Couldn't they develop a relay system for their radios?

"Bob says lower it 2 inches down purple monkey dishwasher."

crazydave_w

Osama is somewhere creaming his pants looking at a picture of this...

snoop-blog

It's pretty cool, but seriously, I pass judgment on a construction project largely based on their safety record, and this project seems to have a relatively poor record.

Ike_Skelton

@SprinklesTDD: It would make you want to commit suicide while committing suicide. That's interesting.

Hectorvex

I'm not sure that the engineering challenges in designing, constructing, and using a building will ever compare to those faced when designing, constructing, and using a space craft (and especially the space shuttle) - unless of course you're talking about a space elevator, maybe. Yeah - its a big building - OMG, they had to figure out how to send radio signals from person to person over a distance of nearly half a mile. Not really the same thing as, say, designing something that can propel thousands of pounds of payload to over 17,000 miles per hour and then survive temperatures in excess of 3000 degrees and then do it all over again. Oh yeah, and the space shuttle has to have radio communications with a target moving at 17k miles per hour at a distance of 200+ miles.
On second thought, you're right - pretty much the same thing.

chumitz

trunking radio systems are state of the art 70s technology...

joelja

@Hectorvex: It gets so long that by the time your halfway thru your goin' "GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!"

I can imagine if they gave tours of the building...
"And here we have the spot where twenty workers died trying to keep a support pylon erected. Some say that if you listen closely, you can still hear their mournful cries"

Errie silence...

"BOO! Haha, got you!"

SprinklesTDD

@HellTempest: It'll evaporate before it hits the bottom.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

@takashimiike 3G edition: Ugh don't remind me of that steaming pile of M. Night's. Everyone should've just gone to the roofs of buildings and hurled themselves off for like 3 minutes and just make that the movie all by itself.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

I wonder if I could beat my spit down.

HellTempest

@James: Agreed. Also, have they never heard of Nextel? Even Verizon has push to talk. Maybe they should have gone the LOTR way, and set up signal fires.

@PipeRifle: IIRC, they never leave people in concrete as creates a void, and eat away at the concrete. Also, I believe they are using re-bar cages, so it makes it tough to get caught in a form while pouring.

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

no craptacular nextel/sprint coverage in Dubai eh?

Kaspir

@PipeRifle: Oh yeah, can you imagine all the poor bridge workers stuck forever inside the pylon of a bridge? As for this tower, can you imagine falling off the side and having all of 2275 feet to contemplate your life? A much longer drop than say off the Golden Gate or Skyway bridges...

The view from the top floors must be amazing. I dunno if I'd want a full time window office though..

Hectorvex

@James: Repeaters...That was my first thought, too.

Whats the hard part of that equation? I think this is a first rate case of going around the back of your neck to get to your a**.

DustyButt

It's the bermuda triangle of Walkie talkies. Wonder if cell-phones will work (probably answer is...).
And yea, what are these fatal accidents you speak of?

Simpsons-Movie-ruled

@velvetwoodstock: The Happening.

takashimiike 3G edition

what, did all the walkie repeaters disappear from the world?

UofITom

@PipeRifle: You're not the only one looking to see those accidents.

velvetwoodstock

ever hear of a repeater? [en.wikipedia.org]

James

This is going to sound strange, but is there a list of the fatal accidents you speak of? That kind of stuff always fascinates me. People embedded in the support pylons of bridges, stuff like that.

PipeRifle

Tower of unbabel?

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: Well not NOW, sure. But back in the bad old days, making the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan for example, in the 50s...they SAY it's just urban legend that people are embedded in the concrete, but there are also a handful of "unaccounted-for fatalities" and never-found bodies. Makes you wonder: are you driving over a HAUNTED BRIDGE?!

PipeRifle

dang they beat us in making a tower to heaven! I bet they can see my house from there, i bet they can see every house in the world from there.

vinnyr

"Osama is somewhere creaming his pants looking at a picture of this..."

You would be too if you had an office reserved on the 119th floor like he does.

KIDDING!

But yes...the list of dearly departed, please ?

OddManOut

Several thousand feet of string and a couple of dozen used campbells soup cans?

tamoko

@chumitz: Don't sleep on building what amounts to a small mountain. A building this tall has to compensate for the difference in air pressure between the upper and lower floors. Maintain the proper interior temperature for different floors while resisting the external variations in temp due to the difference in altitude between the top and bottom floors. Not to mention it has to balance millions of tons of weight while taking into account weather possibilities and the difference in angular monentum between the upper and lower floors due to the rotation of the earth.

I probably missed a whole boatload of tech and design challenges for a building on this scale. But it's by no means a cake walk even when compared to space travel.

DustyButt

Can you hear me now?

Noobs-R-Us

@snoop-blog:

this is in Dubai, a country that will deport you for "engaging in behaviour offensive to Islam".

hardly a decent target...

nutbastard

They need to set up a repeater within line of sight of all the floor…….there must be a building top ½ to 1 mile away that would accomplish this.

