What is Digg?68 Comments
- RuffRidr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+49Take that South Dakota!
- ralf1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+45Lets see - 85 mile radius coverage area, so 22K sq miles. In the Dakotas that means this tower serves what - 19 people?
- anonyjames, on 10/12/2007, -0/+37And all 19 of us are proud to have excellent TV reception.
- doctorperv, on 10/12/2007, -0/+27If you threw Takeru Kobayashi from the top of the KVLY tower he could consume 4 hot dogs before eating the pavement.
- drlha, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19If you melted down the raw materials from the KVLY tower and made it into a 1 millimeter thick wire it would stretch around the world 175.34566 billion times.
- Jwoey, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22if you wanna get banned!!
no im kidding you can. - gravylookout, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17I've lived in Fargo, ND for almost 4 years and I've never seen it. Go figure.
google maps satalite image (You can only really see the shadow)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=mayville,+ND&ie=UTF8&z=17&ll=47.342116,-97.28901&spn=0.004355,0.011147&t=h&om=1 - MaddDog, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16Note that the Warsaw Radio Tower was taller than the KVLY-TV Tower, until it collapsed in 1991. Wikipedia has a fantastic compilation of the tallest supported and freestanding structures here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_tallest_structures
- VeganG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14"The tower was assembled in 33 working days by an 11-man crew with no casualties."
That's probably the most impressive fact on that page. - tas246, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Agreed...
"If a 20 second commercial started at the same moment a baseball was dropped from the top of the KVLY tower, it would end nearly four seconds before the ball hit the ground. "
How about..
"It would take a baseball nearly 24 seconds to fall from the top of the KVLY tower" - piesforyou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Mt. Everest is a structure of sorts. But If you're going to think of it like that, then really the biggest structure on Earth is The Earth!
- evilTak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10That's it! Construction on a new radio tower will begin in Sioux Falls ASAP!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Whats funny is the guy that is leasing them the land is so close he probably cant get a decent signal because its too tall and as we all know the closer you are to the bottom of a tower the worse the signal gets
- eldar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Hey PaulOwen, everest is NOT a structure. A structure is something BUILT. Everest is a mountain. But to console you some, I have awarded you the dumb-***** of the day prize.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10you know it sucks living in this day in age i remember by grandpa telling me stories like when i was a kid we built a shed for the horses and we lost 47 men................now we build a tower thats 2000 feet tall and no one dies
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10What do you mean by fellow North Dakotans. You've already mentioned your family. Who else is there?
- Chompy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7The tidbit about how long a hunter would have to lead the goose he was shooting at was the best, methinks.
- sjbdallas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Too much of OUR money.
- LukeSkyWRX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+833 days to assemble it is pretty impressive considering they used 11 men, I am skeptical about the wrench falling at 250mph. i calculated the same number using potential energy so with air resistance it cant be that fast.
sorry im a nerd, but i hate when people use "idealised" physics to make impressive facts.
your friendly internet ceramic engineer
Luke - ektar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Where did you get that number because 175 billion times seems way to high to me. Here's my rough estimate:
The article says the tower weighs 864,500 lbs. Steel weights .283 lbs per cubic inch, so that means there are approximately 3,054,771 cubic inches in steel in that tower (864,500 / .283). One cubic inch equals 16,387.064 cubic mm, so thats 50,058,727,900 cubic mm (3,054,771 x 16,387.064). If you were to make a 1 mm thick line out of that it would be about 63,736,805,800 mm long (50,058,727,900 / pi x .5mm^2). (Area of a cylinder = pi x r^2 x height)
A line that long would get you around the world a little over 1 and a half times, since the world's circumference is about 40 billion millimeters (40,000 km).
Did I miscalculate anywhere? - Petrarch1603, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I lived in Grand Forks, there's a sign on the highway (at least there was when i lived there) that said it was the tallest structure or some-such
- elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Based purely on the simplest math you can possibly make of that, that means that ONE person working 8 hours/day on it can complete it in about a year.
Crazy. - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm not impressed. It's one thing to build up an economy to US / Japan type levels, it's an entirely different matter to find that you happen to be sitting on an oil field.
- StephenChow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"@StephenChow
Fargo is in North Dakota btw"
Most of it was filmed in MN you damn fool - aviazn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I've flown past it when I was a commercial aviation student at UND in Grand Forks. Go Sioux!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4added that fact to the Wiki
- jlunski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I just knew we had to get a record for something other than being so God forsaken cold in the winter. I lived in Grand Forks from 0-25 years old, been away for 9 years and live in Sioux Falls now but want to move back to GF or Fargo be closer to family again. Any fellow Nort' Dakotans got any job leads for a PC Support Specialist?
- MrMysterious, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Who hunts geese with a .45? I'll stick with my airsoft guns...now that takes skill!
- Xinareiaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Dubai
thats going to be significantly taller and is an acual sky scraper.....Dubai has too much freakin money. - felchdonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you melted the materials to a 1 micrometer thick wire, you could stretch it 1.75 TRILLION times.
