Originally Posted By mousermerf So facsimiles of original drawings put up in a gallery in Epcot itself about the park's first 25 years is not enough proof?
Originally Posted By trekkeruss As I said, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The Disney cruise ships are built in gigantic sections, none of which I would call a ship. But once they are all put into place, they form a ship. Same thing with Spaceship Earth. No drawing about how it was built is proof that it is not a sphere.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Read this online today.... Water is actually made up of hydrogen and oxygen 'molecules.'
Originally Posted By mousermerf But that it is not a structurally a continuous sphere is important though - that's why they made the distinction. They didn't want to mislead anyone.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss <<They didn't want to mislead anyone.>> Okay, so it's not structurally continuous. Aesthetically, would you agree it looks more like a sphere than a dome? If the designers want to say it's two connected domes so they won't "mislead anyone," okay. But IMO it is still a sphere, or spherical in shape. There's probably nothing you can write or show me that will convince me otherwise.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Well duh - they wanted it to look like one, but they couldn't "make" one so it turned out to be architecturally significant in that the solution after year and years of sphere-chasing was the solution used in Spaceship Earth. The big important part of the dome is that you get continuous space without interior supports. That's why the sphere was sought after - but as we see from SSE's solution, it's really not possible, as the table acts as the support one was attempting avoided structurally. If SSE was a true sphere its main support system of the domes/sphere would support the entire weight on the legs directly, not the table. It cannot do that, it would collapse.
Originally Posted By HokieSkipper <<Damn i'm good.>> At what? Being obnoxious? In that case, yes. I agree.
Originally Posted By TempestsPrince Don't know what the Dome-heads are smoking, but this looks like a sphere to me. <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spaceship_Earth_at_night.jpg" target="_blank">http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...ight.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By mousermerf Real spooky haunted mansion: <a href="http://z.about.com/d/gocalifornia/1/0/T/7/3/DL-H-22-a.jpg" target="_blank">http://z.about.com/d/gocalifor...22-a.jpg</a> Real Chinese theater: <a href="http://land.allears.net/blogs/andreamckenna/mgm2a.jpg" target="_blank">http://land.allears.net/blogs/...gm2a.jpg</a> And this lovely REAL castle too: <a href="http://www.callipygia600.com/allpictures/ontheroadpix/2005/images/cinderella_castle.jpg" target="_blank">http://www.callipygia600.com/a...stle.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By mousermerf I almost forgot! Real tree: <a href="http://zoecarnate.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/treeoflifeii.jpg" target="_blank">http://zoecarnate.files.wordpr...feii.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By trekkeruss <<If SSE was a true sphere its main support system of the domes/sphere would support the entire weight on the legs directly, not the table. It cannot do that, it would collapse.>> I don't buy that argument. The table is not there to add support to the dome/sphere. The drawing you posted clearly states that the table is there to support the ride within. If there was no ride, there would be no need for the table.
Originally Posted By mousermerf That's not what the table is there for. That's why the legs go into the domes and attach to the table rather then attached to the other structure.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Correction - i misread what you said, yes it supports the ride/show. But what good is a big empty building? That's the inherent problem with a sphere. It'd have to be empty and couldn't hold anything.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss <<That's not what the table is there for.>> Sure it is, the drawing says so. The legs go into that dome and attach to the table to support the ride. If there was no ride, there would be no need for the table, or for the legs to attach to the table.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros The table is only a table because the ride structure sits on it. If it were simply a spherical shell, they could have gotten the exact same effect for the geodesic portion by simply using a ring around the building to transfer the loads to the legs. The ring could have been build using the same geodesic geometry, but may have required slightly larger member sizes to support the whole structure and the localized stresses. From Modern Steel Construction: "The requirement that the Sphere Structure be totally elevated off the ground posed and unusual engineering challenge. To support the Sphere Strucure loads directly on the legs would have created discontinuities and concentrations of force in the sphere, and would have also destroyed the shell behavior. The solution was to support the Sphere Structure as uniformly as possible at a ring of sphere hubs at the approximate elevation of the tops of the six legs." <a href="http://www.laughingplace.com/Lotion-View-1024.asp" target="_blank">http://www.laughingplace.com/L...1024.asp</a> So, yes, there did need to be something. However, they only used the platform because of the requirement for the ride system to be inside. If they simply wanted a giant hollow spherical shell, they could have done the exact same thing, but without the platform stretching across the inside (creating a diaphragm thatis only needed because of the ride and adds a ton of stress to the outer shell if it's connected), instead just using the same spacing/layout for the members. By changing the member sizes, they can reduce the high stresses near the supports, but still keep the geometry to make it qualify as a sphere under your definition. With the actual construction, it would likely be done almost identical to the original, since there's no real way to balance the entire building off the lowest point. Since the support for the structure is part way up, everything below that point is hanging, and the nearly all members are in tension. It's the exact same principle as how a suspension bridge is a modified arch bridge. It's the same math, same forces, and same shape, but just turned upside down.
Originally Posted By mousermerf <<<If they simply wanted a giant hollow spherical shell>>> Which is why no one ever builds one - a big empty sphere is useless.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros And two domes glued together is somehow more useful? Even though they got that huge space with no supports in it, what was the first thing they did? Put supports in. Yah, they got it to look like a sphere and function as a shell with no columns, but the way that they turned it into a series of small spaces meant that it didn't matter at all that it's a sphere. Functionally, the sphere works as a single shell. I don't know why people had been searching for a full sphere for so long before that, but it had been a goal of the engineering world for years before SSE. Just thinking about it, everybody should know that there is no real practical use for a curved-floor building. Obviously changes were going to be made to make it work. They just wanted a grand entrance and icon for the park, and I really can't think of too many that beat it (though Mt Prometheus after walking under the Mira Costa is a darn good one too).
Originally Posted By MPierce >> Well, 20 something posts to tell me how wrong I was when I was right but none to tell me how right I am when you all were wrong. Typical.. << I wasn't wrong.
Originally Posted By MPierce >> This just in -- Pluto is no longer a planet. << I just thought he was Mickey's pooch.