MiltonCapys

" the difference in angular monentum between the upper and lower floors due to the rotation of the earth."

You're kidding, right?

bandit

@PipeRifle: Or did you eat fish that contained those workers? That's freakier. I always wonder if my fish ate some mobster that went overboard 3 miles out.

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

@DustyButt: I did not mean to belittle a project of this scale. I appreciate that there are significant design challenges involved in building something half a mile high, and am impressed. I just do not think that the challenges are comparable to those involved in getting to space. I am not an engineer, but I play one on the internet.

chumitz

*Cough*Jimmy Hoffa*cough**(Cough* Oh man, I need a cough drop or something.

SprinklesTDD

@Hectorvex: ignoring air resistance and terminal velocity, I get sqrt(2275/16.1) = 11.9s. Versus GGBridge (746 ft) = 6.8s, not that much longer really. Gravity is a bitch.

hc5duke

Or how about trying to shoot someone who's on the top of that building, from the ground? how far does a bullet travel when fired straight up?

snoop-blog

@Curves: Or fill a bunch of Twinkies with bouncy balls and then them over the edge... What a fun and tasty mess that would be.

Rabid Penguin

@Curves: I'd wait for a calm day and obliterate the Guinness world record for paper airplane throwing.

Gann

@nutbastard: It was a joke buddy, can you not watch si-fi without point out all the holes in the plot either? No seriously though, Thank you for explaining that to me, I was confused on why Osama struck us, I thought it was because the trade center was the worlds tallest structure was that not the reason?...

snoop-blog

Terminal Velocity? No 12 story bounce.

Supergeek817

@Curves: Holy shit, me too! I've always wanted to do something like that!

HellTempest

...and the bounce.. is it 3 storeys of b-o-yoing for every 50 storeys (cite: faces of death - yeah, that scene) --- so, what is it about 200 storeys-equivalent? - so we're talking 12 storeys of recoil - wow, if we haven't got full body jello-destruction we could probably get a full storey of secondary bounce off the height of the first bounce... yes. I am that mentally ill to be pondering such stuff... hmmm, but if the ground is made up of that real nice middle-east decorative stone....

designguybrown

I SO wanna take a box of super duper bouncy balls to the top of this thing and hurl them over the side.

Curves

hmmm for 2275 feet, i get a quick calc of about 18 seconds for a flailing jumper to deck out.. yes, well can a person hold a high piercing scream for that long?

designguybrown

It still reminds me of something... City 17, anyone?

atheos

i can't wait for the first base-jump video.

Has anyone done it already?

helldiver

What the fuck is this, ESL day? I can't understand half the comments on here.

I still think that the success of a project is greatly related to its safety record. It seems that this construction project doesn't have all that great a record.

Ike_Skelton

If you jump off the side im sure you would die of old age before dying from the impact.

DarkHavoc99

So I guess they don't really have 26 mile range after all!

markgm

@snoop-blog:

the deadpan nature of text on the internet (and it's wildly disproportionate proclivity for the perpetuation of ignorance) led me to believe you were serious.

apologies, sir.

wink next time!

;)

nutbastard

@bandit: No, from what I understand (IANAE) the CN Tower in Canada has a constant lean of almost 2 inches from it's center line to due to the rotation of the earth. I'm sure the Dubai building has to be constructed taking this into account similarly.

It also comes into account when the building sways. Have you ever seen the experiment of the Foucault pendulum. Eventually it makes an oscillating & rotating pattern on the floor? Thats because of the earths rotation. Building engineers have to account for that too.

Foucault Pendulum: [en.wikipedia.org]

A few CN Tower facts: [www.glasssteelandstone.com]

DustyButt

[en.wikipedia.org]

Interesting read on how it was made and all. It also says it has been successfully base jumped once already.

nthpro

@hc5duke: see, you're falling in AIR so you can't really ignore AIR resistance and terminal velocity. terminal velocity for an average person (without a parachute or other source of external drag) is approx 120mph or 176ft/sec. through the miracle of arithmetic, that gives us a freefall time of 12.9 seconds. in reality, you'd fall for a little longer than that because you'd have to accelerate up to 120mph.

brian s.

@snoop-blog: I'm pretty sure Osama is dead. He has to be. Even American intelligence would have to be able to fairly easily catch a very ill man who requires dialysis three times a week. Just follow the dialysis supplies... duh. So yeah..... he's dead, or the American government doesn't really want to get him to begin with. My last fragile belief in the humanity of mankind requires that I believe the former rather than the latter.

robinandtami

All the steel in that has to really jack with radio waves anyway. I doubt any a persons cell or any other connected device would work beyond a few stores.