I think. There's probably some 3 dimensional issues with volume that mean it's not a simple matter of multiplying by ten. Or is it? My tiny brain hurts. - elnerdo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If you were a good nerd, you would SHOW YOUR MATH here so that we know you're not just making up bull.
- rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The Murjan Tower, proposed for construction in Bahrain, will be 3,353ft. high.
A tower proposed for construction in Kuwait will be almost as high, and is being designed so that it can be added to, keeping it the tallest in the world over time.
The Solar Tower to be built in Australia will be 3,821ft high. There are a few more skyscrapers in the works that top 3,000 ft.
FYI, in 1966, R. Buckminster Fuller was contracted by the owner of Nippon Television Network Corporation to do a design feasibility study for a 12,250-foot-high observation tower - higher than Mt. Fuji. The budget limit was $300 million.
Fuller and his team found that such a tower could be feasibly and safely built with that era's technology and materials, but not for that budget, so they came up with a design for an 8,000-foot-high tower that they could build for under $300 mil.
The tower would have handled icing one foot thik covering its entire surface, wind loadings of 250mph, protected used areas below from falling ice, and would have featured five-story-high pressurized elevators - and included helicopter rescue provisions from the top. It was to be called Tokyo Tower.
Unfortunately, IIRC, his patron died before the project could be greenlighted. You can see the blueprints in Fuller's book "Critical Path".
(He also designed a mile-high translucent geodesic dome that would cover the entire island of Manhattan, but that's another story...) - guytoronto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Guy wires are for wimps. Long live the CN Tower.
- jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5PaulOwen you are wrong
I dont think a mountain classifies as a structure and if it does then Mauna Loa would be the largest.
It located in Hawaii, google it if you want more info. - licoricewhip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I remember that. It was in NW Minnesota just spitting distance from GF. The recorded temp was ~-60 at that location. The conditions were so ripe ... clear skies, hefty snow cover, and bitchin cold air spilling down from Canada. Even at a more common -20, it is downright uncomfortable and your nostrils crust shut in seconds. I just can't imagine -60. I also can't imagine that there are people that live and survive in that as a normal climate during the winter. I'd say hats off to the Canadians for that, but, they might frost their brains.
- licoricewhip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It's not THAT cold here. Sure, there are the occasional -30 or -40 degree days in January/February, but, nothing unmanageable.
We North Dakotans get a beatdown by Canadians for making this a big deal, though! - wetard57, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2ROAR i live here my life didnt know that ^_^/ also fargo has 100,000+ in the metro area :P
- fourzerofour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I knew it was something outrageous like that, I wasn't saying that America would or will do something like that, I was just putting $8 Billion into perspective. Thanks for the actual figures.
- matthewaaron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2...
- eth3l, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, Dubai has to do somethign with that oil money and to spur investment becasue Dubai's oil will run out in about 10 years. Secondly, @fourzerofour regardless of the cost of the Iraq war the government cannot spend its money on buildings like this. Private developers here in the US, like Trump, would develop this project. The government can build federal buildings, and I doubt they would be so ambitious, or they can incent such projects through tax breaks. State and local governments can incent this kind of development through TIFS and other methods - but really, only private investors can develop a Burj Dubai type project.
- DeletedUser, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@ fourzerofour
The total budget for the Department of Defense, is around $440 billion to give you an idea.
(and an additional $36 billion for homeland security.) - aclements, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ok, you're right, it is only 248mph, not including wind resistance.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGGL%2CGGGL%3A2006-30%2CGGGL%3Aen&q=g+times+sqrt+%282+times+628.8+m+divided+by+g%29+in+miles+per+hour&btnG=Search
However, wind resistance on something like a wrench is almost negligible as the density is high and surface area relatively low. - jakebechtold, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1For everyone who says you can see the tower in Fargo, it's acutlly near Hillsburo,ND , but nobody knows where the hell that is so they say it's in Fargo.
And for the book, I've lived in the fargo area for 13 years. - littlebylittle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Home of The Ed Schultz Radio Show!
- tweak13, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1There are no less than three towers within 10 miles of where I live that are within a few feet of the 2,000 foot level. The extra 63 feet on this tower doesn't seem that impressive when I drive past those beasts nearly every day. I still do some part time work for a public radio station with an antenna at the 1,500 foot level of one of those towers. It still impresses me that 100,000 watts can give a coverage area with a 90 mile radius if you just get your antenna high enough.
- Endoquixote, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3No way, you are all wrong the biggest freakin structure there is is the north pole
- jmchez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Fuller always thought big, really, really big!
- alski707, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I’m surprised no one linked the wiki article, has some slightly better pics as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVLY-TV_Tower - jlunski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@licoricewhip - I remember once upon a time Too Tall Tom was on the Today show, it was so cold in Grand forks that he took a boiling cup of water, tossed it into the air and it crystallized before it hit the ground. :)
- roadkillrampage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Take a look at the photos of some of the towers in the Yahoo group called "Tower-pro"
Although they don't have this one, they have some pictures of guys on towers covered in ice at the top of a tower as well as some other really high towers with guys on top. -
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