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Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

I hope someone is crazy enough for the Tall Tower project. It is the kind of project the Human Race needs to convince ourselves that we are still capable of getting Big Things done.

If you don't know about it already, it is a project jump-started in part by Neal Stephenson, to build a 15km tall tower.

http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/project/the-tall-tower/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE0n_5qPmRM

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Curious: How do you suggest funding to arrive? What is the net benefit to the stake holders?

Cheaper rocket launches.

Couldn't you just launch off the top of a mountain?

No. Getting into space (starting at 100 km) is relatively easy. Staying in space, i.e. reaching orbit, is the hard part, because you need a very high speed to do this. xkcd's what-if #58 sums it up pretty well.

But even then, 15 km would only be ~5% of a typical low earth orbit (LEO) of 300 km, so ... yeah, not worth it at all.

This tower seems like a truly useless project.

[1] http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/

Cool! That reminds me of the 10,000 year clock: http://www.businessinsider.com/everything-you-need-to-know-a...

Which Neal Stephenson is also involved in.

A tower of you might say, biblical, proportions.

What's the purpose of the tower? It seems like an incredible waste of resources.

The purpose is mainly the idea.

If such a tower were built, it would indeed be a huge waste of natural resources; but it would improve our engineering abilities.

Improve our ability to build useless, wasteful towers? No, thanks.

I'm pretty sure we can improve our engineering abilities in much more constructive, useful ways.

It will reduce the cost of rocket launches by 50% (or double the payload).

But the net cost is higher because of all the money spent on building the tower. Why not just launch from the top of a mountain? Or build the tower on top of a mountain?

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