Say everyone on Earth suddenly decides that we should all work together to build the tallest structure possible. Money and time are no object, but we’re limited to current construction technology and resources – no nanotube cables or diamond bricks.
How high could we go? The existence of mountains like Kilimanjaro suggests that we could probably reach well over 10,000 feet just by piling up granite blocks, pyramid style. Then if there was a steel structure on top of that … .
(For the purposes of this question, height means height from the base of the structure, not height above sea level. And the structure must be static and heavier than air – no kites, balloons, or moving parts. Just stuff stacked on top of other stuff.)
As I said in my last post there, PBS’s Nova had a program on superskyscrapers a few years ago. Several architects and engineers said there’s no upper limit on building height anymore from an engineering standpoint. If you’ve got the money, the building can go as high as you want it to.
If you actually indend for the building to be useful, then logistics are going to be the overriding problem. If your building is 2 miles high, and the elevator ride to the top takes an hour or more, then the people at the top are going to have to live and work there. Commuting anywhere, except to somewhere a couple of floors away, will just be too inconvenient. Star Wars has those mega-skyscrapers on Coruscant that probably house 10’s of thousands of people, but if you think about it, the majority of those people probably spend their entire lives in that one building, rarely if ever venturing outside. Simple logistics wouldn’t allow otherwise.
I can’t open your link for some reason, but I assume that this figure represents an “express” elevator that runs from the ground floor directly to the top. I suppose the billionaire who owns the penthouse apartment might get something like this, but everyone else will have to make due with an elevator that has to stop at dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of floors, and is always packed full of people. Again, actually commuting between the upper floors and the street would be such a pain that it wouldn’t be practical for most people.
before someone corrects me, if we increase the diameter 100 fold, the volume increases 10,000 fold (I asumme the length stays the same).
20,000 gigatonnes seems unlikely
Elevator banks. Ground floor has 10 elevators that service floors 1-50, 2 larger elevators that simply go from 1 to 51 where they open onto another bay that has 10 elevators servicing floors 51-100, and 1 elevator that goes straight to the top. Perhaps it’s a penthouse or merely top offices. Obviously the exact number of elevators would depend on the actual height of the building and the number of people who need to use it but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work.
“Local” elevators that take you to the nearest multiple of, say, 25 floors. On these floors, there are “medium range” elevators that run to the nearest multiple of 500, with stops every 25 floors. And that’s where you take the Express elevator to the bottom, with maybe another 5-10 stops if you’re really unlucky.
Granted, it won’t be 4 minutes, but I’d say it’s probably doable in 15.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed a mile high building, in the early 1950’s. Whether his plan was practicable isn’t clear. But from the engineering standpoint, it was feasible.