The space launch catapult is a popular topic. Launch from a mountain is often part of the equation. I have read that a one-mile tall building is quite possible. So just how tall a launch structure could be built?

there was a concept for a mile high building.

The Burj Dubai is worth a search. It will surpass that ugly "Freedom Tower" concept.

Petronus already surpassed WTC

No building is going to aproach the height of a decent-sized mountain. Find a mountain near the equator that has an ocean (or largely-unpopulated area) nearby to the east, and you have your ideal launch site both from a delta V perspective and from a safety perspective.

IIRC, Frank Lloyd Wright proposed a 2500 foot building in Chicago, but the idea was scrapped after someone calculated that there would be a severe bottleneck on the elevators. It would take 3 hours or some such for everyone to get to their floors and then 3 more hours at the end of the day for everyone to get back to ground level.

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You can get a mile or two up with a passive structure. Buildings are already starting to use active and semi-active stabilization. If you want something tall and thin, you'll need active stabilization to go up a few miles. With advanced materials and active stabilization I've read suggestions that a building could be tens of miles high.

Beyond that you would need something like the space fountain:

http://www.answers.com/topic/space-fountain

which we aren't going to build soon. But in theory, it is possible.

Better have a good transportation system though. As jfribrg mentioned, conventional elevators won't do. You probably would need a system where multiple cars can share a tube, and can shift between tubes - a true vertical transportation system. Turbolifts, anyone?

How about this, a 1Km high solar power tower!

http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,66694,00.html


(That's it, computer going off now, will return after the invasion of Florida, bye for now folks! )

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The launch structure could be built on a mountain. Maybe Mauna Loa in Hawaii would work.

Aren't the Hawaiian islands too geologically active for that?

That's the real problem: beyond a certain height, so much of a building is taken up with infrastructure that it's no longer cost-effective. I read somewhere that a mile-high building would only be practical if people could be persuaded to wait as long for an elevator as they do for a subway train.

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Certainly, but one of the WTC buildings was the world's tallest only for a month, as it was quickly eclipsed by the Sears Tower. I've lost track of these things, I don't know if the new building in Taipei is open.

A buildiing can be as tall as you want, providing you have the money to spend on constructing it. We know enough about load bearing structures and their geometry's to build them as high as we want.

It's just not practical to build them that tall.

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Eagle Eye Observatory

Some levels could have homes, schools, parks, and stores. People would stay near their home levels most of the time and come out of the building only for vacations. There could be bridges to other tall buildings nearby. Rich people on the upper floors would come and go by helicopter.

Will tall hotels superstitiously skip the 666th floor like they skip the 13th floor now?

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I do not think so. There are many observatories there and there equipment is expensive and sensative. In fact the street lights in the town on the big island are special yellow to minimize light pollution for the observatories.

Dare I say it "The sky's the limit". (insert groans and rimshot here)

Using 20 ton stone blocks like the pyramid, and an even bigger base area, what's the theoretical absolute maximum height that the ancients could have reached a la Tower of Babel, assuming no manpower, stones and construction problems.

Either that, or perhaps the 616th floor.

Adding to the confusion is how you decide to define "tallest". If you defined it as highest rooftop, then Petronus was tallest. If you included spires, then the Sears Tower was tallest. If you limited the height to that of the highest usable floor, then WTC was tallest. [I don't know how Taipei fits into this list either.] Also, this only includes "buildings" --- I think there are radio towers (some with observation decks partway up) that are taller than all of these.

Yeah, but imagine the cost of lugging all those construction materials up a mountain.

Most of the gelogic activity is on the big island of Hawai'i. Which is where the Keck observatory is located, yes. However, it's a short, squat building, which makes it resistant to earthquakes and such in ways that a tall, thin building would not be.

And, frankly, there aren't that many viable, dormant volcanoes/mountains to build on there.

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Good point

Muana Loa has heavy use roads.

It would depend on how much the launch system was used as the cost could be spread out over all the launches. If there were only a thirty launches then maybe not, but if there were 5 million launches maybe it would be worth it. With the size of the structure we are talking about. The acceleration would probable begin far below the mountain. If part of the accelerator were built first perhaps it could be adapted to transport the building material up the mountain.

I think the original post meant to refer to Mauna Kea, which is where the obsrevatories are. mauna kea is probably not extinct, but it is near the end of activity and it may be thousands of years between eruptions.

Mauna Loa, while almost as tall as Mauna Kea, and a much more massive mountain, is still considered active and erupts every 20 years or so.

See here for more:
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/