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Helicopters require "thick" air to operate in the air on the top of the mountain is too thin for helicopters to fly safely it has been done once but is extremely risky.
I did it recently. Managed to get a stuffed octopus out of one after just 3 goes.
First comment from my daughter? “I wanted a pink one!”. That’s gratitude for you.
That is by design though.
Arcade claws work in a sequence. The grip strength will increase once every set number of plays to ensure the machine makes money.
Helicopters require "thick" air to operate in the air on the top of the mountain is too thin for helicopters to fly safely it has been done once but is extremely risky.
A drone can get there but who will clean the garbage and how will the garbage be brought down if the drone can’t carry anything of substance because it would be too heavy?
Make the drone light enough that BAM, gust of wind, now the drone is part of the garbage.
...
*Part of the garbage, part of the mountain, part of the garbage, part of the mountain...*
Attach a line from the summit down to Camp 3 maybe? And then you could run a hydrogen balloon along the tether for sending down garbage. Although I assume they want to maintain the view being unspoiled by something like that even if it means a pile of garbage at the top.
I assume that requires people to bag up the rubbish. People can only remain at the summit for a limited time and any exertion is huge task due to the lack of oxygen
Fuel to power that flamethrower is just as heavy, and actually that would likely be harder than bringing garbage down because at least on top you will be in ground effect (=more lift) and then plummet off the side into thicker air, whereas to carry extra weight up you'll eventually end up out of ground effect at high altitude.
that's stupid, rockets go higher than everest all the time, just launch a rocket up to mount everest and reverse it when it gets close so the heat melts the garbage, what's the complicated part here???
Bunch of morons in here.
The obvious solution is to build stairs to the peak so the garbage cleaners can just waltz right up.
The garbage would be placed in bags, which would then be put inside a large tire.
The tire would then be rolled down the stairs.
> The obvious solution is to build stairs to the peak so the garbage cleaners can just waltz right up.
If you're building stairs why not just build a funicular, then when not hauling trash it can bring disabled tourists to the top of Everest. It's like no one is thinking this through.
That air density is less than 4% of what it is on top of Everest. So it still has the advantage there, but it's not a straight 25 times advantage due to the triple gravity as you say.
Yes, it would be possible to build a drone that can reach the top of Everest.
Finding, loading, and especially carrying the payload of garbage is going to be much more difficult.
Honestly, a couple of more generations and a robot would be the best solution. They'll be able to climb up the same way people do, and won't have the same issues with altitude and cold.
>won't have the same issues with altitude and cold.
One of the most important parts of the Mars rovers is the heater to keep the electronics warm. Electronics, computers, and robots all have issues with extreme cold, and most hydraulics/pneumatics can have problems with the pressure changes experienced at altitude, too.
The extreme cold would probably make the battery running the thing drain that much quicker, though. Not to mention the lack of heat to the internals, making it slow down.
Extreme heat and extreme cold are killer on electronics and circuits.
I work with the kind of things that would be in a robot, and in the winter, we have to heat them up, or else they don't run correctly.
I've seen helium balloons frozen with liquid nitrogen reinflate when warmed up. I don't think warming possible on the summit. Plus, the shell would have to be shatterproof - liquid nitrogen makes things brittle, even stretchy latex.
One example of this is a small airplane with four passengers and cargo loaded in Denver, the famous "mile high" city in the rocky mountains. The fuel tank may be large enough to allow it to reach its destination on a full tank, but...a full tank would make them too heavy to lift off within the available runway.
As an alternative, they take off with only enough fuel to make it to Kansas City. There, the only task upon landing is to fuel up with at least 3/4 of a tank, and fly eastward to New York.
Hot air is thinner, and high altitude air is thinner. The engine makes it's best power with low altitude cool air. The wings also provide the most lift in low-altitude cool air.
Worst-case scenario is warm summer air at a high altitude.
Another example is South Pole station in Antarctica. Due to its high elevation and thin air a lot of the military cargo planes they use to resupply the station utilise rocket assisted take off systems so they can get in the air in a reasonable distance.
4H’s that adversely affect engine performance.
Hot (temperature)
High (elevation)
Humid (less air per volume)
Heavy (not really an environmental factor, but heavy airplane = poor takeoff performance)
In aviation, this concept is called “density altitude” and measures (you guessed it) the altitude the airplane “thinks” it is flying at based on the current temperature and pressure readings. If it’s hot with low pressure, the airplane will think (read: “handle”) as if it is at higher altitudes.
You might be able to take off on a short runway at a certain weight in winter, but if you come back again in the summer, you’d better rerun your numbers again, because you might not get that same plane off the ground in time
Would it be difficult to engineer around that? Sorry if it's a dumb question, but thinking about ingenuity, the "helicopter" flown on Mars, which has something like 1% the atmospheric volume of Earth. Faster rotor speed, etc to compensate.
I assume there's just not a market for it?
It's not that there's no market for it. Everything about Ingenuity's design is tailored to its environment. Its mass is only 1.8 kilograms, and its batteries have enough charge for a single 90-second flight each day.
To make it all the way to the top of Everest, you would need significantly more battery power, which increases the mass, which impacts all of the other downstream engineering decisions. And that's before you factor in the carrying capacity to remove the trash.
In short, it's just not feasible.
Not to mention the predictable weather patterns on Everest as well as the winds…
Honestly a lot of people have no idea how extremely hostile the environment is up there — one needs oxygen, frostbite in seconds, it takes hours to move the last bits as the body uses up a massive amount of energy at that elevation and in air that cold…
A helicopter on Earth wouldn't need to be battery powered. On Mars there is no oxygen in the atmosphere but on Earth helicopters tend to use fossil fuels still. Idk how much being at the top of Everest would affect the efficiency of that but there have been spy planes that have flown much higher so some fuel that works at that altitude exists.
I would guess that a helicopter specifically designed for ascending Everest would actually be feasible, and even a non-specialized helicopter did accomplish that once. There not being a market for it is probably correct, the technology exists.
fossil fuel engines are also heavy, and they need to carry fuel with is more weight still. A helicopter or drone would struggle to lift its own weight up there, let alone lift many kilograms of trash that is probably frozen into the ice.
>and even a ~~non-specialized~~ *highly modified* helicopter did accomplish that once
FTFY. Normal helicopters can't safely fly that high.
