From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 11:28:52 MDT
--- Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
> > Now, this *is* smart - almost all the benefits of the space
> elevator, and no
> > need for miracles, either.
>
> "Compared to the skyhook, which is just barely possible with even the
> theoretical best material properties, a tower 100 km high is easy.
> Flawless diamond, with a compressive strength of 50 GPa, does not
> even
> need a taper at all for a 100 km tower; a 100-km column of diamond
> weighs
> 3.5 billion newtons per square meter, but can support 50 billion.
Okay, but can the ground take it? It seems to me that such a massive
tower will need a foundation of significant depth as well, at least 10
km deep, to prevent a Pisa-like foundational failure. This is a serious
drawback to this design versus the skyhook, which is an orbital
structure. Even then, such a tower will cause significant seismic
problems for the area it is located in.
As a reference, I have heard that the collapse of the World Trade
Center created a local earthquake in the order of 2.7 on the Richter
Scale, and the WTC is a structure of only about 100k tons.
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