HOW HIGH CAN WE BUILD?


How high can we actually build a standing structure on the surface of the earth?. 

       So what is a building?. What is a Tower?. What is the difference between them?. A building is a structure with roof and wall standing more or less permanent in one place where people can live and it has to be habitable. Anything less than that is a Tower which is not build to be habitable but to serve other functions. 
      When the Pyramids of Giza were built in 2560 BC the tallest one was 146.5 meters high making it the tallest thing humans have ever build and they remained like that for nearly 4000 years. It was in 1311 that we were able to build something taller than the Pyramids which was the Lincoln Cathedral in the United Kingdom. After the Lincoln Cathedral surpassed the height of the Pyramids, a number of Churches continued to be build that kept breaking and setting new records.
The next long-term record holder was the Eiffel Tower. It was the tallest thing ever in history that we have built, for about 40 years in a row. It was finally surpassed by the Chrysler Building in NewYork, which was quickly bested by the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building was the first structure ever built by man that was so tall, that if you jump off the top of it, you would actually reach the Terminal Velocity before you hit the ground.
      In the 1950's something weird started to happen. Humans started to build radio and TV towers. These things could be way taller than the buildings that we'd made previously that had to be habitable. Ever since the Empire State Buildings record was broken by a TV tower all the other famous towers like the Petronas Tower, Tapei 101, The World Trade Center, The Willis Tower, The Formerly Sears Tower, none of them have ever within their existence actually held the title of being the tallest 'thing' we've ever build. There was always a radio or TV tower somewhere that was taller. Up until recently, and for quite a while, the record for the thing ever build by humans went to the Warsaw Radio Mast in Poland. Well, that was until 1991, where some workers exchanging guy-wires made a mistake and the whole thing started to bend and then snapped in the middle.
But recently the buildings have made a comeback. The current record holder for the tallest thing humans have ever build is the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The height of this building is mind blowing. At 828 meters (1,716.5 feet) tall, Burj Khalifa is 3 times taller than the Eiffel Tower and twice as tall as the Empire State Building. You can literally watch the sunset from the base of the building, and then take a super fast elevator all the way up to the top and watch the same sunset again.
To put things in perspective The Burj Khalifa is nowhere near as tall as Mount Everest. 
      Then What really is the tallest structure that we could potentially build?. The Tallest Structure that we could potentially build wouldn't be as tall as tall as Mount Everest, it would be way, way taller. Like, into space taller. Of course, the problem with building things that are really tall is that they get heavier and heavier and have to support their own weight. But only up to a point. If a structure was so tall that it wound up the altitude of a geostationary orbit it would start to feel a new force, not just a gravitational force downward, but all of a sudden this new, centrifugal force up and outward. So a building that tall could be stable through tension. And more than 35000 km high. This kind of structure is called "Space Elevator". Unfortunately, there aren't any materials known to science today that is strong enough to make building something that large feasible. With the exception maybe, of Carbon Nanotubes or Boron-Nitrate Nanotubes. Of course, if we went to a smaller celestial body, like The Moon, we could build one today out of stuff like Kevlar. But why build a Space Elevator, well because it is awesome and also for better reasons too. For instance, right now, in order to send a pound of material into space orbit, it costs around 11,000 dollars. But with a space elevator, we could possibly send the same amount of material into orbit for about 100 dollars. The first country to deploy a space elevator will have a 95% cost advantage and will possibly be able to control all space related activities.



Links:

Tallest Structures TIMELINE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline...

Tallest list incorporating building/structure distinction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_...

falling person and terminal velocity: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci...

Space elevator: http://www.spaceward.org/

Youtube (Vsauce): https://youtu.be/GJ4Qp2xeRds







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