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San Francisco's 58-Story Millennium Tower Seen Sinking From Space (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from SFGate: Engineers in San Francisco have tunneled underground to try and understand the sinking of the 58-story Millennium Tower. Now comes an analysis from space. The European Space Agency has released detailed data from satellite imagery that shows the skyscraper in San Francisco's financial district is continuing to sink at a steady rate -- and perhaps faster than previously known. The luxury high-rise that opened its doors in 2009 has been dubbed the Leaning Tower of San Francisco. It has sunk about 16 inches into landfill and is tilting several inches to the northwest. Engineers have estimated the building is sinking at a rate of about 1-inch per year. The Sentinel-1 twin satellites show almost double that rate based on data collected from April 2015 to September 2016. The satellite data shows the Millennium Tower sunk 40 to 45 millimeters -- or 1.6 to 1.8 inches -- over a recent one-year period and almost double that amount -- 70 to 75 mm (2.6 to 2.9 inches) -- over its 17-month observation period, said Petar Marinkovic, founder and chief scientist of PPO Labs which analyzed the satellite's radar imagery for the ESA along with Norway-based research institute Norut. The Sentinel-1 study is not focused on the Millennium Tower but is part of a larger mission by the European Space Agency tracking urban ground movement around the world, and particularly subsidence "hotspots" in Europe, said Pierre Potin, Sentinel-1 mission manager for the ESA. The ESA decided to conduct regular observations of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Hayward Fault, since it is prone to tectonic movement and earthquakes, said Potin, who is based in Italy. Data from the satellite, which is orbiting about 400 miles (700 kilometers) from the earth's surface, was recorded every 24 days. The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
Happy or sad that is was not a Trump Tower?
Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
fine prints: "As long as the earthquake tilts it straight and doesn't make it tilt more in the northwest direction"
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Gee, let's build a concrete, 58-story tower on top of landfill. No problem!
It's mortgaged up to the hilt, if Trump Tower did collapse he'd happily take the insurance and run.
Most of his businesses are mortgaged up to the hilt and beyond. It's all dodgy as f*** in there, Bernie Madoff numbers.
http://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/the-8-billion-dollar-man/
Trump tower had another $100 million mortgage taken out in 2012.
40 Wall street has $160 million mortgage against it at 5.71 percent interest, those most recent numbers show it generates $6.49 million in profits, to pay a $9.1 million in mortgage payment. i.e. he's not covering his mortgages.
It's a big mess in there, on the one hand he declared £3.3million from his Scottish golf resort in his election filing papers, but Companies house says he made a £1.1million *loss*.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3832893/Donald-Trump-s-Scottish-golf-courses-lost-9million-year.html
He borrowed $18 million last year against his Miami golf resort "Trump National Doral", bringing the disclosed borrowing (it might be more) to $125 million (to Deutsch Bank), yet his lawyer says its only worth $75.
http://therealdeal.com/miami/2016/08/22/trumps-doral-and-jupiter-resorts-tax-bills-under-scrutiny/
Not sure if trolling or not. Any building built on something other than bedrock is going to settle. Even a building build on bedrock could move up or down due to seismic activity. The settling is going to happen whether the soil is warmer or not, and most of the soil under a building isn't going to heat up very quickly because the Earth is like a big heat sink. Temperature changes very slowly under ground, and seasonal variations disappear as you go deeper.
In any event, the lean is a much bigger concern than the sinking. The lean is caused by non-uniform soil, not temperature. Either there's an underground stream they didn't know about, cavities on one side they didn't know about, or other excavations are causing problems as the owners have accused.
AGW? What's the C for?
And there will be much rejoicing.
In honor of the great Bill Hicks, I propose we name the resulting scenic landscape Arizona Bay.
The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.
Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.
Re:Developers say it is safe? What about engineers?
Don't you think that people have had enough of experts?
After the 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, NZ, 22 February 2011, we can tell you that what you thought was safe, isnt... We had buildings that should have survived the quake, but didnt...
And then we had a 7.8 in Kaikoura, on November 25 2016...I wouldn't want to be within a mile of this building in an earthquake
Wow, mapping a buildings from space with millimeter accuracy. From an orbit 693km high. That's an accuracy of 1:100,000,000 while flying 24,000 km/h.. Crazy. And then imagine the capabilities of really good US satellites aren't even known because classified.
The ESA link to this story: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Satellites_confirm_sinking_of_San_Francisco_tower
Almost as if God is punishing them for something....
