The Coiling Dragon Cliff skywalk in China with a glass floor through which you can look down 4,600 feet.
The view seems like the view from a plane. Would you enjoy riding in a plane with a clear floor?
August 22, 2016
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Yes.
And tangentially, these look cool, too.
With Chinese glass? I don't think so.
I get out of my seat and hug the ground after looking at such photos.
Would you enjoy riding in a plane with a clear floor?
Absolutely!
They should take off the railings.
Curious George said...
With Chinese glass? I don't think so.
3,500-Ft-High [Chinese] Glass Walkway Cracks Under Visitors’ Feet
Grand Canyon Skywalk
Last I heard the Indians had stiffed the guys who built it.
Would you enjoy riding in a plane with a clear floor?
If it's good enough for Wonder Woman it ought to be good enough for you, Professor.
1) I would love to ride in an airplane with a glass floor;
2) Unless that airplane had been engineered and/or built by the Chinese.
My immediate thought was "nope, noppity nope, hell nope". My next thought was "someone had to build that".
Heights used to never bother me. As I've gotten older that has changed. I don't obsess about falling - it's the landing I dwell on. Shudder.
Yewbetcha, for sightseeing, but especially for combat.
I took MIL sightseeing in a puddle jumper some years back. She pointed out some scenery she'd like to get a better look at; a see-through bottom would have been more comfortable for her than my having to stand a bit on her wing to give her the view she desired.
Eric Hines
I remember reading a long time ago, I think by someone having gone through WWII paratroop training, that there was something psychological about heights and being connected to the ground - standing on a tall tower being scary, or even in a balloon basket tethered to the ground, but flying free in an airplane was just fine.
Is that beam rusting already? How deep do those bolts go? If one gives way, how many more will peel off? What is the seismic activity in that part of China?
Things you can think about to keep your mind off the fear.
For Althouse it would be the thought of having to fly to China.
How many people is that safe for?
Is that number in Chinese people or in American tourists?
These people totally get it.
I remember the glass-bottomed boats at Silver Springs when I was a kid and the water was actually clear down there. No longer.
This is nothing like that, except for the glass floor.
My stomach flips when I look at the picture. Nope.
I couldn't say where this starts, at what altitude, but from the altitude a plane normally flies the instinctive perception of a potential fall decreases radically to virtually nil. Studies done in the early 1960's showed that babies as young as four months recognize and fear a fall when placed on a glass floor. Control runs with other primates, infant chimps and rhesus monkeys, showed some interesting results. Chimps would tolerate higher glass floors than humans but still showed anxiety, which jibes with their being a mostly terrestrial ape. Monkeys on the other hand didn't react adversely to any glass floor height tested. I haven't followed the psychology of perception since my university days so I don't know what the latest research indicates, but the texts I read in class suggested that fear of falling decreases as the ability to recognize distinct human forms decreases, which explains why someone working on a second story roof might experience more trepidation than a window washer working 60 floors above the street.
I had an experience as a rambunctious lad of twelve summers which I take to be illustrative. One evening I buddies and I decided to climb the local AM radio station's antenna mast which I estimated to be about four hundred feet high. How we got over the surrounding fence and up the twenty feet or so to the first ladder rung I won't discuss, nevertheless we got on the tower and started to climb. When I got about eighty feet up we saw police cars and a fire engine approaching. The boy above me demanded we start down and escape their wrath, a plan I agreed with heartily, so we started to decend as rapidly as we could. At first it was easy, but shortly thereafter I could plainly see faces looking up at us, and it was only then the height became terrifying. Sixty feet up and then forty and even thirty were more fear-inducing than my highest point on the mast.
Let’s see. How can I put this? No, non, nein, nr, não, нет, αριθ, 否, いいえ, 아니다, never,nunca, jamais, nie, nooit, никогда, ποτέ, 从未, 決して, 결코, ain’t happenin’, no way, José, fuhgeddaboudit, no chance, no freaking chance, snowball in hell, zip, zero, nada, zilch, squat, jack squat, less than jack squat.
Those booties look pretty slippery.
For the professor, plummeting to your death is bad enough. Plummeting to your death surrounded by men in shorts is a bridge ( walkway? ) too far.
Whose job is it to wash the underside of it, to keep it nice and clear for tourists to shoot photos through?
And, if one were to start jumping up an down on it, would one's fellow tourists fling one off the edge?
Fernandinande,
OMG, there's more than one of these things in China? I had read about the first one cracking and thought Althouse was just late to the party.
Damn Chinese show offs. Wait until Trump builds one with see through walls. He will charge extra for curtains. This one charges for parachutes.
The closest thing to that I've seen was the funicular at Mount Desert, CA, which can't be a quarter the height. Still, it was weird and freaky. You'd come up from the ground, which was always 90 degrees plus, and at the top you could ski. And when you got off the funicular at the top you could look down. Way down.
