about such extremely fantastic structures, and the forces which would be operating not only against their construction, but against their maintenance and continuation then you will need not just means and methods and materials but a constant set of compensating forces to counter the shearing and other stressors which will chronically operate to ruin and collapse the structure.
So it won't just be how built, but how maintained, and by what counteractive forces?
A building like this will require you to answer, at the least; who built it (for yourself, even if it is never directly revealed in the story), what methods did they employ, what materials used (no known materials would enable such a structure now- not unless you greatly modify the definition of what a building is), when was it built and under what conditions (did conditions vary at time of construction which made construction feasible then and would make it impossible now?), where was it built (does geographic locale offer advantages and capabilities not available at other locations), and how (what method or methods were employed). What you are describing would be impossible under normal conditions on this planet anyhow, so this how will depend upon alien or otherworldly conditions and capabilities, something far beyond current technological and engineering capabilities. Meaning you're gonna have to answer those questions yourself.
I can however suggest the following courses of action.
1. Go to a local university and find their engineering/architectural department. Find someone and ask how they would go about it. They will tell you it is impossible practically but then say, "yes, but if it could be done, what would it take? What kind of materials, what kind of locale, what conditions, what methods, etc?" Once you get them speculating take note son their best estimates and ideas.
2. Talk to an architect who has built high rise buildings. Get ideas, same as above.
3. Study the construction methods of ancient architects and buildings, such as the Lighthouse of Alexandria for ideas.
4. Go and explore some high rise buildings for ideas, as well as some ruined buildings, especially mutely-story ones. Do a little vadding on your own. Take a notebook and camera and tape recorder for ideas that occur to you.
5. I can suggest a series of fantasy books to read which often include monumental structures erected and maintained by a complicated set of magical counter-fluences. "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant," by Stephen Donaldson.
6. You might also try reading something like Ringworld by Larry Niven for ideas. You don't necessarily have to make the building seven thousand feet long linearly. It could posses a strange shape, a unique or even magical geometric profile, or it may exist it different tiems and places in different ways.
No! No you can not!
Because of you I listened to that very, very good lecture at The Modern Scholar: Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature. And because of that lecture I've purchased The Earthsea Trilogy (one volume that collects books 1-3 but not 5-6) and the His Dark Materials trilogy. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is too much I tell you! Too much!
Talking to someone at a university is a good call. I'll have to do that. The University of Michigan and Easter Michigan University are not but 20 minutes from me.
Thanks, Jack! You've been a bigger help then I could ever ask for.
You haven't asked for much then, but Godspeed and Happy New Years anyway.
I can put you in touch with one of my clients, they only bill about $150 an hour for consultations.
Or, I could talk to the head of the University of Michigan's College of Engineering for free!
No doubt you found this already, but here's a website dedicated to building a mile-high structure that seems to have some thought behind it.
Here is a link to a Wikipedia article on a Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned mile-high building. So Mr. Wright apparently thought such buildings were possible with what is now 100 year old technology. With newer materials it seems that going to 7,000 feet should be possible.
There are BIG issues you have to deal with for such a building, and then there are a lot of little issues (such as waste disposal). The big issues are:
1. How do you handle the stress of the weight of the building itself?
2. How does the building react to the stress of wind and weather?
3. How does the building react to the stress of earthquakes?
4. Do you need to take into account any forces due to the earth's rotation? Off the top of my head I would say "no" but I could be wrong. A 7,000 foot tower's top would be less than 2 hundredths of a percent of the radius of the earth higher than the base of the tower, so I think it unlikely that any consideration would need to be made, but if you wanted to look really smart, you could put something about compensating for the planetary rotation into the mix.
Once you have a design (and I think the "trumpet horn" design is good from a literary perspective whether it is necessary for technical reasons or not), the materials and all the "whats" you won't tell us worked out, then you can work on the other details like how to move around the building, how to pump water, remove waste, etc.
Hope this is helpful, at least it's some architectural information once removed...
Personally, though, I'd just make it a parked megastarcruiser with sufficient gravity control to be safely moorable in a planetary gravity well. I like that twist.
Sean, I'm not trying to be argumentative, but, there are also websites dedicated to communicating with aliens from Venus, how a US-Jewish conspiratorial complex brought down the World Trade Center, and about perpetual motion cold fusion you cook up in your bakeware and keep secret from your neighbors.
Having an idea that something is possible, and actually doing it is another matter.
As for Frank Lloyd Wright, personally I think he was the greatest architect this country ever produced, as far as making real pretty buildings.
Making them pragmatic, easy to maintain over time, and not in need of constant repairs, that's another matter. Especially his big ones. Wright envisioned a lot of things nobody wanted to touch. Sometimes just for cost, sometimes for far better reasons.
Now let's say you build a building that big, it's not just how do you do it, but how do you maintain it?