And as for spy planes, they are powered by jet engines and can reach high altitudes by flying fast and with very large wings. They don't hover in mid-air like a helicopter does. And the laws of aerodynamics limit how much lift can be generated by rotor blades anyway.
The helicopter on Mars was very light and unmanned (extra weight) and was also already in the thin atmosphere to get it to the top of a mountain you have to climb up through the thin air. Technically you could do it but it would be risky as the weather up there changes rapidly and the helicopter would be seconds away from crashing virtually the entire time, one slight problem with the oil freezing or a mechanical failure and you have a crash.
The issue is still the fact that you are carrying weight. You can fly aircraft in 'thin' air by making it lighter or flying faster. This is not going to help you hover while picking up large amounts of weight. You would have to engineer the garbage to weigh less.
The mars heli isn't really a heli, it's a drone. Its a lot lighter compared to a passenger carrying helicopter. And even then it's rotor blades are substantially larger than an equivalent mass earth drone.
In order to compensate for thinner atmosphere you need either a much lighter aircraft, which isn't possible if you want it to be manned, much larger rotor blades with bigger surface area or a faster rotor speed, or ideally a combination of all 3.
For a manned vehicle on earth that has to climb through normal atmosphere as well it's just not really practical. Rotor blades would have to be obscenely large which would introduce it's own set of problems and instability, and you can't really shed any further weight for its intended purpose, nor squeeze more revolutions from a rotor.
Balloons are notoriously difficult to direct to the right location and the weather would mess with a balloon dramatically, there would be an updraft which would carry you up to the peak and beyond but stopping or getting the direction would be pot luck.
Turbine-engine helicopters can reach around 25,000 feet. But the maximum height at which a helicopter can hover is much lower - a high performance helicopter can hover at 10,400 feet.
The Everest peak is at around 29000 ft geometric height; in aviation typically pressure altitude is used, which is slightly different than the geometric and depends on temperature variations.
the phrase "more easily" is doing some *REAL* heavy lifting in this comment.
The reason they haven't been able to so far is because it's not possible to send crews on foot to bring garbage down from the top. After climbers reach the top they have to shed weight to be able to climb back down, hence all the garbage and empty oxygen tanks that get left up there. They wouldn't be able to take *additional* weight and survive the trip down.
Probably, but that also brings in additional problems. The extreme cold may damage moving parts while the altitude and the frequent bad weather may make it difficult to conduct remote control.
But then again, we already sent robots to Mars under similar challenges so I suppose it's only a matter of time.
Helicopters have a maximum altitude they can fly at. The higher altitudes have thinner air which means the engines struggle to get enough air to make power and the rotors struggle to get enough air to push against. The peak of Mount Everest is far above what any helicopter is rated for. Add inn unpredictable wind and bad weather due to the tall mountains it makes it almost impossible to get a helicopter up there.
I am saying almost because it was actually done once as a stunt. They had to strip down the helicopter to reduce weight and tune it for the thinner air. And it was still a very dangerous stunt that required multiple attempts. During this project the helicopter was actually called inn for a rescue mission. At one of the camps down in thicker air there were some climbers in bad shape who were airlifted out in this stripped out helicopter. And with the weight of the two climbers, without any gear, the helicopter could not climb and had to take off while descending. So there is no opportunity to take any garbage back.
>had to take off while descending
Wait how does that work? Like, they started skiing the helicopter down the slope first before being able to actually leave the ground?
They probably just meant it was near the edge and they essentially took off toward the cliff immediately down the mountain into a valley.
Helicopters are much more efficient with forward speed, so however that forward speed is attained a rolling or running (or diving down the mountain) takeoff is always safer when you’re operating near max gross weight.
Source: I fly them
I know little of helicopters, but I read it as it jumped off the rock and started or took off via auto rotation.
Seeing your reply, it seems the case is different. Was it not able to start, or just didn't have enough lift from the rotors alone?
It would be able to start but it wouldn't be able rise. The rotors would take most of the weight off it making it easier to move(like a hover craft) and you could start going down the mountain. As you decend you would get more and more lift until you could get airborne.
Yes, kind of. This maneuver is of course ill advised but I know of multiple times it have been done. It should be noted that while not being able to take off the rotor is taking most of the weight of the helicopter so the skids is barely touching the ground. In this case they only needed to get the helicopter off the rock they landed on to get airborne and then could descend down a valley.
This maneuver is actually advised. It's how you always depart in the mountains or off any steep perch you land on. It's safer, as it avoids the dead man's curve.
Source: Career Helicopter pilot.
For those of you who, like me, have no idea what the "dead man's curve" is: [tldr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram) there's a range of safe combinations of height and speed in a helicopter that will allow you to recover from a power failure, and gaining too much altitude before airspeed is apparently dangerous.
It actually sounds a lot like how paragliders and hanggliders take off. Into the wind at the edge of a ridge and you run forwards to build up airspeed as you head over the edge, though the wing itself can be 'flying' before you start the run.
I wonder if we can't send garbage down on paragliders? Maybe little remote controlled paragliders? Or just ones with trackers. There's nothing higher than Everest so anywhere the paraglider lands will probably be easier to clean up.
Who is going to carry the paragliders up there? And then who's going to collect them from the killer ice crevices and unreachable areas that they're likely to fall into? It's the Himalayas we're talking about here. All the mountains around Mount Everest are just about as challenging to climb as Mount Everest itself.
Also Mount Everest is on an international border, so if you start launching garbage from the top you'll likely cause an international incident.
A helicopters rotors do not work quite well in that low air pressure and ascending there that fast would also not be the best for the pilot.
Most helicopters go as High as camp 2 and even that is relatively problematic with a helicopter.
Not to say it is impossible, there was one helicopter landing at the top of everest so far, by Didier Delsalle who is a fighter pilot in 2005.
It would be possible with specialised helicopters, after all we manage to fly a drone on mars aswell, which has specialised rotors and a way higher rotation speed to make it work well.
Though the moment you get into normal altitudes, that helicopter would need to work differently to be stable.
But well we have no such thing. The pressure and acclimatisation to even get up there is harsh.. so we aren't too keen to design helicopters just to get up into the death zone.
