71,000,000 pounds?!? Are they sure they didn't miss a decimal point somewhere? I'd like to see an engineering article on how that thing withstands that much load.
Don't know about the Grand Canyon specifically. But in the bird books, they're not "sea gulls", they're "gulls", and they were pretty common in Colorado.
71 MILLION pounds?! Does anybody know what those beams are, or if that load is a major typo?
I did a quick calc because I'm bored at lunch: Assuming from those photos that the beams are 3ft x 6ft SOLID 50ksi steel, not dealing with self weight at all, and assuming the load is uniformly distributed, I get a max cantilever of about 10ft.
According to one website, a 747-200F has a max takeoff weight of 833000#. Of course I don't see where they are going to park 71 747's on that bridge and still have room for one fat tourist!
If you click on the video on the website listed at the top, you get a little bit of a feel of what the structure is like. The beams are 32" x 72" twin steel box beams in a horseshoe shape. The glass floor is 5 "plies" thick - 3 19 mm plies, an 8 mm ply, and a 6 mm ply.
They did actual wind speed collection at the top of the cliff and recorded speeds of 80 and 90 mph.
The video also talks about 71,000,000 pounds. I'm still not quite sure where they get that number, because according to that video the glass floor is good for a little more 100 psf. That would mean a walkway area of 710,000 square feet to get to 71,000,000 pounds. There is no way the structure itself could hold up that much weight.
Maybe the 71,000,000 is the theoretical load the foundation could withstand. The structure would fail long before you ever got to that load.
One of the earlier threads seem to indicate that the skywalk was built on land controlled by a Sovereign Nation. That would raise the question of what code was it required to meet and under what code was it actually designed.
If I went it would be before it had a chance to fatigue.
![[rofl]](/data/assets/smilies/rofl.gif "[rofl] [rofl]")
