From: Joseph C Fineman (jcf@world.std.com)
Date: Tue Jul 20 1999 - 17:15:04 MDT
On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Ron Kean wrote:
> A practical problem with very tall office/residential buildings is
> that the overhead associated with servicing the upper floors takes
> up so much space on the lower floors, and costs so much, that the
> building becomes uneconomical. Many elevators must be provided, for
> example, to service a very tall building, as the occupants would not
> want to wait 40 minutes every time they want to take an elevator.
And, N.B., every shaft needed to serve an additional floor takes up
space on _all_ the floors below, so that the space lost to elevators
per added floor increases with the height. Eventually a point is
reached where the space added by going up one more floor is canceled
by the decrease in usable space on the floors below, so that nothing
is gained -- *assuming* that the idea is to create usable space. If
you are just trying for a height record, no expense spared, then
presumably you can do at least as well as the natural relief of the
earth's surface, and if you imagine another order-of-magnitude
increase in the strength-to-weight ratio of the materials, then of
course the sky's the limit.
--- Joe Fineman jcf@world.std.com
||: Take it easy, but take it. :||
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