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.-- FlyingToaster, Aug 02 2012 (?) 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_20ArcologiesAn old Idea with some similarities to this one. [Vernon, Aug 03 2012] Sierpinski pyramid http://farm3.static...5634_d61c956022.jpgmade, for some reason, out of softball bats and balls (and some sort of metal corner joint). [baconbrain, Aug 04 2012] Not unreasonable.
Actually, just a huge Eiffel Tower built of composites.
Assume for the sake of stability that a 3:1 ratio of base to height is achievable.
So, a 30km baseline. Plenty of places in equatorial regions where land is available at reasonable cost. Africa would be favourite.
So, all you need is a few trillion dollars …-- 8th of 7, Aug 02 2012 more "ginormous wireframe pup tent" than Eiffel Tower, made of large preformed tetrahedrons or the like, joined at the corners.
100km tall, 300x600km at the base.-- FlyingToaster, Aug 02 2012 Might as well make it a city while you're at it. [link]-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 02 2012 ^the link's cool, but that's a filled pyramid, whereas this is almost completely just load-distributing frame.-- FlyingToaster, Aug 02 2012 But... there's so much room for activities.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 02 2012 What happens when the lift breaks down?
<Dave Bowman>
"My God ! It's full of stairs ! "
</Dave Bowman>-- 8th of 7, Aug 03 2012 ^[marked-for-tagline]-- FlyingToaster, Aug 03 2012 Well done Borg-- AusCan531, Aug 03 2012 ^Indeed.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 03 2012 Well, THAT led me on a merry chase to figure out what the hell you were all referring to - alright, carry on...-- normzone, Aug 03 2012 //alright, carry on//
<HAL> I'm sorry [normzone], I'm afraid I can't let you do that. </HAL>-- AusCan531, Aug 03 2012 >750,000 people
>1/47th the population of Toko
wow-- Voice, Aug 03 2012 You could pressurize the inside of the tubes to make them stronger. And live inside them at high altitudes.
I thought we agreed elsewhere that the Eiffel shape was the best for a tower.-- baconbrain, Aug 03 2012 I think that was before my time or during a hiatus.
Yup, same idea.
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.-- FlyingToaster, Aug 03 2012 <Blackadder>
"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit. "
</Blackadder>-- 8th of 7, Aug 04 2012 Oh, Lordy, don't delete this. If only because it explained the Kármán Line to me. And for the wit.
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....
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.
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.[+]-- baconbrain, Aug 04 2012 Now, if you were to construct the entire edifice out of beefed up Segways, then you could move it about to get best positioning.-- not_morrison_rm, Aug 04 2012 [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.
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)-- FlyingToaster, Aug 04 2012 random, halfbakery