CWJ said...
OMG, there's more than one of these things in China?
I think so, the names and such looked different.
standing on a tall tower being scary, or even in a balloon basket tethered to the ground, but flying free in an airplane was just fine.
I don't mind airplanes but after living in Utah "canyon country" for a while I had nightmares every night about falling off cliffs. On otherwise flat ground you can come across canyons that are deeper - 50' to 100' is common - than they are wide, with overhangs and mostly vertical walls.
As a student I joined an on-campus sport parachute (what the uninitiated over-dramatically call "sky diving") club. The deal was this: pay an up-front fee, and the club leaders, certified FAA instructors, would train you, conduct your training jumps, and sign your FAA logbook -- everything required to obtain the license. Since we did it as a club the fee was much cheaper than individual instruction, and it's likely the club was subsidized with university money as well.
At the time the FAA requirement was five static line jumps, three with simulated ripcord pulls, had to be made before one's free fall jump. Because the rules required we wear reserve 'chutes we never jumped lower than six thousand feet, which meant than your float to the ground was a long one from at least five thousand feet. Everybody was in great fear of the first jump, at least until you got airborne. What we all noticed was that six thousand or seven thousand feet up isn't that scary. What was bad was the descending the last thousand feet under your canopy.
If you fall through, or off, that thing, and assuming you don't crash into the cliff wall on the way down, you'll have about half a minute to think about why you decided that walking on a mile high glass walkway was a fun thing to do.
I'm with you. Not a chance
I hope the Chinese did not sub any of the work out to Brazilian contractors (I keep thinking of the rio elevated bicycle path when I see things like this)
Damn spell check.
Not if the Chicoms built it.
As for airplanes that are wide open, some designs like the Breezy have been popular for over 50 years. People love them.
http://breezyaircraft.com/
As for parachutes, I was a paratrooper a long time ago. We never jumped higher than 1500 feet and only the for helicopter jumps. Regular jumps were usually at 1250 feet. After the chute opened, we'd be hanging beneath the canopy over 1,000 feet high. It was normally a terrific thing with little sensation of motion. The last 100 feet or so was different. It seemed the ground was rushing up at us very quickly. I hit like a ton of bricks.
In training, we used a 32 foot tower to practc our exits and body position. We then moved to a 250 foot tall free tower. That was a lot of fun.
or pusscats. Told to lean out and do ground shots with a 3 1/2" Hasselblad with the door off and the floor hatch out in a Huey (barely) is much the same height, except when below the tree tops, but much faster.
Many years ago I had a plane ride in the Grand Canyon in a plane that had mostly glass sides and floor (I think). Great fun. It was stopped not long after because of a crash. You can't fly in the canyon now.
I can do it if the instructions aren't in Chinglish.
Heights in motion, as in flying & amusement park rides, never bothered me but I used to feel very queasy looking down from a stationary height. I would even have nightmares about being stuck on a high ledge with no way down. After an experience that forced me to make a high, scary climb, I overcame my acrophobia entirely.
I can do it if the instructions aren't in Chinglish.
The railing looks high enough for most Chinese women.
I wouldn't even care to be on the part with a solid wood floor. And while flying does not normally disturb me, there are moments when I look out the window and realize that if the plane broke apart in midair I'd be conscious all 35,000 feet down.
I don't want to be in a passenger plane with a clear floor because then I'd just see everyone's luggage. If it was a small private plane, then I'd like it, at least right up until time to land.
I am a private pilot. Flying does not bother me at all. I have been in a helicopter circling on it's side, with the doors open, when looking to the left meant looking straight down. It did not bother me. However, being on the edge of a tall building or cliff, drops my stomach from under me. I cannot even look at photos of it. My knees buckle.
Ken, see my post at 5:52.
Big Mike said...
I wouldn't even care to be on the part with a solid wood floor. And while flying does not normally disturb me, there are moments when I look out the window and realize that if the plane broke apart in midair I'd be conscious all 35,000 feet down.
Probably not. If the forces involved in the breakup didn't kill you or knock you unconscious (hitting a 500+ MPH air blast isn't a pleasant experience), you'd probably pass out within seconds due to a lack of oxygen. There have been airliner accidents where the plane broke up at altitude. For those that happen over water, few of the passengers' bodies have water in the lungs which indicates they were dead before hitting the water.
Karen of Texas: I don't obsess about falling - it's the landing I dwell on. Shudder.
Here I go again: F = ma.
Guess what? Since a is "acceleration," the derivative (that is, "change in the rate") of "velocity," which is itself the derivative of position with respect to time, when you reach terminal velocity, the rate of change in velocity—acceleration—goes to 0, and 0 times anything is 0! F = 0, no matter what your mass is! Yay!
Unfortunately, the change in velocity upon landing is very large over a very short period of time. So very large "a" times your mass gives you the force that kills you.
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