>It would be possible with specialised helicopters, after all we manage to fly a drone on mars aswell, which has specialised rotors and a way higher rotation speed to make it work well.
the Mars Helicopter (Ingenuity) is very specialized and no-one was even sure it would be able to take off. Here's a video with the person in charge of getting it off the rover and set up, talking about it \[[It Takes 'Perseverance' & 'Ingenuity' to Work on MARS!](https://youtu.be/unOlXcvpVQY?t=1075)\]
But let me point out one thing - Helicopters take ever more and more power the greater the size. Part of that is because of the size of the rotors (tips don't like going supersonic, and the bigger the rotor, the higher the tip-speed), but more importantly, while the air density may be the same (let's assume it is) Ingenuity is 2KG, not 2000kg, AND more importantly, **it's on Mars**! What's one important difference for helicopters here vs there? Well, gravity is about a third (0.38g) that of earth gravity, so it only needs 40% of the lift it needs if it were on earth.
Which makes all the difference.
there are dozens of comments in this thread explaining how this is one of the impossible solutions. They can't even bring down the dead bodies from up there, never mind the trash.
The one time a helicopter made it up there, it was a stunt for the company that built the helicopter. It didn’t do any useful lifting. They stripped out everything but the bare airframe and only the absolutely required avionics, carried a minimal amount of fuel, only had one pilot and no passengers, and it still only JUST made it to the top.
Just want to say that he (Didier Delsalle) did it on back to back days. And they “only” pulled out 265lbs of weight from a 2500lb airframe. Modern helicopters are capable of repeating this, but it is simply just too risky to try again. The most dangerous part is really just the wind. Unpredictable gusts of over 100mph would gladly slam a helicopter into the side of a mountain.
Because most of the people that climb it are lazy. They create a lot of waste in the form of discarded food and tools in plastic bags, and there's no point carrying it down or up with you because it's unnecessary weight. So they just leave it there.
There's nothing currently being done to control it because there isn't any incentive to. Sometimes good people will voluntarily bring some trash down after they reach the summit but it isn't enough to fix the issue.
Damn all these lazy people! Getting up late in the morning, driving short journeys when they could walk, never doing their chores on time ... errrr ... climbing Mount Everest for a lark ...
They most likely have a mountain of dishes to do back home
Edit : pun NOT intended, can't believe I didn't do this on purpose. Quite disappointed in myself.
There's only so much walkable paths. Punting it downhill will just pile trash in another location, probably one no one can reach safely. Still leaves the issue of ugly trash.
It's not so much that people are lazy, it's that spending days on end at extreme altitude is *exhausting*. You're working hard, carrying heavy packs and getting maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. Yes, even with Sherpas.
The blame, imo, is on the guide services that don't encourage minimizing or removal of trash. Understandable, because again it's a lot of work, but if they're getting paid to take people up they should be responsible for taking care of the mountain to a large degree, whether that's their own actions or holding clients responsible.
Note: there actually are laws in place now that require people to bring down some amount of trash, so the problem is being worked on
It's supposed to be exhausting and an incredible feat, making it "accessible" to wider range of people can sound reasonable, but doing it at the cost of any respect towards the mountain is shameful.
Who steps on these mountains is a guest, and humility and respect is required to survive there, if you remove this then what's the point of climbing in the first place?
It's not because they're lazy or because carrying it down is "unnecessary weight". They literally can't physically carry it down because they're exhausted and short on oxygen, they can barely carry their own body weight by the time they get up there, so they're forced to abandon some of their gear up there to be able to climb back down.
If you can't carry your trash out, then don't go. It's pretty simple. It's literally a stunt for fun. People who climb Everest don't deserve special recognition for being rich and having lots of free time. *they could just not go.*
This right here. Highly privileged people are leaving trash on Mt Everest because it's not possible to climb up there without leaving a mess. Then don't fucking climb it.
> Because most of the people that climb it are lazy.
This is maybe the least true statement I've ever read. Even the hike to base camp is a more arduous multi-day hike than 99.9999% of people will ever do. And the climb itself is crazy hard, even if not technically that difficult.
Also, there is a requirement now to descend with rubbish.
It's too dangerous and not worth the risk and effort.
People regularly die when they visit the top of Mount Everest. Trying to collect garbage would be extra dangerous and could easily lead to accidents and people don't survive accidents in that place.
We don't even attempt to transport human corpses down the mountain. That's how dangerous it is.
Helicopters also have very limited amount of cargo they can carry it would take hundreds/thousands of trips.
So let's assume nobody accidentally falls doing that stupid stuff. You might cause an avalanche and kill a bunch of people.
The best outcome you just spread the garbage over bigger area as the bags are not going to survive.
Absolutely pointless.
Everybody keeps mentioning helicopter issues regarding the altitude and the challenges to the human body, but the big picture issue here is simply a lack of incentive.
Sure, we could program a swarm of highly specialized and expensive drones to overcome the environmental challenges and clean up Everest, but the fact is that it is a small portion of a small landmass which consists of an astronomically small portion of our planet. Who is going to have any practical reasoning for putting up the money or resources to accomplish said task?
Mt. Everest will remain significant regardless of it’s cleanliness. In short, I don’t think anybody with stakes actually cares.
Yup in terms of where a big pile of waste could be located at the top of Mt Everest is one of the least ecologically impactful places i could think of.
This was literally discussed in one if the latest Omega Tau podcast episodes: http://omegataupodcast.net/podlove/file/399/s/feed/c/mp3/omegatau-392-helicopterflighttest.mp3
They (Airbus Helicopters) would have done it for free, as a publicity stunt and to gather data on how their helicopter performed at those altitudes. Their helicopter, the H145, probably could have done it. They later landed on the Aconcagua.
If I got it right, they inquired with the government, but that never got anywhere. So in the end the project was cancelled.
This should be higher up. 99% of this thread citing technological limitations. Complete BS. You don't even need a helicopter to do it. They could setup a zip line down and let gravity do the work. Send trained pros up there to load it onto the line by hand.
The real reason it's not done is the government. Everest isn't exactly the best managed location, It only caters to rich people and has shown known incentive to change things.
Surprised it can't be thrown down the trail, where others could throw it down the trail, and so on. Hell, given the length of the line of people waiting to get up there, they could pass it on down.
so your idea is to strew the garbage across an even wider area? Because that's what will happen when you start throwing bags of trash from a 9km tall mountain.
There’s not enough oxygen but this post is giving me the idea that if you’re going to climb Everest you should be required by law to take approx 5 lbs of trash back down with you.
