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New York Plans World's Largest Ferris Wheel
justelite writes "It is an old trend to build "The World's largest..." something. One of the latest somethings is a 630-foot tall Ferris wheel planned for Staten Island. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said 'The New York Wheel will be an attraction unlike any other in New York City even unlike any other on the planet.' Designed to carry 1,440 passengers at a time, it's expected to draw 4.5 million people a year to a setting that also would include a 100-shop outlet mall and a 200-room hotel."
This would scare the crap out of me. I can do any ride in an amusement park. Tallest, fastest, upside down... doesn't matter. Put me on a Ferris wheet and I'm grabbing the bar with white knuckles. I think it is the fact that I just have time to look out at the world and wonder about the minimum wage carnie who maintains the machine. That and the person sitting next to me can decide to start rocking the damn thing...
No, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'd rather be on the 70mph dragster than on a small Ferris wheel.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
My first thought on reading that it would hold 1,440 people at once... in New York City... What a tempting target for a terrorist... Yea, I've been brainwashed, I know it...
It still won't be as big as the original Ferris Wheel which could hold 2,160 people at a time. Also, will a 9-minute ride still be 50 cents?
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Ferris wheels like this don't stop for loading - they just have a mobile loading platform that moves with the wheel. Also remember that it's not 1440 people per car, but only 40 people that need to be loaded at once.
If you ever went to such a wheel (I'm thinking London Eye now) , you'd know that they never really stop rotating so that they can _constantly_ load and unload passengers, one car at a time, each time one of the cars passes near the floor.
Are we really on Slashdot as you seem to have never heard of "pipelining" ????? ^_^
I think most people would measure how "big" it is by height, and yes, the new one will be about 3 times taller.
You're correct that the old one had greater capacity.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Who is paying for this?
Who profits?
How many 16 ounce soft drinks will I need to take with me to stay hydrated during the 38 minute ride?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Come on New York be original build another tower, or build world's largest roller coaster...
No sense copycatting London
The New York Wheel will be an attraction unlike any other in New York City even unlike any other on the planet
I guess that's true if you don't count London or Shanghai as being on this planet...
The Singapore flyer offers a dinner service for two revolutions. Not quite what you have in mind I realise but along the same lines.
Not sure about the daily load factor. I guess they rounded up. I imagine it will be less popular in the winter though. I presume they have quite a good idea about seasonal variations in tourist attractions based on other New York attractions.
but main street is all cracked and broken.
I used to run a much smaller ferris wheel. We only had 40 cars, 8 people per car. Even so, we had to very carefully balance the weight of people to opposing cars. The entire thing had very limited torque, it only took about 1,000 lbs without an equal weight on the opposite side for us to lose control of the wheel. It would spin on it's own, eventually reaching equilibrium.
To load the whole thing, you had to load 1 set of cars "light" with just a few people, then the opposite side, then one set ahead of that, then one set behind the other set. It actually took a fair amount of training to transition from "20 cars light" to "40 cars heavy." Most of the operators were not skilled enough, and we even lost control of the wheel once when I took a day off. The entire park staff had to turn out and turn the wheel by hand (yes, I'm almost sorry I missed it).
I'm sure such a large wheel will have much more torque, but it will be interesting to see how they load it.
It says 10am to 10pm in the Spring, Fall, and Winter, and til 2AM 'or even all night' in the summer. It also says 'up to 30000/day'. There is nothing incompatible with '30000 people on a busy day in the summer, average of 12300 per day (which is 4.5 miilion per year) over the course of a year'. Both of those figures fit easily into the numbers provided, and leave plenty of room for maintenance and weather.
Your explicitly stating this implying that you thought some people might otherwise have considered renting them for a NON-integer number of rotations?! :-)
Can you base jump from only 600 feet or so? I'd be extremely nervous of being tangled in the machinery or blown back into it by a freak wind gust. You know some xtreme lunatic is going to figure out some maintenance door or whatever and smuggle a parachute onboard sooner or later.
Personally I think a really huge wheel with three access points would be the worlds most weirdly cool "skywalk". I don't know if they have skywalks below 45 or so degrees latitude so this might not make much sense. They're kind of like human subways but above ground and more like sidewalks than trains... Or they're like underground steam tunnels between buildings, but without steam and not underground. Anyway, I could see a 1000 foot diameter urban wheel with a skyscraper at 0 degrees and an access port around the 50th floor, another skyscraper at 180 degrees rotation about 1000 feet away also with an access port around floor 50, and the ground / subway station at 270 degrees rotation and zero feet altitude. Even better two counter rotating wheels on the same axle so both skyscrapers are never more than 1/4 turn away from the subway (you know new yorkers, always in a hurry).
This is probably proof that I shouldn't be an architect.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The original Ferris Wheel had a height of 264 ft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferris_Wheel