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posted by on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-why? dept.

Designers Ostap Rudakevych and Masayuki Sono have unveiled a design for a skyscraper that would hang from an orbiting asteroid:

Clouds Architecture Office has unveiled plans for a futuristic skyscraper dubbed the "Analemma Tower." The building would hover majestically above the ground because it would be attached -- wait for it -- to an actual asteroid, in space, that is forcibly put into orbit around the earth.

If that's not enough to digest, consider that your exact address in this pendulous pad could be anywhere on Earth. The tower will be suspended via high-strength cabling from an asteroid and placed in "eccentric geosynchronous orbit". In other words, it would be always moving -- residents and visitors would take a daily journey between the northern and southern hemispheres with a prolonged visit over a main "home" point like New York City or Dubai (it's always New York City or Dubai, isn't it?)

[...] Analemma Tower's designer Ostap Rudakevych told CNN that the tower could be made of durable and lightweight materials such as carbon fiber and aluminum. Advances in cable engineering would be needed to achieve the cable strength required to support the structure. Power would come from space based solar panels that have a constant exposure to sunlight. Water for the tower will be captured from clouds and rainwater and maintained in a semi-closed loop system.
As proposed the top of the tower sits at 32,000m and would be expected to reach speeds of 300mph as it travels through the sky.

Elysium 1.0?

Also at NBC and BGR.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @07:22AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @07:22AM (#486365)

    I think in general this is almost always a well intentioned but not necessarily logical view.

    There will always be other problems to solve. And progress in one area opens up unexpected frontiers in another. Think about how many completely serendipitous discoveries there have been of all sorts. When I was younger I looked on Larry Page's comments that he'd rather donate his billions to Elon Musk than charity as a disgusting example of some sort of cruel greed and example of out of touch billionaires. In reality I was stupid, and he was right. Gates trying to cure malaria is great headlines, but in the end it will be unlikely to change much. The primary source for malaria is sub-saharan Africa which has something like 90% of the cases and 90% of the deaths of malaria. Overcome malaria and the problem shifts to AIDS, or overpopulation, or violence, or regional instability, and so on. And of course this concept is not relegated to undeveloped areas. Now in America obesity and lethargy induced disease have become major issues at the same time that these very people invent ever more issues to be upset and hate and even kill each other over. There will always be problems. And solving one problem rarely makes clear progress, but just opens up new problems.

    And so while I do think we should tackle problems, we are incapable of determining where the major benefits will come from. Even war has paradoxical gains. One can only imagine how many years of human life have been extended by chemo therapy, which was of course was discovered thanks to the World Wars and us trying to kill each other with chemical weapons. And again to be clear I'm obviously not evangelizing war (for any reason) there, but rather emphasizing the serendipitous nature of grand discoveries. Consequently, I think we should never push back against an idea just because it doesn't fit into our myopic understanding of 'progress.' What good could come from people floating around in exclusive buildings above Earth? Well if you think it might be more beneficial than us trying to kill each other with mustard gas, then perhaps something quite grand indeed!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @07:54AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 30 2017, @07:54AM (#486372)

    Thank you for one of the wisest, most insightful, and inspiring posts I've ever seen. You're completely correct. I still wish there was more collective and coordinated effort toward conquering diseases, etc. And probably the truth is that some people are just wired to design asteroid-hanging buildings and may not be great at much else.

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday March 30 2017, @08:56AM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Thursday March 30 2017, @08:56AM (#486394)

      FTFA this guy isn't very good at designing asteroid-hanging buildings either.

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:59PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:59PM (#486489)
    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 31 2017, @04:25AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 31 2017, @04:25AM (#486929) Journal

    Gates trying to cure malaria is great headlines, but in the end it will be unlikely to change much. The primary source for malaria is sub-saharan Africa which has something like 90% of the cases and 90% of the deaths of malaria. Overcome malaria and the problem shifts to AIDS, or overpopulation, or violence, or regional instability, and so on.

    The thing about malaria is not the deaths, but the crippling disabilities. A single bout by itself can cause in extreme causes permanent physical and mental disability. But on top of that, you can apparently catch a chronic form of the disease that results in recurring bouts of illness over the course of decades.

    It's worth noting that most of Gates's targets are of this sort, diseases or parasites that cause long term disability and impairment. These really are beneficial to eliminate even in a high fertility population because they lower the productivity of a population much more than they lower the population growth rate. And wealthy societies are the number one way to reduce a high population growth rate to sustainable levels.