Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday March 30 2017, @11:03AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday March 30 2017, @11:03AM (#486424) Journal

    Checked TFA, and learned that it was crazier than I imagined from the summary. At the heights shown in the renderings, it will interfere with air-traffic. If you can get the base that low to the ground, a space-elevator is in our future as well.

    If you could build it (big if!), then it would actually be more interesting than a space elevator. That low and you could get very cheap (in energy terms) flights up to the base, but you could also have it meander around a bit, so the total cost of getting to the bottom terminus would end up being cheaper than getting people and cargo to the base of a fixed equatorial anchor point. The energy cost of getting up the elevator would be slightly lower, but not significantly.

    --
    sudo mod me up
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2