How do you service it against storms, electrical bombardment (and it will get some eventually), meteorological stress, exposure, earth tremors, and so forth? And say you gotta a problem, a real one, what's your evac plans? If it's a real building and something really goes wrong then you got one tightly focused death trap. Because that's a lot of material and wasted space unless it is actually used (doesn't mean you gotta use the whole structure for occupancy, but that space has gotta be occupied to build and maintain it). Most importantly how do you pay for it, aside from totally draining your treasury in construction, how does it make money for upkeep? You build something that big, and it being a real building, not just a monument, and it has to do something for upkeep. This ain't a pyramid or a ziggurat. That's a long way up against all kinds of forces that would beg to argue differently. Especially over time. There is no unsinkable ship and no unbreakable building. Except in fiction, and in the imagination.
I'll bet, dollars to doughnuts, that aside from sci-fi and fantasy and surrealistic novels nether of us, nor our children, nor our grandyoungins are ever gonna see the average 7000 foot tall building. It just has no real viability, no real reason to exist. Not in this world. There are a lot of much easier ways to solve the problems that would make such a structure viable than to build such a structure as a solution to those problems. The cost of solving any problem has to be less than the cost produced by the problem, or you're bleeding out resources from the start of your enterprise. And nobody and nothing bleeds forever. Sooner or later you bleed out. I suspect anybody attempting this would bleed out of funds and labor long before they ever reached that high. In real life anyways.
Say for instance, and this is a deductive assumption based on what I know of Kevin and what has been implied about this already (and I could be wrong too, but the example will serve), that men wanted to build something like this as something like a Tower of Babel in his story. Well, anybody who could really do such a thing already probably knows enough about science (or whatever their equivalent is) and force and matter control to realize that there are much simpler ways to go about it, or that it isn't likely to work in the way speculated. That is they will probably know the difference between theory and what the theoretical objective is likely to really produce. You go up so high and then you start to recognize that going up higher ain't likely to meet your real goal. That you can't get there from here in that way.
It's an interesting idea and theory, it's a great story device, but at what cost in the real world?
I'm betting nobody you know, nor anybody else for that matter, thinks it worth what it would really cost.
Not that that matters cause the technology and materials simply don't exist. They may very well at some time in the future, but would people decide that's the best way to employ such materials and technology? Wright aside, I kinda doubt it.
But that's just me. We'll see if somebody actually tries it.
Well, you can't make friends with anyone til you talk to them first.
That's the first step.
And you can't get anyone's help til you ask for it.
But it's been my experience that if you ask in the right way then most anybody will help ya with what most interests them if they feel you are someone who shares their particular interests. If the professor won't, and one might not, another will, or a grad student certainly will. And the grad student will often say, "I'll talk to my professor and see what he says."
Or the professor or the grad student will say, "you know, I don't know about this but I do know who does." You'd be surprised how often I hear that and most of the time it's true, they might not know, but they know exactly who does and then I walk in to see that fella and say, "Hey, Professor Watson sent me to see you Mr. Holmes." And sure enough, with that kinda intro, Mr. Holmes will give me fifteen undivided. True, most of the time you gotta do what is convenient for the other guy, but networking is a lot like going to a party and striking up with the fella you most want to fish for information. You might not go straight at the fella, hammer and tongs, but warm up his friends first. Or you might warm up your intended by starting out talking about what interests him most first (and that's always a good play because most people's chief concern is what most concerns them - you'd be surprised at how many people never figure that out about the other guy), then moving him along slow and careful towards what you wanna know. But once you get most fellas yakking, ten to one he'll spill what you wanna hear soon enough.
So there's more than one way to skin most cats, if you're really determined to skin one.
But Ron is dead right on about this. Most fellas (and gals) are much more likely to be responsive if you are friendly and complimentary towards them. Like, "I here Mr. So and So that you are a real expert in this field. I have an interesting challenge and problem that I wanted your opinion on, if you can just spare me a few minutes." Then buddy up to the guy and work him real good and friendly. Nothing pretentious, just man to man. You'd be surprised how many friends you can make this way, in high places and low. in time he might become a real buddy, bona fide.
But also remember, the other fella usually wants something to. Always remember to say, "If I can ever do anything for you in return, I will." And mean it.
Cause you might need to return the favor one day.
Hmm.... so when someone asks for an architect's opinion on a mile-high building, am I more likely to listen to Frank Lloyd Wright or you? I don't think that's even close to a serious question.
Is it realistic to think that there will ever be an actual 7,000 foot tall building? That depends on so many technological, cultural and practical considerations that it is impossible to predict.
But I wasn't predicting it, I said that there are some who believe it to be inevitable, and I provided links to two serious sites that provide their own arguments for it. I was simply responding to Kevin's request about how it could be done.
As far as my own opinion is concerned, I do in fact believe that it is technologically feasible to build such a building. I believe we have the materials, the engineering skills and the economic might to build one, or more.
But we also have the ability to build supersonic commercial passenger airplanes so why don't we do it? Because although it is possible, it's not practical.
And that is probably true of a 7,000 foot tall building, at least with current people-moving technology. But that could change. Materials development is advancing rapidly and it will probably get easier and easier to build such a building for some time, until it becomes an exercise in undergraduate engineering courses to design one.