As far as the base jumpers, they should charge admission. You want to jump its a million bucks a pop.

rjflyn

@nutbastard: BTW- that wink was strictly A-sexual...

snoop-blog

@nutbastard: ;) ...what the crap my eye got stuck!

snoop-blog

@DustyButt: I just think he meant that the angular momentum does not vary between the bottom and the top of the building. It's the velocity tangeant to Earth's surface that varies. That lean in the CN tower is due to wind drag.

The surface of the Earth moves at roughly 1670 km/h:

Earth's radius (equator): 6378.16 km
Earth's angular momentum: 2*Pi radians per 24h = 7.272e-5 rad/s
Surface speed: R * w = 6378.16 * 7.272e-5 = 0.4638 km/s = 1669.68 km/h
Speed at the summit (let's say 1000m altitude): 0.4639 km/s = 1669.94 km/h
Speed difference is proportionnal to the radius difference between both points: (6379.16-6378.16)/6378.16 = 0.000157%

Doubt it makes that much of a difference...

J. Nadeau

@crazydave_w: Hmmm... Reminds me of 'whisper down the lane' from when I was 7. Hehe.

cmantito

@J. Nadeau: Ah, you'd better get in touch with that website then.

DustyButt

the earth is square

theconqueror

@nutbastard: and yet there's plenty of belly dancing going on....

Noobs-R-Us

I'd never want to work at the top of a building that high. I'd throw up every time I looked out the window.

And yeah, that building/swaying thing is trippy. You can actually feel the CN tower swaying when it's really windy.

Margatron

@snoop-blog: "that wink was strictly A-sexual..."

A sexual what?

GadgetPlay

dont they have walkie talkies for like 30mi? why wouldn't those work?

Charging_Mooses

What kind of crap walkie-talkies are they using? $85 gets you two handsets poweful enough to go 30 miles.

smartboydan has a headache

@Charging_Mooses: i think those are for situations where your outside....or dont ahve many floors between that interfere....

urbanturban666

Yea, this doesnt seem right, as you can get walkie-talkies that go for 5 miles at any electronics store. last time i checked 2,275 feet was less than 5 miles. it could be the steel beams acting like a faraday cage

arrgh406

@yelraf: um, that's "Point Break". Sorry 'bout that.

yelraf

@brian s.: Can't you go faster than terminal velocity? I think they tried this on Mythbusters, relating back to the scene in "Break Point", in which Keanu Reaves jumps out of an airplane and chases down Patrick Swayze, who had jumped before him. The MB's diver, head down and arms tucked to his side, approached 275 mph or so as he overtook and passed the first jumper on the way down.

yelraf

@arrgh406: It may have more to do with the radiation pattern of the transmitting radio. Potentially, you could put a guy with a walkie on the outside of the building, at the top. Another guy, 2,275 feet below, standing outside the door of the building might have problems receivng the signal simply because of the pattern. We used to have a 100 KW FM station in my town that transmitted thru an antenna on top of a 400ft steel tower. If you were within 1/2 mile or so of the tower, you couldn't pick up the signal. My dad was chief engineer of the station and he always explained to me that the antenna transmitted in an "umbrella" pattern that overshot the dead area. But, I'm sure that all the beams and rebar don't help either. So, I guess that I'm not disagreeing with you as much as offering another possible part of the equation.

yelraf

@chumitz: I don't get it; what you've said about the Space Shuttle's communication system in an attempt to compare it to the communication method used by the construction workers do not make much sense, as you are putting something that weighs a few ounces, powered by small batteries, is small enough to fit in your pocket and doesn't cost a second mortgage to own one alongside something that obviously took years to get the hardware and software match up correctly while costing millions, not to mention having a serious weight, power and technological advantage. Oh, and then there's the huge problem with all of the concrete interfering with the radio transmissions, (more than 160 floors' worth) while the Shuttles have relatively clear line of sight to the antenna located pretty much in middle of nowhere in New Mexico. I could probably write an essay here, but I'll leave the rest to your imaginations.

enomosiki

@J. Nadeau: Not to be a "nattering nay-sayer of negativity," but you aren't saying that the drag from the Earth's rotation moving the tower through the atmosphere is causing the building to lean 2 inches are you? Because the air moves too. At the same speed. Discounting climactic factors, of course.

TerminalSobriety

@yelraf: Yes you can go faster than terminal velocity if you have some kind of power source pushing you down, eg upside-down jetpack or something.

Otherwise though, terminal velocity depends on air resistance (because it is the speed at which deceleration due to air resistance matches acceleration due to gravity; gravity is more or less constant while air resistance increases with speed).

If you change your air resistance (eg duck in head, arms to side, to make yourself more streamlined) then you change your terminal velocity, you don't go faster than your terminal velocity.

quen

@TerminalSobriety: I meant wind drag due to climatic factors, not due to the building moving through the atmosphere of course.

J. Nadeau

How long until the first BASE jump?

spazztastic