One day, it might be possible to travel the world without even leaving work—and not on the Internet, either. An architecture firm in New York has designed a building that would hang from an asteroid that orbits the Earth.
The building’s lowest point would be 20 miles in the sky and the asteroid from which the tower would be suspended would orbit about 31,000 miles up. It would orbit the Earth in a figure eight once every 24 hours. The proposed path would take the tower from New York City to Atlanta, Havana, Panama City, Cartagena, and Medellin. Its southernmost point would be off the coast of Peru, and then it would loop back up to the north.
Called the Analemma Tower, the proposed building uses a principle called a Universal Orbital Support System. The skyscraper would be suspended from the asteroid by means of high-strength cables.
It would be moving at its slowest at the top and bottom of its loop, and that would be the time when people could get on and off the building, packages could be delivered, and other matters of day-to-day life that require contact with the Earth could be conducted. Dining, shopping, and entertainment centers would also be located at the bottom of the tower.
The Analemma Tower would contain residential areas, solar panels, greenhouses, offices, and even a funerary section near the top. It’s designed to effectively be a community, in one building, hanging from an asteroid and orbiting the Earth.
Sure, this sounds like science fiction—and at this point, it is. But NASA is planning an Asteroid Redirect Mission for 2021, in which they plan to capture and relocate an asteroid, which so far hasn’t been done. So, the idea, while speculative, isn’t impossible.
There aren’t any plans to move forward with the Analemma Tower project, but that didn’t stop the architecture firm from proposing that the tower be built in Dubai, where construction costs are lower, and then moved to New York.