The cultural barriers to living and working in such a tower are probably far more difficult to overcome. However, this is a fantasy novel that Kevin is describing and in such a setting it could be easily explained as having religious importance. The "people" who live in the top 1/3 of the tower could live there for decades without ever setting foot on the ground again. Think of the tower as being a physical manifestation of a worldwide church hierarchy and the cultural barriers of inhabiting such a building are far easier to reconcile. This stratification of society would also make it less important for large numbers of people to move up and down the building, greatly reducing the need for devoting space to elevators, for instance.
It all depends on the things Kevin isn't telling us whether it is "practical" for such a building to exist. But to physically build one is not far-fetched in my opinion. It is certainly far less of a plot contrivance than the planet-wide miles-deep steel caves of Trantor, and nobody attacks Asimov for building an unrealistic setting.
That's what I'm saying.
Nobody builds that stuff, or a Ringworld or a Rama either.
I'm saying there is a real difference between the real world, and what people write about as what they'd like to see as a real world.
Especially when it comes to monumental stuff.
But you don't have to take my word about Wright.
Just look up the maintenance costs for his big buildings. Most are real works of art. And also extremely expensive to maintain.
That's not because I designed em that way. It's because he did.
Although I do engage in architecture (not the actual building, and he oversaw a lot of the building), you don't have to be an engineer to recognize a trainwreck. Or a software engineer to know you got a buggy program. (I'm not saying Wright was a disaster, that's not my feeling about the man, just making a point.) Seeing the weakness in a thing doesn't take some sort of metaphysical expertise or a degree in know all about it. You just have to observe carefully what works and what don't. And what people can do and what they can't. And what they will try and what they won't. And why that is.
I think that's a real big problem with modern man in general. The assumption that expertise and experience necessarily makes you right. Or that a clever theory makes you more correct than the other fella. You might be right as an expert, then again you might just as easily be wrong. Time and your work and the way things really are will prove that out, not degrees and theories.
By the way, I'm not telling Kevin don't pursue your idea. I never said that, I said it's impossible for this world, and so he'll have to consider modifying the setting in which it appears in some way. But then again a writer shouldn't be limited to just reality as we know it.
It is after all a fictional idea, and fictional ideas can serve many more purposes that just mimicking physical reality. And they should serve more than one purpose.
I'm saying physical reality and how it really works, and a theory about how it might work, are two different kettle of fish.
One you can eat, the other might just eat you if you go swimming in that pot long enough.
And expect your readers to accept it as fact.
Ryan
I'd be appreciative for you help! Please, e-mail me and I can provide additional details I've left out here.
OK, first of all, the issue of maintainability was not on the table.
Second, if you intend to argue that Frank Lloyd Wright is still not considered one of the great architects of history, I don't know what you are smoking.
Finally, even if Frank Lloyd Wright is a terrible architect, his proposals for a mile-high building were taken seriously enough that people examined them and commented on them, and the end result of those comments were not "oh, that's IMPOSSIBLE" they were more along the lines of "Oh, great Frank, but who's gonna live there?"
I'm no great fan of Frank Lloyd Wright. When they had to repair his greatest architectural structure because it was breaking after only a couple of decades, I figured that Frank probably missed a few strengths of materials classes.
But he's an architect, and generally recognized as a great one. So his opinion is RELEVANT to the discussion. And the fact that a generation ago he was proposing mile-high buildings without getting laughed out of the engineering community pretty much tells me that most of the experts didn't disagree with the POSSIBILITY of such a structure, only the PRACTICALITY of one.
Anyway, it's clear that when RyanR says essentially exactly the same things that Jack G. and I have been saying but puts "I'm an aero engineer" in the message and Kevin says "Hey, great, call me" that Kevin's looking for more than good ideas, he's looking for some sort of resume. And I don't have the resume, so I'm off this issue. Have fun with it Kevin, and good luck with RyanR's weight/stress distribution model. Let me know how much it resembels the "trumpet" shape that was on that web page I linked for you.
Ryan
carbon fiber / carbon nanotubes.
Seriously. It's the only material(s) that (probably) have the strength to weight ratio.
To build the building, you have 'spider' like robots that weave the material.
I'd bet you money the PhD guy you're going to talk to will agree with me.
Ryan
You could engineer a 7,000-foot tall pile using a variety of materials very easily. The building might be 15,000 feet at its base, but what the heck ... you want a 7,000 foot tall building, that's one easy way to do it with existing materials.
After all -- mountains are up to five miles high, and they don't need to be made out of special materials. Rock and dirt works just fine. If you tunneled out a lot of the mountain, you could probably create a lot of useful space.
Not from base to peak. From peak to sea level, thousands of miles away.
Otherwise, good point.
Yours,
Wince
As for the comment about mountains: the two big Hawaiian volcanoes are seven miles high when measured from their oceanic base to their peaks.
oops... :-)
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.