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Comment by alexchamberlain | Hacker News Reader

I don't know alot about Physics, Engineering or Elevators, but I do know that there is some magical force at work in the world that once made an Apple fall on someone's head. Could we not utilise this force for the better and, perhaps even, recoup some energy?

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I think elevators are usually counter-balanced so that the motor doesn't have to really lift anything except the occupants. Maybe not though ...

The are, with the effect (and I'm guessing intent) that an electrical/motor failure won't lead to the elevator plunging 20 stories and killing all occupants.

Software engineering could (and should) learn a few things from mechanical engineering. People have been saying that for decades, but it bears repeating...

Crash driven design. Design your software such that it can recover from a crash to a known state and continue. Make life so much simpler. Shutdown is just a matter of power off. Startup always does a recovery before starting.

There's a separate emergency brake system to prevent the elevator from falling, because you also need to be safe if the cables holding the elevator up break (this is actually the technology that lead to the first elevators). The counterweight is probably primarily just to reduce power/energy requirements.

Yeah, they have elevators that do that. Here's some marketing literature I found if you're interested: http://www.kone.com/countries/en_gb/products/elevators/konem...

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