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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday August 09 2017, @05:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the wonkavator dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

In the 160 or so years since the first skyscrapers were built, technological innovations of many kinds have allowed us to build them to reach astonishing heights. Today there is a 1,000-meter (167-story) building under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even taller buildings are possible with today's structural technology.

But people still don't really live in skyscrapers the way futurists had envisioned, for one reason: Elevators go only up and down. In the "Harry Potter" movies, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and others, we see cableless boxes that can travel not just vertically but horizontally and even diagonally. Today, that future might be closer than ever. A new system invented and being tested by German elevator producer ThyssenKrupp would get rid of cables altogether and build elevators more like magnetic levitation trains, which are common in Japan and China.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-reengineering-elevators-21st-century-cities.html


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @06:09AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @06:09AM (#550966)

    Going down? Regenerative braking is nice, when there is regenerative braking. If not, we call this "freefall". You'll be fine, until you reach the ground floor.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @06:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @06:15AM (#550969)

    Send only the poorest blackest kids to the bottom to break your fall.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 09 2017, @09:24AM (#551035)

    It would be strange for someone to design an elevator without taking into account the possibility of power failures.

    A conventional elevator has several types [washingtonpost.com] of brakes [howstuffworks.com]. The story doesn't say that these designs will have only one type. Also, the whole point of regenerative braking is to generate electricity from unwanted motion. It could be possible to generate enough power to run the electromagnets so that the descent can be slowed. If not, a battery could make up the difference, or a conventional type of brake, which stops the elevator when power is lost (see Wash. Post link), could be used.