Intamin announces Vertical Launch Coaster model

Oh yeah, there are definitely a lot of assumptions there. But if roller coasters rely on any standardized designs (which I would be shocked if they don’t, at least in part- I seriously doubt they’re redesigning every track piece and support column for every ride and for every portion of a ride) they’re assumptions that I think Cedar Point would want their new engineer to consider. Especially if Intamin is involved, since theoretically they could go back to the original design and see if they have enough excess capacity to carry the trains.

The vertical launch tower shown in Intamin’s new animation is certainly different than TTD’s, but they’re also using two-rail track on the vertical. The additional structure in the tower may be a function of the track used, not the tower itself.

Tyler2012:

I seriously doubt they’re redesigning every track piece and support column for every ride and for every portion of a ride

You shouldn't doubt that, because a friend of mine who does this for a living says the supports are always custom. Why? Because you have to support a dynamic load unique to that ride, and you don't want to use excessive material and add cost. And of course you get all kinds of weird supports even you have to build over other rides or terrain features. Mind you, they write software to do the math, so they're not out there with pencils and slide rules.

Jeff:

you don't want to use excessive material and add cost

This is like 90% of engineering

Engineer's design things to work, not to be worked on. :)

RE: TTD 2.0:

What makes you people think the LSMs are going to be installed on the Top Hat?

Assuming a "swing launch," and then assuming it's even getting Vertical Launch tech, wouldn't they be installed on a straight rear spike?

An absence of any official information feeds the wild speculation. Remember the ideas floated when the ride was under construction before it was announced?

An absence of any official information feeds the wild speculation. Remember the ideas floated when the ride was under construction before it was announced?

Those were crazy times…

Red Garter Rob:

Engineer's design things to work

So you're saying Intamin hires "mechanical artists", and not engineers, right?

Software suffers the same problem, as if it's not meant to ever change.

Well, see, if it were designed right the first time it wouldn't have to change, now would it? 8-)

/me remembers spending hours writing a parser that would convert a web page full of audio file links into a properly formatted podcast XML file because the site owner hadn't bothered to do so...and the day after I finally got the code working, they changed the site and completely broke my code. I'm still after the guy to publish a @#$! podcast link...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Site scraping is a cosmically bad idea.

Yeah, but so is distributing a weekly radio show over the Internet without some method for allowing an automated system to subscribe to it. Even worse when the web site is an unreadable mess that looks like it came out of a Geocities template.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.