h a l f b a k e r yWhy not imagine it in a way that works?
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Spaceframe Mountain
mfd - redundant (see [Vernon]'s <link>) - kept only for the smartass remarks. | |
Both Mount Everest and Mauna Kea are 10km high and neither appear to be in any danger of falling over anytime soon.
Postulated is that a spaceframe could be made, with the same load-carrying attributes as granite, at less than 1/10th the weight per unit of volume. So...
the Idea is to build a giant
tubular-frame mountain 100km high. 100km is the altitude where you'd have to be travelling at orbital velocity in order to get any aerodynamic lift (the Kármán Line). Sounds like a good place to build a few hundred kilometers of mass-driver andor anchor a space-elevator, both free of wind-drag.
To mitigate the effects of wind-drag on the mountain itself, hot or cold air is blown through the pipes to expand or contract sections accordingly.
(?) http://www.geekwidg...ga-city-pyramid-346
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 02 2012]
Space Mountain
[xaviergisz, Aug 03 2012]
Space Scrapers
Desert_20Space-Scraping_20Arcologies
An old Idea with some similarities to this one. [Vernon, Aug 03 2012]
Sierpinski pyramid
http://farm3.static...5634_d61c956022.jpg
made, for some reason, out of softball bats and balls (and some sort of metal corner joint). [baconbrain, Aug 04 2012]
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Actually, just a huge Eiffel Tower built of
composites. |
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Assume for the sake of stability that a 3:1
ratio of base to height is achievable. |
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So, a 30km baseline. Plenty of places in
equatorial regions where land is available at
reasonable cost. Africa would be favourite. |
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So, all you need is a few trillion dollars … |
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more "ginormous wireframe pup tent" than Eiffel Tower, made of large preformed tetrahedrons or the like, joined at the corners. |
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100km tall, 300x600km at the base. |
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Might as well make it a city while you're at it. [link] |
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^the link's cool, but that's a filled pyramid, whereas this is almost completely just load-distributing frame. |
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But... there's so much room for activities. |
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What happens when the lift breaks down? |
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"My God ! It's full of stairs ! " |
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Well, THAT led me on a merry chase to figure out what the hell you were all referring to - alright, carry on... |
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<HAL>
I'm sorry [normzone], I'm afraid I can't let you do that.
</HAL> |
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>1/47th the population of Toko |
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You could pressurize the inside of the tubes to make them stronger. And live inside them at high altitudes. |
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I thought we agreed elsewhere that the Eiffel shape was the best for a tower. |
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I think that was before my time or during a hiatus. |
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I may have to fall on my sword on this one, but I'd hate to lose [8/7]'s m-f-t: he musta been saving that one up for years. |
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"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's
spontaneous and it's called wit. " |
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Oh, Lordy, don't delete this. If only because it explained the Kármán Line to me. And for the wit. |
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There's a new lightest-substance-ever in the news. It's expensive, of course, but your mountain could be built like one of those fractal pyramids. I've got to look that up.... |
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Sierpinski (I can't get the original orthography to work) invented the triangle made up of smaller triangles, somebody at Burning Man made a pyramid. Linky. |
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Notice that a tetrahedral pyramid gives you a straight edge for a linear accelerator aimed over at an angle, whereas an Eiffel is all bendy and would fire things straight up. A domed mountain shape would arch your launcher over toward the horizontal at the top.[+] |
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Now, if you were to construct the entire edifice out of beefed up Segways, then you could move it about to get best positioning. |
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[re: linear accelerator]//straight edge// is fine for short ballistic shots but not for "to orbit" where you actually want to take off horizontally.
//[convex] curved// would squish everything to the top of the vehicle with extreme prejudice.
re: Sierpinski link: yeah, something like that. |
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The Eiffel tower gives credence to the fact that for every doubling of height you need to quadruple the area of the base (or something like that): the bottom edge of the mountain might be close to horizontal. Either way you could stretch it lengthwise to make a nice long top platform (quick visual a bunch of Eiffel towers in a row with scaffolding across them) |
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