That really IS a high rise: Sci-fi plan to hang wandering skyscraper from asteroid orbiting Earth...

www.dailymail.co.uk ^ | Updated: 18:59 EDT, 27 March 2017 | By Stacy Liberatore

[M Kehoe]

Hi.

Wouldn’t the orbit of the asteroid decay with the additional mass attached?

5.56mm

[Red Badger]

Yes.................

[wastoute]

Read “Seveneves”. Great read.

[Moltke]

Never mind that even a “high strength” cable will break just due to its own weight at 50,000 miles length...

[lacrew]

The same type of people who believe in these make believe projects reject a border wall as too difficult to build.

[mountn man]

I’ve concluded that there’s good (not big, but quite livable) money in proposing over-the-top mega-engineering projects. Over the years I’ve seen proposals for:
- a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar, including a 5-mile suspended span
- a single freeway connecting every continent (yes, I said “every”)
- an indoor ski resort in Atlanta (just a 10 minute drive from me)

.

Dubai to build world's longest indoor ski slope

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/ski/news/Dubai-to-build-worlds-longest-indoor-ski-slope/

By Helen Coffey, Ski and Snowboard Online Editor
5 August 2015 • 12:00am

Not content with the 103 or so Guinness World Records it already holds – including world's tallest building, longest handmade gold chain and, oh yes, largest tennis ball mosaic – United Arab Emirates is also going to be home to the longest indoor ski slope.

Plans to build a 1.2km slope in the city of Dubai were announced by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, earlier this month.

It's part of the elaborate Meydan One project, which will also feature a mall, 711m tower, civic plaza, 4km canal and marina with 100 berths. The development will span 3.67 million square metres, and the first stage is due to be completed by 2020. The cost of the project has not been disclosed.

Dubai already boasts Ski Dubai – the Middle East's first indoor snow centre – with five runs, the longest of which is 400m. However, it's not the longest indoor slope out there – and that's just not going to cut it for the record-hungry UAE.

The new proposed indoor ski and snowboard facility will knock current record holder, the Alpincenter in Germany, off the top spot. At 640m, this impressive indoor slope in the city of Bottrop will be little over half the length of Dubai's.

But why stop there on the World Records front? The complex is set to also include the world's tallest residential tower and the world's largest fountain, the latter measuring more than 420m across.

UEA's passion for record-breaking is hardly a secret; Guinness World Records had to set up an office in Dubai in 2013 to accommodate the plethora of record attempts across the region.

[lacrew]

I think you’ve left out a very important component:

Demand.

Are people just itching to live in a space high rise where (according to the article) the only way to leave is by parachute? IOW, who wants to live in a minimum security prison?

Regardless of the technical hurdles, wouldn’t the very first question be ‘why build it?’.

Since there is no good answer to that question (last I checked we’ve got plenty of office space without tethering a building to an asteroid), I am a gazillion percent certain this will never be built.

[Purdue77]

Put an asteroid in orbit about the earth and it becomes a moon. It's no longer an asteroid.

The geostationary altitude is 36,000 km above the earth. That means an orbital period of 24 hours. If you go to 50,000 km above the earth the orbital period for a circular orbit is about 36 1/2 hours.

If I were a satellite owner I'd be concerned about this cable constantly slicing through the geostationary belt.

[Red Badger]

Yes........

[z3n]

"The geostationary altitude is 36,000 km above the earth. That means an orbital period of 24 hours. If you go to 50,000 km above the earth the orbital period for a circular orbit is about 36 1/2 hours."

I'm not an astro-physicist, and I don't even dabble. So I'm probably asking a dumb question but isn't mass of the satellite a factor? In other words, the geostationary orbit of something with the mass of X isn't the same as that with the mass of X(1.25). Wouldn't it need more escape velocity to remain in orbit?

[cotton]

31,000 miles of cable and or top structure. How many tons of cable would that be. What is the weight of the tower itself which must be lifted to the desired height. How is the cable attached to the asteroid, and how large must it be to bear the load. How much does it cost to transport to materials to the asteroid. How much would this all cost in materials and labor. What would the insurance rates for the construction and than the occupied structure be like. Sounds not just implausible and impossible, but kind of expensive to me. I do have a nice inexpensive bridge for you if you are interested.

[camle]

the cost will far outweigh any benefits. like the fools who believe a dyson sphere will be feasable.

[ctdonath2]

Yup - proving the concept is feasible.
That’s the real driver behind some of these mega-engineering projects: sometimes they actually happen. Hence, the proposals keep coming.

[ctdonath2]

“If you build it, they will come.”

[Purdue77]

Satellites in the same orbit all follow the same laws of motion regardless of mass. All objects in the same orbit have the same velocity. Any less velocity and they fall into a different orbit or into the larger gravitational body. Any more and they move into a different orbit.

Escape velocity is a term concerning the velocity of an object needed to escape the gravitational pull of another object. Orbital velocity is the velocity of an object in orbit about a larger gravitational body.

However, it will take more energy to accelerate more mass to a given orbit than it will less mass.

[JimRed]

I quit reading at "Analemma Tower"

Wasn't she a porn...never mind!

[z3n]

So basically, we are going back to Newton in the tower. I think it's different because at the point in the experiment before both objects are released they are being held up by someones hands rather than orbital velocity.

Now can we bring in questions of drag? If you don't just have an asteroid but you have a long 'skyscraper', even if it's exposure to atmosphere at that altitude is relatively nominal, because of it's increased surface area, you may have to nudge your geosynchronous altitude to compensate?

[central_va]

Will it have a Denny’s and a casino?

[Rebelbase]

Imagine an orbital decline of the asteroid and this thing smashes into the side of Mt. Everest at 1000mph.

Cue Sci-Fi movie...

[Daffynition]

Knock yourself out