Like the rampant drug use, loose morals and homosexuality perhaps?
Nah, the smug.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.
In this context, I would guess "developer" is used similarly to "business development" which means sales. Personally, I would prefer an engineer to make a safety assessment rather than a developer in the assumed context, but I could be wrong about context. I didn't see Millennium Partners engineering firms on the first page of a Google search, though.
Maybe they mean safe in a context similar to "perfectly safe" from Zaphod Plays It Safe.
Look, it's safe until it's not okay, now shut up and get in there.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
The imagery looks like the actual measurements are LiDAR derived.
Similar levels of accuracy are available from the GPS system when differential GPS is used. More information about GPS here:
Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) http://geodesy.noaa.gov/CORS/
It is rocket science, however today not surprising. The really hard part of this is that the data is available in near real time. See the Sentinel mission website
https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/missions.
Any time a building incurs settlement like this I wounder if the foundation layer - likely some sort of clay - is a thixotropic material potentially subject to liquefaction when shaken. Reference Jan. 17, 1995 Hyogo-Ken Nanbu Earthquake:Technical Paper on Liquifaction and,Earthquake Impact on Kobe
It is a pisa something that's for sure.
"When I first came here, this was all a landfill. Everyone said I was daft to build a tower on a landfill, but I built it all the same, just to show them. ..."
Ezekiel 23:20
"It sank into the landfill. So I built a second one."
I'm sure the experts have thought of this, but don't see an answer: is the 16 inch sinking measured from the top of the tower, or from ground level?
In other words, does that measurement include settling within the 58 above-ground stories? I would think that a building that large would have some internal compaction over time, independent of the ground beneath it.
I presume that the ground surrounding the building is deformed downward with the building, otherwise the entrance threshold would have moved markedly compared to the street level. Road crews could probably identify pavement cracks in vaguely concentric rings around the building.
That burned down, fell over, then sank into the landfill.
But the fourth one stayed up. An' that's what your gonna get, lad -- the strongest tower in these islands.
It has sunk about 16 inches...
errr, how many billion dollah landers are you going to smash into Mars before you start using the metric system? this is ridiculous.
The USA hasn't crashed a Mars rover landing(there have been 4 so far)... I believe every lander Europe and Russia has sent to Mars has crashed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This is false: "That does not make sense. Businesses are kept separate for a whole slew of legal and tax related reasons."
No that's not true. He doesn't have money in any of these organizations to lend.
Berkshire Hathaway is all internal loans. Each company within the group lends spare cash to other companies in the group at market rates, and thus earns the interest charged as profits, instead of that profit going to banks. Warren Buffet buys specifically insurance companies, because they're cash rich and can lend that cash to other companies in the group. Insurance premiums are paid up front, but liabilities on the premiums arrive later. Interest earned is kept within the group, simply returning to the Insurance company as profit. Rather than being paid out to a bank. That's what cash rich companies do.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/08/how-warren-buffett-borrows-77-billion-for-free.aspx
Currently Trump's companies shift revenue around. So investment money for one place, travels through the books as revenue in his other companies. Hence the 160% sudden increase in Miami National Doral revenue, without the corresponding increase in room rate or occupancy on that resort. That property is valued at $96 million, his lawyer says its only worth $75 million, yet it's borrowing is $125 million from Deutsch bank alone. A black hole of $50 million just comparing two different Trump company numbers and noticing the mismatch.
Same with the loss making Scottish golf resort, which he claims is profitable in the US figures he gave for that UK business, and yet makes a loss in the UK figures filed at companies house. Again two different numbers for the same thing files in two different places.
All of his businesses are like that. The mature New York buildings which should be debt free by now, are basically bankrupt. e.g. 40 Wall Street has $160 million mortgage, at 5.71 percent, i.e. $9.1 million mortgage and yet makes only $6.49 million profit. It doesn't make enough to service its debt.
I just walked by the Tower and expected to see the foundation slab sunk below the level of the sidewalk, but nothing like that is visible, I wonder why?
There's only so much flex the gas and water and all that can have.. isn't that a gas and/or water disaster waiting to happen?
Right. Because of the use of the metric system. If they'd used real (i.e., US) measurements, it would have been fine. You start sticking in weird furrin' measurements and you have problems.
The problem with the metric system is that it makes the math easy. And anytime the math is easy, you're going to make mistakes. When the math is hard, you double and triple check it to make sure you haven't made some silly mistake.
(Yes, I'm being facetious.)