Terrifying view from glass box balcony jutting out from Sears Tower's 103rd floor

[-Cp]

If you're scared of heights, it may be time to look away now.

Not content with having the tallest building in America, the owners of Sears Tower in Chicago have installed four glass box viewing platforms which stick out of the building 103 floors up.

The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building's Skydeck.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/07/02/article-1196967-058FB3F7000005DC-833_634x431.jpg

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/07/02/article-1196967-058F7B4F000005DC-280_634x424.jpg

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1196967/Dont-look-Terrifying-view-glass-box-balcony-jutting-skyscrapers-103rd-floor.html

[Mr. P]

I'm fine in the cockpit at 41,000 ft but you'd have to drug me to get me on the 103d floor of a building much less a glass overhang!!!

[Abbey Marie]

Yikes. I'm just not that trusting of materials or laborers.

[Little-Acorn]

Just went to the Shanghai World Financial Center today, here in Shanghai, which they bill as the World's Tallest Building, at least until the Dubai Towers get finished. 101 floors all told, not counting the large air space above the 99th. 490-odd meters high.

Go into the section above the air space, and they had originaly made many of the floor panels out of clear (and very thick) glass. Stand on one, and it looked like you were standing on nothing at all. So many people freaked out and screamed complaints, that they replaced the panels with equally-clear glass, but with patterns of small dots. Now you can see you're standing on something, but it's just as clear as the undotted glass.

Spooky. I'm a pilot like Mr. P, and can fly 10,000 ft or more high without trouble. But I get nervous when putting up the Christmas lights on our 2-story house. And this place gave me the willies.

More later about the Hanging Temple in Shanxxi Province. A bunch of monks wanted to build a temple in a river gorge, don't ask me why. But there was only the almost-vertical-sided gorge, and the crashing river below. So instead of looking somewhere else, they climbed the impossibly steep sides of the gorge, somehow drove in solid wood pilings horizontally into the sheer wall, and built a complete temple, hanging above the gorge.

Those were some dedicated people.

Now you can climb up there, the river is much mellower due to 1,000 years of climate change (the real kind) that left the region hotter and drier. And it is SCARY to this Cessna pilot. Worse than the Shanghai World Financial Center IMHO.

Naturally I waited in the SWFC until a number of smaller, slimmer Chinese people were looking my way, then jumped about a foot in the air and slammed my soles onto those clear thick-glass panels with a loud BOOM. Several people yelped, then laughed when I didn't go through. The guard didn't take me away, probably seen it before.

That building is so tall and slim, that it is able to sway back and forth in a high wind. So, to compensate, they have gigantic counterweights near the top that they use as harmonic dampers. If the building starts to sway, the heavy dampers automaticlally move in that direction and essentially push the building the opposite way, stopping the swaying. Quite ingenious. What they do when the damper comes to the end of its travel, I don't know.

http://www.swfc-shanghai.com/html/img/img_vi_message_about.jpg

http://www.allaboutskyscrapers.com/images/shanghai_financial_center.jpg

[Mr. P]

Hey LA! OFF topic.

I just thought to ask..you seem to be posting from Red China without problems..I thought they had some pretty harsh internet restrictions a few yrs back..What's it like now??

[Little-Acorn]

Hey LA! OFF topic.
Party pooper.


I just thought to ask..you seem to be posting from Red China without problems..I thought they had some pretty harsh internet restrictions a few yrs back..What's it like now??

I thought it would be too. But I have been getting internet access in various hotels, and have had zero problems getting anything (on the internet, I mean) without problem. Drudge Report, rushlimbaugh.com, you name it. I was quite surprised, and pleasantly so.

Our tour guide is quite a fellow. 30 years old, father a devoted Communist Party member, he was in the CP program here (you have to be trained from birth, AND get a recommendation from another CP member, then attend LOTS of sessions where they spend hours praising the CP, etc.). He says he got tired of it and quit the program. Now calls himself a half-communist. Personally, I believe he's more conservative than a lot of Americans.

BUT, he said that one of the reasons the CP is losing influence in China, is because young people can get onto the Internet.

I don't know how much internet a regular Chinese citizen can get without getting access to American hotels (some of our hotels were Chinese, actually, but FULL access to everything I could get in America).

If this keeps up, communism in China is doomed. And that's a good thing. The best thing the Chinese have going for them right now, in addition to boundless energy and drive, is the fact that they've already tried communism, and are now trying more capitalistic (i.e. free) ways, and have a solid basis to judge which is better.

That's something Americans are sadly lacking.

Most Americans don't have to swallow cyanide to decide it's a bad thing. Partly because they've been well taugt the truth about it. But that teaching is sorely lacking about communism, in America. That one fact may be ourr undoing.

If China ever passes the U.S. in GDP per capita, or in plain old FREEDOM, our educational system (which includes the everyday media) will be the dominating factor of the disaster.

[Insein]

Yikes. I'm just not that trusting of materials or laborers.

In Chicago no less.

[stephanie]

I'm not one who is afraid of heights..but that glass box...:eek:

great pictures..

[Kathianne]

Having been up in Sear's Tower restaurant many times, I can tell you that you feel the building sway in the wind. Umm, wind is the norm here, especially that high up.

Nope, couldn't get me to stand on that. :coffee:

[-Cp]

A number of years ago I was at the CN Tower in Toronto - they have a section of the floor inside the observation deck that is made of glass.

There was a gal w/ us who was terrified to walk on it - we finally convinced her to step out on it. Once she did, we all started jumping up and down on it.. lol.. she freaked out so badly..

I have some pics somewhere - lemme check..

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/9458/cntower1.jpg

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5450/cntower2.jpg

This pic was taken with the lens of my camera directly on the glass floor - which is why it's fuzzy, but you get the idea... :)
http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/5365/cntowerglassfloor.jpg