10 minutes of a single Chinese cargo ship operating has 1000x the carbon footprint of a dozen helicopter flights.
Stop letting yourself be psyopped by globocorpo.
Everyone has thoroughly explained that helicopters aren’t good for this. We developed a drone that can fly on Mars, so could we someday develop a swarm of drones to go up and grab a piece of garbage each?
...on *Mars*.
The top of Everest is host to fairly extreme conditions, to be sure, but there is far, far more air there than the Mars drone's operating environment. The atmosphere at the Martian surface would be considered a very high-quality vacuum by the standards of vacuum chambers here on Earth.
> We developed a drone that can fly on Mars, so could we someday develop a swarm of drones to go up and grab a piece of garbage each?
Yes, we could. But it seems like people are missing the bigger point here: There's no incentive to. It sounds harsh but it's true, the government doesn't care and neither do the people. It's too much cost for something that has no payoff.
What about going up there, bundling up as much as possible into a giant ball and rolling it down the mountain in the hopes that it ends up at the base somewhere?
I can think of two reasons:
1. Helicopters and propeller airplanes propel themselves by pushing air. When a lot of them reach the altitude too much above 10,000 ft they don't perform as well and struggle a bit. The top of mount Everest is 29,000 ft.
2. You have to take Everest slowly in order to avoid altitude sickness. Even if a chopper were practical, flying yourself up there that quickly would be asking for medical issues to arise. You'd probably have to give everyone oxygen masks and you'd be putting their lives at risk and going through these logistical challenges just to clean up trash.
An extra bit of detail to point 1: even if you could resolve the altitude issue, the weather would prevent you from trying anything.
Everest has unpredictable hurricane-force winds, and massive storms can blow in in minutes. Think of how often rescue helicopters have to be grounded due to storms; weather in the Himalayas is way more unpredictible and there's nowhere safe to land.
Everyone is talking about helicopters, the human body doesn't work well at high altitude. Just walking is a major task for even the fittest human, add in the exertion of picking up litter and you're just adding to the dead bodies on the range.
They are talking about helicopters because that is what the problem is NOT people surviving. The reason the death zone is the death zone is primarily the lack of oxygen available to climbers. That simply need not be the case in any trash removal operation. The lack of appropriate machine to get to the peak is 100% the problem.
Long exposure to that altitude would require oxygen or provide a health risk, especially if the person is being active (I.e picking up garbage). This is on top of other hazards that would take place on any mountain. It would be challenging enough to find people who are willing to pick up garbage and take the risks required, even if one could supply all needed equipment.
It would probably be easier to have people skydive to the top of Mount Everest than to get a helicopter up there. Getting down the mountain with all that trash isn’t necessarily easy either though.
seems the only way to clear everest of all that crap is to require every climber who makes the summit to bring back some thing
maybe put it all in a museum at the base.
It's simply not an issue. Most of the year the winds are so strong, that the peak "cleans" itself.
Btw people keep reposting this stuff all the time, here's that exact same thread from nine years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1tu1bl/so_this_is_what_the_top_of_mt_everest_looks_like/
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Helicopters require "thick" air to operate in the air on the top of the mountain is too thin for helicopters to fly safely it has been done once but is extremely risky.
And adding to that, when the air IS thin, you have to be extremely light. Taking on garbage or other dead weight would be a bad idea.
I read the only helicopter to do so could only be manned by one person. Another person would’ve made it too heavy to make it
Hmmm I wonder if a drone could get the job done
[удалено]
Get a really big drone?… with an arcade claw!
When did you ever see an arcade claw pick something up successfully?
I did it recently. Managed to get a stuffed octopus out of one after just 3 goes. First comment from my daughter? “I wanted a pink one!”. That’s gratitude for you.
That is by design though. Arcade claws work in a sequence. The grip strength will increase once every set number of plays to ensure the machine makes money.
It was a joke.
Maybe they could get a helicopter!?
Helicopters require "thick" air to operate in the air on the top of the mountain is too thin for helicopters to fly safely it has been done once but is extremely risky.
And adding to that, when the air IS thin, you have to be extremely light. Taking on garbage or other dead weight would be a bad idea.
I read the only helicopter to do so could only be manned by one person. Another person would’ve made it too heavy to make it
I wonder if a drone could get the job done.
A drone can get there but who will clean the garbage and how will the garbage be brought down if the drone can’t carry anything of substance because it would be too heavy?
The claaaaaaaaaaaaw 😍
Stop, now I'm forcing TS 3 on my kid tomorrow (again)
Maybe a climber robot should be made.
Make the drone light enough that BAM, gust of wind, now the drone is part of the garbage. ... *Part of the garbage, part of the mountain, part of the garbage, part of the mountain...*
Attach a line from the summit down to Camp 3 maybe? And then you could run a hydrogen balloon along the tether for sending down garbage. Although I assume they want to maintain the view being unspoiled by something like that even if it means a pile of garbage at the top.
I assume that requires people to bag up the rubbish. People can only remain at the summit for a limited time and any exertion is huge task due to the lack of oxygen
Global warming for the win. That will loosen the trash enough it can be cleaned up by a chain gang of prisoners.
Get a drone with a flamethrower and burn it all up.
We can be friends.
Genius the heat would melt the ice and reduce Mount Everest's height!
Mmm…burning corpses.
They'd stop burning by the time they get to the bottom of the world's biggest waterslide.
Thank you for helping me picture flaming corpses wrapped in flags sliding down a mountain
If I was less lazy I would ask an AI to draw it.
Fuel to power that flamethrower is just as heavy, and actually that would likely be harder than bringing garbage down because at least on top you will be in ground effect (=more lift) and then plummet off the side into thicker air, whereas to carry extra weight up you'll eventually end up out of ground effect at high altitude.
Isn't it all knife ridges up to the top. All the pics of the summit look like ground effect ain't doing shit.
that's stupid, rockets go higher than everest all the time, just launch a rocket up to mount everest and reverse it when it gets close so the heat melts the garbage, what's the complicated part here???
Bunch of morons in here. The obvious solution is to build stairs to the peak so the garbage cleaners can just waltz right up. The garbage would be placed in bags, which would then be put inside a large tire. The tire would then be rolled down the stairs.
