New material enables 1,000-meter super-skyscrapers

The Register ^ | 18 June 2013 | Rik Myslewski

[ThomasThomas]

[Red Badger]

The closer you get to the center of the earth, the lighter things are..............

[Red Badger]

Most elevators have four walls with graffiti.............

[Raycpa]

I think elevators are not all the issues. Utilities -water, power lines, air, fire suppression etc all converge at creating space demands the higher one goes.

[MHGinTN]

Actually, it looks like it’s darker down there ... until you break through the mantle.

[Red Badger]

Then you won’t need an elevator. The magma will shoot you up....................

[Mr. K]

serious question: Why dont elevators have gears along the shaft, and an electric motor on the car itself? (no rope)

[thackney]

The closer you get to the center of the earth, the lighter things are..............

If you go deep enough to become noticeably lighter, you are going to have some more significant problems than weight.

[Red Badger]

Keeps the zombies out.............

[treetopsandroofs]

“He provides some rather staggering stats about steel rope versus its UltraRope. For example, at a building height of 500 meters and with an elevator large enough to hold two-dozen souls, the total mass in motion of a steel rope-hoisted lift system would be 29,000 kilograms. The same system equipped with UltraRope would total a mere 12,800 kilograms.
.... but if you extend that building height to 800 meters, the steel-rope weight would increase to 108,600 kilograms, while the UltraRope-based lift system would rise only to 13,900 kilograms.”

12,800 kg for 500 meters is 25.6 kg/m.

An additional 1,100 kg for 300 more meters?

Now it’s 3.67 kg/m.

Why is “UltraRope” so much lighter per length measure after the first 500 meters upwards?

What am I missing here?

[ForAmerica]

Resident Evil comes to mind.

Loved that game, the first and second one.

[Red Badger]

Gonna need a bigger air conditioner.................

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Well sure. Of course. But the implied premise of the article was that it was max elevator height that was THE bottleneck.

[ShadowAce]

I’ve wondered that myself.

[ShadowAce]

You’re not taking into account the weight of the car and people, which is constant in both measures. The weight of the rope is the same, but as you string out the steel cable, there is more weight due to more cable.

[Norm Lenhart]

The infrastructure/motors etc.

[treetopsandroofs]

Ah, ok, thanks.

[MHGinTN]

Don’t know, but I’ll bet it has something to do with regulations from a bureaucratic buffoon agency.

[thackney]

Not to mention dealing with fluid pressure from the exterior...

[Pearls Before Swine]

If I’m getting this, they could build taller skyscrapers today if they were willing to have two elevators—one from the first floor to 500 meters, and the second from 500 meters to the top. But, that would be too uncool a design, so it isn’t done, and has to await an improved, ultralight, high-tensile elevator rope that can do bottom to top in a single run.