Re: Question Clarified

Gina Miller (nanogirl@halcyon.com)
Tue, 20 Jul 1999 17:04:51 -0700

Could you help me out al little further? (here's the idea elaborated) This structure would be just that, only devised to demonstrate the possible height. It would not be a building, or have an elevator or door. It would just be the least amount of required materials to achieve maximum tall. Can I have some answers on how high and how minimal of a structure could be built. If I were to build as far as is humanly possible, how high could I go with the perfect circumference (as minimal as possible yet strong enough to hold up).
Nanogirl

>On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Ron Kean wrote:
>
>> A practical problem with very tall office/residential buildings is
>> that the overhead associated with servicing the upper floors takes
>> up so much space on the lower floors, and costs so much, that the
>> building becomes uneconomical. Many elevators must be provided, for
>> example, to service a very tall building, as the occupants would not
>> want to wait 40 minutes every time they want to take an elevator.
>
>And, N.B., every shaft needed to serve an additional floor takes up
>space on _all_ the floors below, so that the space lost to elevators
>per added floor increases with the height. Eventually a point is
>reached where the space added by going up one more floor is canceled
>by the decrease in usable space on the floors below, so that nothing
>is gained -- *assuming* that the idea is to create usable space. If
>you are just trying for a height record, no expense spared, then
>presumably you can do at least as well as the natural relief of the
>earth's surface, and if you imagine another order-of-magnitude
>increase in the strength-to-weight ratio of the materials, then of
>course the sky's the limit.
>
>--- Joe Fineman jcf@world.std.com
>
>||: Take it easy, but take it. :||
>