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Engineers Develop 'Ultrarope' For World's Highest Elevator
HughPickens.com writes: Halfway up the Shard, London's tallest skyscraper, you are asked to step out of the elevator at the transfer floor, or "sky lobby," a necessary inconvenience in order to reach the upper half of the building, and a symptom of the limits of elevators today. To ascend a mile-high (1.6km) tower using the same technology could necessitate changing elevators as many as 10 times. Elevators traveling distances of more than 500m [1,640 ft] have not been feasible because the weight of the steel cables themselves becomes so great. Now, after nine years of rigorous testing, Kone has released Ultrarope — a material composed of carbon-fiber covered in a friction-proof coating that weighs a seventh of the steel cables, making elevators of up to 1km (0.6 miles) in height feasible to build.
Kone's creation was chosen to be installed in what's destined to become the world's tallest building, the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. When completed in 2020, the tower will stand a full kilometer in height, and will boast the world's tallest elevator at 660m (2,165ft). A 1km-tall tower may seem staggering, but is this the build-able limit? Most probably not, according to Dr. Sang Dae Kim. "With Kingdom Tower we now have a design that reaches around 1 km in height. Later on, someone will push for 1 mile, and then 2 km," says Kim. He adds that, technically speaking, 2 km might be possible at the current time. Anything higher would require new materials and building techniques.
Kone's creation was chosen to be installed in what's destined to become the world's tallest building, the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. When completed in 2020, the tower will stand a full kilometer in height, and will boast the world's tallest elevator at 660m (2,165ft). A 1km-tall tower may seem staggering, but is this the build-able limit? Most probably not, according to Dr. Sang Dae Kim. "With Kingdom Tower we now have a design that reaches around 1 km in height. Later on, someone will push for 1 mile, and then 2 km," says Kim. He adds that, technically speaking, 2 km might be possible at the current time. Anything higher would require new materials and building techniques.
Highest skyscraper is a hell of an expensive way to show your ability to get an erection. How much of the Burj Dubai is even occupied? Or for that matter even the *cough* whatever they're calling it now in NYC which gets a third of its patriotic 1776 feet from a totally nonfuctional dick-waving spire.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
With a magical lightweight power cord, perhaps?
The British already have a twenty mile long extension cord that they use to power the trains going through the Channel Tunnel. They reel it out as each train goes through, and then wind it up afterwards to prepare for the next train. There is no other way to do it, since it is totally impossible to transfer electricity to a moving object through, say, a power rail.
Maybe we should apply this great cable technology to subway trains. I do notice the pits on the third rail. They always have to send some poor guy out to sand them out real quick before the next train comes.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
All the engineers who actually have to build these devices obviously never had the brilliant flash of insight after a few minutes of thought that our intrepid slashdot armchair engineers had, of course!
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.