> From the WeatherWatch archives
Feeling too fancy for normal earth-bound existence? A new skyscraper concept would elevate your living situation — literally.
Clouds Architecture Office has unveiled plans for a futuristic skyscraper dubbed the “Analemma Tower.” The building would hover majestically above the ground because it would be attached — wait for it — to an actual asteroid, in space, that is forcibly put into orbit around the earth.
If that’s not enough to digest, consider that your exact address in this pendulous pad could be anywhere on Earth. The tower will be suspended via high-strength cabling from an asteroid and placed in “eccentric geosynchronous orbit”. In other words, it would be always moving — residents and visitors would take a daily journey between the northern and southern hemispheres with a prolonged visit over a main “home” point like New York City or Dubai (it’s always New York City or Dubai, isn’t it?)
Rendering of Analemma passing above buildings in midtown Manhattan
Analemma Tower hovers over New York City
Advances in space tech could make the vision a reality
In 2015 the European Space Agency’s Rosetta Mission successfully landed on the surface of the comet Churyumov-Geraismenko showing that it is possible to interact with such smaller bodies in space. NASA’s “Asteroid Redirect Mission” is scheduled to send a robot to collect a boulder off an asteroid and then place that boulder into a stable orbit around the moon.
An asteroid is relocated into a geosynchronous orbit and affixed with supporting cables to hold the tower below
In like fashion, CAO plans to use an asteroid harnessed with high strength cabling reaching towards earth to hold the skyscraper along its journey.
Analemma Tower’s designer Ostap Rudakevych told CNN that the tower could be made of durable and lightweight materials such as carbon fiber and aluminum. Advances in cable engineering would be needed to achieve the cable strength required to support the structure. Power would come from space based solar panels that have a constant exposure to sunlight. Water for the tower will be captured from clouds and rainwater and maintained in a semi-closed loop system.
As proposed the top of the tower sits at 32,000m and would be expected to reach speeds of 480km/h as it travels through the sky.
How you would hang out
The design leaves some pretty important questions to be answered, like, “What do I do if I want to also have a life on the ground?” “Won’t my family and friends miss me because they will only have a finite window each day in which to see me, and even then, I will be floating above the earth, unable to make contact?”
The upper reaches of Analemma would extend beyond the troposphere
If you have to ask these questions then, we hate to say it, you are probably not ready to live in a huge mobile asteroid tower, but the designers have your back nonetheless.
Rudakevych said he envisions large passenger drones allowing people to move back and forth between the tower and earth’s surface along with cutting edge electro-magnetic elevators moving people throughout the this fantastic vision.
Currently the proposal calls for the tower to be constructed in Dubai which has a long history of building tall and stylish skyscrapers at a fraction of the cost of U.S. based construction.
When asked what inspired such a project, Rudakevych said, “Since humans have emerged from caves our buildings have been growing ever taller and lighter. We believe that some day buildings will break free from earths surface, releasing us from harmful floods, earthquakes and tsunamis.
Analemma Tower is a speculative idea for how this might be achieved some time in the future.”
– CNN.COM
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Before you add a new comment, take note this story was published on 1 Apr 2017.
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Guest on 1/04/2017 9:28pm
So quite apart from the physics involved with building something like this, I can think of at least three issues that they are going to have with this…
1) Geosynchronous orbit. While it is theoretically possible for something like this to be built, it would need to be in GEOSTATIONARY not Geo-synchronous orbit. The reason for this is that the tower would be something in the order of tens of thousands of kilometres long. Thus, while the asteroid or orbital base point might move only a mile or so, the end inside the atmosphere might move several hundred kilometres in the course of a few minutes. This would set up resonance waves in the structure, which would put it under even more pressure.
2) Weather. Quite apart from the issues in the point mentioned above, major storms tend to develop high in the planets atmosphere. These include major electrical, and freezing events, not to mention magnetic storms caused by the sun’s radiation. Such a tower would have to be insulated/protected against the effects of these storms, not to mention the effects that high winds would have acting on the structure at altitude. Again the tower would have to be strengthened almost beyond economic viability to deal with the effects of spending significant time dealing with these effects.
3) Oxygen. Then there is the whole issue of containing and maintaining a breathable atmosphere within the structure. Since anything above 8000 metres (26000 feet) Above Mean Sea Level is invariably fatal to humans, (unless they have life support available, such as oxygen cylinders, or as in the case of international flight, where the aircraft is pressurised to a lower altitude generally around 8000 feet), such an atmosphere would almost have to be produced within the structure itself. That’s a whole different kettle of fish and problems…
4) Orbit again. Once the structure is placed in orbit, it would need some form of station keeping device to keep it where it needed to be. As we would be talking about something with a gross mass of millions of tonnes, not pounds, this would have to be quite something in itself. And yes it would be required, as no orbit (apart from those in a laboratory) is truly static or perfectly spherical or unaffected by external influences such as other planetary motions or even the motion and effects of other orbital bodies. Not to mention the effects of other satellites in lower faster orbits….or are they going to have some form of laser defence system to remove threats from the path of this tower…?
Now I am not any sort of scientist or physicist. In fact most of my points from the above have come from my sci-fi habit. But it seems to me that once again someone who knows absolutely NOTHING about the issues affecting such a design is coming up with wild and speculative designs…and the media is publishing it as being possible. I wish people would actually think about this sort of thing before they go an publish it on the internet, and people who know less about the subject get hold of it and tout it as fact/possible.
Rant over…for the moment.
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Zelda on 30/03/2017 4:42am
damnation, should of read Fantastic!
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Zelda on 30/03/2017 4:40am
A modern day Prison would be great, freedom in space for lowlife not fit for this world.
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