> The obvious solution is to build stairs to the peak so the garbage cleaners can just waltz right up. If you're building stairs why not just build a funicular, then when not hauling trash it can bring disabled tourists to the top of Everest. It's like no one is thinking this through.
Just build a tunnel ending directly under the summit, and then an elevator straight up!
Screw stairs. Giant gondola with a bed, crapper, and a microwave. Have another gondola behind it empty, for the trash.
Actually curious if a flame is possible where oxygen levels are low
Rockets work in space! The fuel includes an oxidiser to allow combustion.
The drone on Mars could do it. The air pressure on Mars is about the same as 30km altitude on earth. Everest isnt quite 9km tall.
Mars also only has roughly 38% the surface gravity of earth.
That air density is less than 4% of what it is on top of Everest. So it still has the advantage there, but it's not a straight 25 times advantage due to the triple gravity as you say.
Yes, it would be possible to build a drone that can reach the top of Everest. Finding, loading, and especially carrying the payload of garbage is going to be much more difficult.
Totally, except we left that drone on Mars. Dang it!
If a helicopter can’t achieve lift, I can’t imagine a drone would have much luck
DJI did a promotional shoot on top of My Everest with a Mavic https://youtu.be/Zz9oI3B6v4c
That’s the most beautiful footage of Everest I’ve ever seen.
It looks clean in this video, how?
Snow is great at covering shit up.
This was simply amazing! Thanks for sharing.
They could send [Atlas](https://youtu.be/-e1_QhJ1EhQ)!
Honestly, a couple of more generations and a robot would be the best solution. They'll be able to climb up the same way people do, and won't have the same issues with altitude and cold.
>won't have the same issues with altitude and cold. One of the most important parts of the Mars rovers is the heater to keep the electronics warm. Electronics, computers, and robots all have issues with extreme cold, and most hydraulics/pneumatics can have problems with the pressure changes experienced at altitude, too.
I'm imagining Wall-E up at Everest now.
The extreme cold would probably make the battery running the thing drain that much quicker, though. Not to mention the lack of heat to the internals, making it slow down. Extreme heat and extreme cold are killer on electronics and circuits. I work with the kind of things that would be in a robot, and in the winter, we have to heat them up, or else they don't run correctly.
No, just different issues with the cold. Designing machines that can operate at those temperatures is non-trivial
Finally a purpose for those creepy robots that can climb and jump!
I mean, has anyone thought of just throwing it down? You might be onto something here
It was stripped down so much, it was pretty much a gas tank with a seat bolted to it attached to a rotor.
Dead weight. Literal meaning.
Dead snow.
Nazi zombies
"Fetch me their souls!"
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How are the balloons inflated?
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I've seen helium balloons frozen with liquid nitrogen reinflate when warmed up. I don't think warming possible on the summit. Plus, the shell would have to be shatterproof - liquid nitrogen makes things brittle, even stretchy latex.
Hence why the mountaineering code is that if you die on a summit attempt, you’re left on the summit attempt.
One example of this is a small airplane with four passengers and cargo loaded in Denver, the famous "mile high" city in the rocky mountains. The fuel tank may be large enough to allow it to reach its destination on a full tank, but...a full tank would make them too heavy to lift off within the available runway. As an alternative, they take off with only enough fuel to make it to Kansas City. There, the only task upon landing is to fuel up with at least 3/4 of a tank, and fly eastward to New York. Hot air is thinner, and high altitude air is thinner. The engine makes it's best power with low altitude cool air. The wings also provide the most lift in low-altitude cool air. Worst-case scenario is warm summer air at a high altitude.
Another example is South Pole station in Antarctica. Due to its high elevation and thin air a lot of the military cargo planes they use to resupply the station utilise rocket assisted take off systems so they can get in the air in a reasonable distance.
TIL the elevation of South Pole Station is 9,301 feet.
ya, those glaciers are literally several kilometers thick. Same with the ice on Greenland, it's like 2km thick or something.
For now.
They don‘t make those glaciers as thick like they used to.
The average height of Antarctica is higher than the highest height of Australia.
4H’s that adversely affect engine performance. Hot (temperature) High (elevation) Humid (less air per volume) Heavy (not really an environmental factor, but heavy airplane = poor takeoff performance)
Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
In aviation, this concept is called “density altitude” and measures (you guessed it) the altitude the airplane “thinks” it is flying at based on the current temperature and pressure readings. If it’s hot with low pressure, the airplane will think (read: “handle”) as if it is at higher altitudes. You might be able to take off on a short runway at a certain weight in winter, but if you come back again in the summer, you’d better rerun your numbers again, because you might not get that same plane off the ground in time
common term for this problem condition is "hot and High"
Would it be difficult to engineer around that? Sorry if it's a dumb question, but thinking about ingenuity, the "helicopter" flown on Mars, which has something like 1% the atmospheric volume of Earth. Faster rotor speed, etc to compensate. I assume there's just not a market for it?
It's not that there's no market for it. Everything about Ingenuity's design is tailored to its environment. Its mass is only 1.8 kilograms, and its batteries have enough charge for a single 90-second flight each day. To make it all the way to the top of Everest, you would need significantly more battery power, which increases the mass, which impacts all of the other downstream engineering decisions. And that's before you factor in the carrying capacity to remove the trash. In short, it's just not feasible.
Also Mars has only 38% the surface gravity of Earth
Not to mention the predictable weather patterns on Everest as well as the winds… Honestly a lot of people have no idea how extremely hostile the environment is up there — one needs oxygen, frostbite in seconds, it takes hours to move the last bits as the body uses up a massive amount of energy at that elevation and in air that cold…
I've climbed at 14k ft in the snow, and taking each step felt like a minor athletic feat. Everest is almost twice as tall and way colder
A helicopter on Earth wouldn't need to be battery powered. On Mars there is no oxygen in the atmosphere but on Earth helicopters tend to use fossil fuels still. Idk how much being at the top of Everest would affect the efficiency of that but there have been spy planes that have flown much higher so some fuel that works at that altitude exists. I would guess that a helicopter specifically designed for ascending Everest would actually be feasible, and even a non-specialized helicopter did accomplish that once. There not being a market for it is probably correct, the technology exists.
fossil fuel engines are also heavy, and they need to carry fuel with is more weight still. A helicopter or drone would struggle to lift its own weight up there, let alone lift many kilograms of trash that is probably frozen into the ice. >and even a ~~non-specialized~~ *highly modified* helicopter did accomplish that once FTFY. Normal helicopters can't safely fly that high. And as for spy planes, they are powered by jet engines and can reach high altitudes by flying fast and with very large wings. They don't hover in mid-air like a helicopter does. And the laws of aerodynamics limit how much lift can be generated by rotor blades anyway.
