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"Going Up" At 45 Mph: Hitachi To Deliver World's Fastest Elevator
Zothecula (1870348) writes "Hitachi has announced that it's installing the world's fastest ultra-high-speed elevators in the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre skyscraper in Guangzhou, China. Making up two out of a total of 95 elevators in the building, Hitachi says the new lifts use a range of technologies to produce record-breaking speeds of 1,200 m/min while still meeting the necessary standards of safety and comfort."
I think it would be cool to go 45mph from one floor to the next, provided the elevator is well padded.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
High speed elevators are stupidly expensive.
I was looking at apartments a while back and at one of the buildings there was some ongoing construction.
Somehow I ended up getting shown around by one of the head contractors who told me that the building was supposed to have four medium speed elevators, but they got permission to knock it down to 3 high speed elevators, which would move the equivalent # of people per arbitrary unit of time.
The kicker was that those 3 elevators were about 1/4th the total budget of the entire building.
So based on that, I'm guessing that TFA's 95 elevators are a respectable portion of the price for that new tower in China.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
For a 3m floor height, I find about 27.5G, at least.
45mph => 20.12 m.s^-1
a t_m = 20.12 m.s^-1
a t_m^2 = (3m / 2) (max acceleration obtained at half the floor height).
=> a = 20.12^2 / (3 / 2) \approx 270 m.s^-2 / or 27.5 earth G (G = 9.8 m.s^-2)
Where the limit of the human body for such vertical acceleration seems to be between 2,3G and 5G, depending if you are going up or down... but I haven't tested that myself).
Ok, back to work now...
Some of these towers have an upper lobby. So you take the express from 1 to 75, then a 'local' from 76 to 100.
Usually the 'important people' are on the top floors so the elevator ratio is better and there's little waiting in the upper lobby. Unless you stop at the bar.
Once in a blue moon there's an express to the penthouse, but to pay for an entire express elevator entirely in the rent of the penthouse apartment isn't feasible for all but the ultra-ultra rich.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
learned this thanks to SimTower.
I want my high speed elevator to descend at a rate *just* fast enough to have me hovering six inches off the floor, which should be made of glass.
Depends on who the other occupant is and how romantic you are about dying together.
I wonder how they avoid the popping. The article says that they use some kind of fancy pressurization system for that, but you still have to change altitude in a short amount of time, so how do you "avoid" that pressure change? You could pressurize the whole building, but then the windows couldn't open, you couldn't have a terrace (except if it had an ear-popping airlock), and there would be a constant strong draft from top to bottom unless you kept the floors sealed airtight (which is kind of hard to do if you have things like elevators)
I imagine the best they can do, is spread out the pressure change over the slightly longer period that includes the slower parts of the journey and the wait for the doors to open, but that won't make such a huge change.
The problem with ascending or descending that fast is that many people will have issues with sinus pressure that can't keep equilibrium. Comfortable ascent/descent in an unpressurized airplane is between 500 fpm and 1000 fpm. 45mph straight up or down is about 4,000 fpm. It hurts my ears just thinking about riding this elevator without it being pressurized!
This may be a anecdotal comment, so take it for what you will, but I have noticed that Asian buildings and infrastructure technology are so far ahead of us in the USA that it is really embarrassing if you go there and come back and compare.
If you've ever gone to Taipei 101 for example, the elevators move so quickly, and without any vibration as they go up/down that you almost cannot tell if they're moving. Go to Singapore or Hong Kong, and watch how smoothly, quietly, and punctually their subway systems run.
Or go to China and be surprised that in even small-sized cities, you didn't realize that *all* their motorcycles are now electric and they leap-frogged the smelly gasoline phase of motorbike technology.
You come back to the US, and wonder how we're still (maybe) #1, with our rickety buildings and public transport systems. It's embarrassing. And people will say, well, "Who needs quieter, smoother subways? What we have is fine." Said while yelling because you have to cover your ears to not go deaf on the F train in New York City. And as you have to hold your nose as you walk through the piss-soaked, dark and dingy subway/bus station concourses.
Sometimes I feel like we're witnessing the slow decline of American technology / investment when it comes to public infrastructure.
I'll stick with my Sirius Cybernetics Happy Vertical People Mover, thank you very much. It may be a bit unhinged, but damnit, it gets me where I need to go (well, when it's not sulking in the basement, anyway).