What if they took the LSM Coaster (S:TE) and put a loop going up the tower like this...
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The O is the loop and it would be much bigger. Wouldn't that be fun
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"Get off of my moor you michtevous weeins." We prefer to stay" (eyes begin glowing) "Your thinking of hurting us." "Now your thinking, how did they know what I was thinking?" " But now your thinking, I hope that's Shepards Pie in my knickers"
Fun: yes
Possible: no
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The Pens will win the Stanley Cup in 2002!
What would be impossible about it
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"Get off of my moor you michtevous weeins." We prefer to stay" (eyes begin glowing) "Your thinking of hurting us." "Now your thinking, how did they know what I was thinking?" " But now your thinking, I hope that's Shepards Pie in my knickers"
The loop cant be vertical like that. If the loop was on the launch section, then maybe.
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Let the bears pay the Bear Tax, I pay the Homer Tax.
*** This post was edited by Coaster Xtreme on 6/25/2001. ***
I just like your drawing!
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WARNING: THIS POST MAY ACTUALLY INCLUDE SARCASM AND OR HUMOR. PLEASE CONSIDER BEFORE RESPONDING.
I don't think it could happen because the loop would kill all the speed and it would stop in it or valley on the way back. Also you would need support on the loop and tower.
People, anything is possible. Remember that funny rumor a few years back about CP getting a 300 foot coaster?
There would be problems, but engineers would fix them, that is what their job is! Supports would be the major problem, which I would guess wouldn't be too hard to fix. As for forces and valleying, they would just have to find the right placement on the tower for it. Not too low so it makes too many Gs, not too high so it might valley on the way back.
See, it is possible. It would be fun, too.
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Everybodys got something to hide except for me and my monkey!
Actually, no it isn't. There is no way you can safely put a loop on a vertical tower. It will either valley, or pull so many g's pretty much kill everyone on board.
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The Pens will win the Stanley Cup in 2002!
The loop would only be possible if it were on a horizontal section of track. If not, the g's would be too intense.
Why is the loop on the vertical tower any different than on the flat? The car is going faster on the flat than on the tower, so the G's would be smaller. If you're going to say that in order to minimize G's the loop would have to be tear drop shaped, look at Taz's Texas Tornado: Perfectly circular loops.
And unless I forgot my elementary school geometry, a circle is a circle, whether it starts from a flat position or a vertical position.
WHY would the forces be too high?? Lemme see your calcs...
If you put the loop on a vertical section of track, the forces going through the loop would be exactly the same as the forces going through the same loop on a horizontal section of track. Even supports wouldn't have to be too difficult. About the only risk would be that the train would come down the tower and not have enough energy to make it all the way through the loop and back out again, with the result that the train would valley...right-side up...in the bottom of the loop. So put an evac catwalk and a winch up there, and that problem is solved...
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
Who wonders why people are so quick to say things can't be done. Probably the same people who said you couldn't go through a Corkscrew inversion with a lap bar.....
Ok, Time to break out the physics... Due to the curvature needed for the car to safely traverse the loop, the loop would be too weak and fall when a car went through. Also while going through the loop, it would generate up to 8Gs. That will probably kill you, if not kill, then you would bleed profusely out of the ears.
Sorry, Mindbender04, you still haven't convinced me.
First of all, the initial challenge is to support such a loop. That doesn't need to be difficult, as such a loop will have to shift to the left or right of the launch track anyway. It would probably be necessary to include structure bridging the launch track, but the earliest looping coasters, the ones with the trusswork, demonstrate an elegant way of handling that.
The next step is to work out the design of the element itself. Vertical loops are dead easy because they have been part of coaster design for so long. The trick in this case is that the launch track leads into a vertical loop, but the pull-out from that loop, instead of pulling out into a return hill, pulls out right into a second loop. But instead of arcing over the top, the second loop just goes straight up at a tangent to the vertical portion of the loop. So what's the problem?
In practice it might prove easier to construct the thing in such a way that the bottom of the loop is actually below the launch track, something along these lines (hope it works...)
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(supports omitted for clarity)
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
*** This post was edited by RideMan on 6/25/2001. ***
Like I said before, it is the engineers' jobs to figure out how to make it work. Anything is possible. Just give it time.
And where are these stats for the Gs comming from? Think about it. Vertical loops have vertical track on it.
What would the difference be if it started looping at vertical or horizontal? There is none! Also, 8 Gs could be produced on a regular vertical loop too. Just add speed. If the train is going faster, it will make more Gs, if it is going slower, it will be less Gs. That means to get the vertical loop on a tower to work, you would need it in the right spot, so your not going too fast though it, but not too slow where you won't have enough speed to get through it backwards.
Also, if it did valley, then RideMan has that problem solved. Anyways, how can you argue with RideMan? He is almost always right. He must have some kind of physics degree or something, because he always makes sense.
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Everybodys got something to hide except for me and my monkey!
Such a loop is perfectly possible and it wouldn't be difficult to plot the coordinates for its shape. The structural supports would look interesting and be relatively expensive. In fact, the top hat maneuvers followed by a vertical spike on some of Premier's coasters aren't far from this, just eliminate the vertical down on the top hat.
*** This post was edited by Jim Fisher on 6/25/2001. ***
As a part time engineer, I would have to say that the support of the loop wouldn't be *that* hard to work out, but it might be expensive, depending how large the loop is and how high up it is. But look at the carnie "Ring of Fire" rides, they dont have much side structure they siply have the bottoms supported. A simple adaptation of a standard truss could hook that up.
And as far as the G's issue think like this, the Mr. Freeze coasters already enter an inversion from a vertical ascent. All you would have to go is make a wider radius for the bottom of the loop. Furthermore, to avoid valleying (and to reduce the speed needed initially) you could have LIMs extending from the exit of the loop to drag the train higher than the top of the loop (ala Mr. Freeze again). Then the train would be traveling much slower in the loop element therefore less stress on both the structure and the riders.
lata,
jeremy
--"I think it's gonna work this time!" (okay yes, I dont care for the IHC but the quote seemed to fit)
You just LOVE Mr. Freeze don't you? lol.
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"Villain-Once You Drop, The Fun Don't Stop!"~SFWoA Rules In 2001~X Marks The Spot In 2001(SFWoA)~With SFWoA ANYTHING Is Possible!
What can I say, it was an ICE ride! lmao
jeremy
--Mr. Freeze: The Coolest Coaster on the Planet
TrBiggar, for the record, my degree is in communication. I went to school for broadcasting, the engineering...if you can call it that...is only a hobby. :)
But you and Jim and Jeremy have the right idea. We're talking about a fairly conventional ride element here; it's just that the implementation is a bit unusual
Oh, and the lateral support on a Ring of Fire comes from the compression cables (which are not supposed to be terribly tight) attached to the top of either side and connected at the bottom to the ends of the mud sills. :)
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
It could be done. Supports aren't the real problem. having enough speed to make it back through the loop would be the problem. There would have to be a second propulsion system right at the end of the loop (what 2HOSTYL said), that would shoot you up the rest of the tower. Then you could let gravity or another propulsion system get you back down and through the loop again. Unless, they could use those psycho-mouse cars. Then they could easily be shot all the way through the loop and up the tower.
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cmiesen
*** This post was edited by cmiesen on 6/25/2001. ***