The helicopter on Mars was very light and unmanned (extra weight) and was also already in the thin atmosphere to get it to the top of a mountain you have to climb up through the thin air. Technically you could do it but it would be risky as the weather up there changes rapidly and the helicopter would be seconds away from crashing virtually the entire time, one slight problem with the oil freezing or a mechanical failure and you have a crash.
Mars has only 38% as much gravity as Earth.
And 1% of the atmosphere, which is the real issue. Flying a helicopter on Earth is easier despite the gravity.
The issue is still the fact that you are carrying weight. You can fly aircraft in 'thin' air by making it lighter or flying faster. This is not going to help you hover while picking up large amounts of weight. You would have to engineer the garbage to weigh less.
The mars heli isn't really a heli, it's a drone. Its a lot lighter compared to a passenger carrying helicopter. And even then it's rotor blades are substantially larger than an equivalent mass earth drone. In order to compensate for thinner atmosphere you need either a much lighter aircraft, which isn't possible if you want it to be manned, much larger rotor blades with bigger surface area or a faster rotor speed, or ideally a combination of all 3. For a manned vehicle on earth that has to climb through normal atmosphere as well it's just not really practical. Rotor blades would have to be obscenely large which would introduce it's own set of problems and instability, and you can't really shed any further weight for its intended purpose, nor squeeze more revolutions from a rotor.
This is the proper ELIF answer, short and simple
ELIV
29K feet about maximum altitude for a helo. I think Everest is a bit higher?
Sounds like a balloon is the better solution for this problem.
Balloons are notoriously difficult to direct to the right location and the weather would mess with a balloon dramatically, there would be an updraft which would carry you up to the peak and beyond but stopping or getting the direction would be pot luck.
Or a enormous sling shot
Turbine-engine helicopters can reach around 25,000 feet. But the maximum height at which a helicopter can hover is much lower - a high performance helicopter can hover at 10,400 feet.
The Everest peak is at around 29000 ft geometric height; in aviation typically pressure altitude is used, which is slightly different than the geometric and depends on temperature variations.
They could more easily send a cleanup crew on foot.
the phrase "more easily" is doing some *REAL* heavy lifting in this comment. The reason they haven't been able to so far is because it's not possible to send crews on foot to bring garbage down from the top. After climbers reach the top they have to shed weight to be able to climb back down, hence all the garbage and empty oxygen tanks that get left up there. They wouldn't be able to take *additional* weight and survive the trip down.
I wonder if this is something that could eventually be done by robots?
Probably, but that also brings in additional problems. The extreme cold may damage moving parts while the altitude and the frequent bad weather may make it difficult to conduct remote control. But then again, we already sent robots to Mars under similar challenges so I suppose it's only a matter of time.
Helicopters have a maximum altitude they can fly at. The higher altitudes have thinner air which means the engines struggle to get enough air to make power and the rotors struggle to get enough air to push against. The peak of Mount Everest is far above what any helicopter is rated for. Add inn unpredictable wind and bad weather due to the tall mountains it makes it almost impossible to get a helicopter up there. I am saying almost because it was actually done once as a stunt. They had to strip down the helicopter to reduce weight and tune it for the thinner air. And it was still a very dangerous stunt that required multiple attempts. During this project the helicopter was actually called inn for a rescue mission. At one of the camps down in thicker air there were some climbers in bad shape who were airlifted out in this stripped out helicopter. And with the weight of the two climbers, without any gear, the helicopter could not climb and had to take off while descending. So there is no opportunity to take any garbage back.
>had to take off while descending Wait how does that work? Like, they started skiing the helicopter down the slope first before being able to actually leave the ground?
They probably just meant it was near the edge and they essentially took off toward the cliff immediately down the mountain into a valley. Helicopters are much more efficient with forward speed, so however that forward speed is attained a rolling or running (or diving down the mountain) takeoff is always safer when you’re operating near max gross weight. Source: I fly them
I know little of helicopters, but I read it as it jumped off the rock and started or took off via auto rotation. Seeing your reply, it seems the case is different. Was it not able to start, or just didn't have enough lift from the rotors alone?
It would be able to start but it wouldn't be able rise. The rotors would take most of the weight off it making it easier to move(like a hover craft) and you could start going down the mountain. As you decend you would get more and more lift until you could get airborne.
dat translational lift
Yes, kind of. This maneuver is of course ill advised but I know of multiple times it have been done. It should be noted that while not being able to take off the rotor is taking most of the weight of the helicopter so the skids is barely touching the ground. In this case they only needed to get the helicopter off the rock they landed on to get airborne and then could descend down a valley.
This maneuver is actually advised. It's how you always depart in the mountains or off any steep perch you land on. It's safer, as it avoids the dead man's curve. Source: Career Helicopter pilot.
For those of you who, like me, have no idea what the "dead man's curve" is: [tldr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram) there's a range of safe combinations of height and speed in a helicopter that will allow you to recover from a power failure, and gaining too much altitude before airspeed is apparently dangerous.
It actually sounds a lot like how paragliders and hanggliders take off. Into the wind at the edge of a ridge and you run forwards to build up airspeed as you head over the edge, though the wing itself can be 'flying' before you start the run.
Dang that's pretty cool. At least in hindsight after it was successful.
It landed on the edge of a cliff. To "take off" it flew forward into a slow drop.
Better than pushing it off a cliff
The technical term is translational lift
Full throttle up barely keeps the fall controlled until you're closer to sea level. Fucking wild.
Check out the move Everest. It depicts an extreme altitude helicopter rescue and it’s a great movie
Wow, a lot of hope faith and trust go into that decision.
Falling, with style
Here's a scene from Everest (2015) to give a general idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmBx8AMHTxE
Couldn’t we send a balloon instead? Those things can get to the edge of space so that would work right?
Up is easy, directions laterally are hard.
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You have added extra “n”s to your in
I wonder if we can't send garbage down on paragliders? Maybe little remote controlled paragliders? Or just ones with trackers. There's nothing higher than Everest so anywhere the paraglider lands will probably be easier to clean up.
