Just a thought - reading about the terrible problems that happen because of brain swelling and other deadly causes made me wonder how you could cheat to make climbing everest safe.
If there were power cables and winch points - so you wouldn’t really have to climb - and you were wearing a suit that compressed the outside air back to 1 atmosphere, or at least the pressure of air at 10k feet, you’d be good to go, correct? There would have to be power cables every few hundred feet, and the power system would use sealed nodes that contain special batteries that can operate at low temperatures. Essentially, if there’s a break in the cable, you’ll still have power as long as you have a connection to a node.
The suit would have both an external air heat exchanger (to cool it if it gets too hot) and electric heaters to keep you a nice toasty warm temperature.
Are you asking if being hauled up to the top of Everest in a pressure suit would prevent altitude sickness issues or if it’s practical?
Yes on the first, no on the second.
Note that many if not most of the climbers already take oxygen bottles with them (and as noted in the other thread, those discarded O2 tanks are a big garbage problem on Everest).
ETA - what would the point of that approach be? Every time I fly Southwest I go higher than Everest but I don’t tell people about my awesome trip up into the Death Zone. If you want to see what it’s like in safety and comfort look at the photos and video taken by others from the summit.
There’s not a path or trail up Everest. You have to climb it with handholds and all that other mountain climbing stuff. Put on a bulky pressure suit and it makes climbing that much more difficult.
How difficult would it be to anchor a pulley to somewhere near the summit? Take up a spool of silk fibre, then use the pulleys to gradually take up stronger and stronger fibres until eventually you’re hauling the air and power hose. You’d probably have to do it in stages.
Besides the utter impracticalities of it, climbing Everest is supposed to be mountain climbing! Not a carnival ride. There already exists a cottage industry of experienced mountaineers who, for $30,000 or so, will ‘lead’ complete dilettantes to the summit. Which can (and often does) include nothing less than them literally carrying them there and back!
A large percentage of the deaths have been due to this, and the answer is not to make it more encouraging for the inexperienced to try.
(Bold added.) Well, then they can certainly carry all those corpses back down too! Problem solved! Okay, I’ll give you that they should only be expected to bring down one at a time.
Or install that kinda-sorta-zip-line with the helium-filled body bags. No problem lugging all the telephone poles up the hill to place every 0.1 miles along the way. With modern technology, you could just use 3-D printing in-situ to put them there.
I would so sign up for Everest: the carnival ride!
Other ideas:
Everest: The Carnival Ride: The Musical
Everest: The Corpse Pile Toboggan Slide…of DEATH! in IMAX 4-D Cinerama. Brought to you by Red Bull. Red Bull gives you wiiiiiiings!
I could go on, but i have patents to pend on all of the above…
For that matter, modern helicopters can reach the top of Mt. Everest. So if you’re going to ‘cheat’, why not just ride a helicopter up there, take some pictures, and ride back down again?