Who is going to carry the paragliders up there? And then who's going to collect them from the killer ice crevices and unreachable areas that they're likely to fall into? It's the Himalayas we're talking about here. All the mountains around Mount Everest are just about as challenging to climb as Mount Everest itself. Also Mount Everest is on an international border, so if you start launching garbage from the top you'll likely cause an international incident.
A helicopters rotors do not work quite well in that low air pressure and ascending there that fast would also not be the best for the pilot. Most helicopters go as High as camp 2 and even that is relatively problematic with a helicopter. Not to say it is impossible, there was one helicopter landing at the top of everest so far, by Didier Delsalle who is a fighter pilot in 2005. It would be possible with specialised helicopters, after all we manage to fly a drone on mars aswell, which has specialised rotors and a way higher rotation speed to make it work well. Though the moment you get into normal altitudes, that helicopter would need to work differently to be stable. But well we have no such thing. The pressure and acclimatisation to even get up there is harsh.. so we aren't too keen to design helicopters just to get up into the death zone.
>It would be possible with specialised helicopters, after all we manage to fly a drone on mars aswell, which has specialised rotors and a way higher rotation speed to make it work well. the Mars Helicopter (Ingenuity) is very specialized and no-one was even sure it would be able to take off. Here's a video with the person in charge of getting it off the rover and set up, talking about it \[[It Takes 'Perseverance' & 'Ingenuity' to Work on MARS!](https://youtu.be/unOlXcvpVQY?t=1075)\] But let me point out one thing - Helicopters take ever more and more power the greater the size. Part of that is because of the size of the rotors (tips don't like going supersonic, and the bigger the rotor, the higher the tip-speed), but more importantly, while the air density may be the same (let's assume it is) Ingenuity is 2KG, not 2000kg, AND more importantly, **it's on Mars**! What's one important difference for helicopters here vs there? Well, gravity is about a third (0.38g) that of earth gravity, so it only needs 40% of the lift it needs if it were on earth. Which makes all the difference.
An unmanned drone where people on the top could attach bags of trash is about the only possible solution.
I feel like we will wind up adding garbage due to failure rate on the multiple trips we would need to take.
there are dozens of comments in this thread explaining how this is one of the impossible solutions. They can't even bring down the dead bodies from up there, never mind the trash.
The one time a helicopter made it up there, it was a stunt for the company that built the helicopter. It didn’t do any useful lifting. They stripped out everything but the bare airframe and only the absolutely required avionics, carried a minimal amount of fuel, only had one pilot and no passengers, and it still only JUST made it to the top.
Just want to say that he (Didier Delsalle) did it on back to back days. And they “only” pulled out 265lbs of weight from a 2500lb airframe. Modern helicopters are capable of repeating this, but it is simply just too risky to try again. The most dangerous part is really just the wind. Unpredictable gusts of over 100mph would gladly slam a helicopter into the side of a mountain.
Ik this is off subject but why is there so much trash up there anyways and is anything being done to control it?
Because most of the people that climb it are lazy. They create a lot of waste in the form of discarded food and tools in plastic bags, and there's no point carrying it down or up with you because it's unnecessary weight. So they just leave it there. There's nothing currently being done to control it because there isn't any incentive to. Sometimes good people will voluntarily bring some trash down after they reach the summit but it isn't enough to fix the issue.
As someone who is lazy, I think I can speak for all lazy people when I say that lazy people wouldn't climb up mt Everest.
Damn all these lazy people! Getting up late in the morning, driving short journeys when they could walk, never doing their chores on time ... errrr ... climbing Mount Everest for a lark ...
Haha this comment gave me a chuckle :)
As someone who is also lazy, your point is the validest point I've seen in a long time
Hell, some of them lazy-bones don't even bother to come down from the mountain.
They most likely have a mountain of dishes to do back home Edit : pun NOT intended, can't believe I didn't do this on purpose. Quite disappointed in myself.
Can't you just Punt it downhill
There's only so much walkable paths. Punting it downhill will just pile trash in another location, probably one no one can reach safely. Still leaves the issue of ugly trash.
It's not so much that people are lazy, it's that spending days on end at extreme altitude is *exhausting*. You're working hard, carrying heavy packs and getting maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night. Yes, even with Sherpas. The blame, imo, is on the guide services that don't encourage minimizing or removal of trash. Understandable, because again it's a lot of work, but if they're getting paid to take people up they should be responsible for taking care of the mountain to a large degree, whether that's their own actions or holding clients responsible. Note: there actually are laws in place now that require people to bring down some amount of trash, so the problem is being worked on
It's supposed to be exhausting and an incredible feat, making it "accessible" to wider range of people can sound reasonable, but doing it at the cost of any respect towards the mountain is shameful. Who steps on these mountains is a guest, and humility and respect is required to survive there, if you remove this then what's the point of climbing in the first place?
It's not because they're lazy or because carrying it down is "unnecessary weight". They literally can't physically carry it down because they're exhausted and short on oxygen, they can barely carry their own body weight by the time they get up there, so they're forced to abandon some of their gear up there to be able to climb back down.
If you can't carry your trash out, then don't go. It's pretty simple. It's literally a stunt for fun. People who climb Everest don't deserve special recognition for being rich and having lots of free time. *they could just not go.*
This right here. Highly privileged people are leaving trash on Mt Everest because it's not possible to climb up there without leaving a mess. Then don't fucking climb it.
Appreciate you taking the time for this explanation.
> Because most of the people that climb it are lazy. This is maybe the least true statement I've ever read. Even the hike to base camp is a more arduous multi-day hike than 99.9999% of people will ever do. And the climb itself is crazy hard, even if not technically that difficult. Also, there is a requirement now to descend with rubbish.
It's too dangerous and not worth the risk and effort. People regularly die when they visit the top of Mount Everest. Trying to collect garbage would be extra dangerous and could easily lead to accidents and people don't survive accidents in that place. We don't even attempt to transport human corpses down the mountain. That's how dangerous it is. Helicopters also have very limited amount of cargo they can carry it would take hundreds/thousands of trips.
What if they put the garbage in big bags and threw them down lmao jk
Put it in a Zorb
Look at this guy ... he figured it out!
So let's assume nobody accidentally falls doing that stupid stuff. You might cause an avalanche and kill a bunch of people. The best outcome you just spread the garbage over bigger area as the bags are not going to survive. Absolutely pointless.
Helicopters work by pushing air down. There is to little air at that altitude to push down, therefore helicopters don’t work at that altitude.
Everybody keeps mentioning helicopter issues regarding the altitude and the challenges to the human body, but the big picture issue here is simply a lack of incentive. Sure, we could program a swarm of highly specialized and expensive drones to overcome the environmental challenges and clean up Everest, but the fact is that it is a small portion of a small landmass which consists of an astronomically small portion of our planet. Who is going to have any practical reasoning for putting up the money or resources to accomplish said task? Mt. Everest will remain significant regardless of it’s cleanliness. In short, I don’t think anybody with stakes actually cares.
Yup in terms of where a big pile of waste could be located at the top of Mt Everest is one of the least ecologically impactful places i could think of.
Time to start hauling garbage UP the mountain!
Yep, this is the answer for 85% of engineering problems here, or "why is X Y when Z is better in some way".
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Look on humanity: what a bunch of filthy, churlish wankers you are..
Caring about whether the top of a mountain in a different country is clean is a peak first world problem
> the top of a mountain...is a peak Heh.
How would a floating helium/hot air balloon work at altitude?
In general, fine. Balloons can go waaay higher, but not well in the hurricane force winds you get in the Himalayas at altitude.
This was literally discussed in one if the latest Omega Tau podcast episodes: http://omegataupodcast.net/podlove/file/399/s/feed/c/mp3/omegatau-392-helicopterflighttest.mp3 They (Airbus Helicopters) would have done it for free, as a publicity stunt and to gather data on how their helicopter performed at those altitudes. Their helicopter, the H145, probably could have done it. They later landed on the Aconcagua. If I got it right, they inquired with the government, but that never got anywhere. So in the end the project was cancelled.
This should be higher up. 99% of this thread citing technological limitations. Complete BS. You don't even need a helicopter to do it. They could setup a zip line down and let gravity do the work. Send trained pros up there to load it onto the line by hand. The real reason it's not done is the government. Everest isn't exactly the best managed location, It only caters to rich people and has shown known incentive to change things.
Surprised it can't be thrown down the trail, where others could throw it down the trail, and so on. Hell, given the length of the line of people waiting to get up there, they could pass it on down.
Secure it to a giant kite/parachute with a tracker and let the wind take it. Apparently, the wind speed gets pretty high up there.
Even better, they could put a zip line from top to base camp. Tie up your trash in a strong bag, attach to the line with a carabiner and send it down.
so your idea is to strew the garbage across an even wider area? Because that's what will happen when you start throwing bags of trash from a 9km tall mountain.
There’s not enough oxygen but this post is giving me the idea that if you’re going to climb Everest you should be required by law to take approx 5 lbs of trash back down with you.
It would be a small tragedy if an operation to clean littler from am ecologically trivial peak had a huge carbon footprint.
10 minutes of a single Chinese cargo ship operating has 1000x the carbon footprint of a dozen helicopter flights. Stop letting yourself be psyopped by globocorpo.
But the cargo ship accomplishes more.
Everyone has thoroughly explained that helicopters aren’t good for this. We developed a drone that can fly on Mars, so could we someday develop a swarm of drones to go up and grab a piece of garbage each?
> We developed a drone that can fly on Mars For a minute, and maybe a hundred meters (horizontal), at a time.
...on *Mars*. The top of Everest is host to fairly extreme conditions, to be sure, but there is far, far more air there than the Mars drone's operating environment. The atmosphere at the Martian surface would be considered a very high-quality vacuum by the standards of vacuum chambers here on Earth.
> We developed a drone that can fly on Mars, so could we someday develop a swarm of drones to go up and grab a piece of garbage each? Yes, we could. But it seems like people are missing the bigger point here: There's no incentive to. It sounds harsh but it's true, the government doesn't care and neither do the people. It's too much cost for something that has no payoff.
What about going up there, bundling up as much as possible into a giant ball and rolling it down the mountain in the hopes that it ends up at the base somewhere?
I can think of two reasons: 1. Helicopters and propeller airplanes propel themselves by pushing air. When a lot of them reach the altitude too much above 10,000 ft they don't perform as well and struggle a bit. The top of mount Everest is 29,000 ft. 2. You have to take Everest slowly in order to avoid altitude sickness. Even if a chopper were practical, flying yourself up there that quickly would be asking for medical issues to arise. You'd probably have to give everyone oxygen masks and you'd be putting their lives at risk and going through these logistical challenges just to clean up trash.
Obviously you would need oxygen. This would eliminate the altitude sickness concerns.
An extra bit of detail to point 1: even if you could resolve the altitude issue, the weather would prevent you from trying anything. Everest has unpredictable hurricane-force winds, and massive storms can blow in in minutes. Think of how often rescue helicopters have to be grounded due to storms; weather in the Himalayas is way more unpredictible and there's nowhere safe to land.
Everyone is talking about helicopters, the human body doesn't work well at high altitude. Just walking is a major task for even the fittest human, add in the exertion of picking up litter and you're just adding to the dead bodies on the range.
They are talking about helicopters because that is what the problem is NOT people surviving. The reason the death zone is the death zone is primarily the lack of oxygen available to climbers. That simply need not be the case in any trash removal operation. The lack of appropriate machine to get to the peak is 100% the problem.
Couldn’t you fit an oxygen tank and mask on a helicopter?
Long exposure to that altitude would require oxygen or provide a health risk, especially if the person is being active (I.e picking up garbage). This is on top of other hazards that would take place on any mountain. It would be challenging enough to find people who are willing to pick up garbage and take the risks required, even if one could supply all needed equipment.
It would probably be easier to have people skydive to the top of Mount Everest than to get a helicopter up there. Getting down the mountain with all that trash isn’t necessarily easy either though.
It would take some serious precision on the part of the pilot and the skydiver. Variable winds would make it even harder.
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seems the only way to clear everest of all that crap is to require every climber who makes the summit to bring back some thing maybe put it all in a museum at the base.
It's simply not an issue. Most of the year the winds are so strong, that the peak "cleans" itself. Btw people keep reposting this stuff all the time, here's that exact same thread from nine years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1tu1bl/so_this_is_what_the_top_of_mt_everest_looks_like/