We need to pay the fair a visit when it is up and running, as the mode of operation of the ride was not completely clear to me. I think the not very big motor at the top must get the thing going in the way of a pendulum, cunningly timing its contribution to gradually increase the amplitude of the swing, eventually getting it to go up and over.
I don't see how such a motor would be able to sweep the chairs up to the top, by brute force, in one go. In any event, the torques on the motor's rotor must be enormous. Clearly something one would want to take advice from W. S. Atkins on - or perhaps the people who specified the rotor for the London Eye - although the stresses involved there are not quite the same. Who knows?
One hopes also that someone has run a slide rule over the spacing of the legs. Are they far enough apart to contain the forces at work when the chairs are swinging at speed? Is square the right format, given that the forces are clearly much greater in one direction than the other?
In any event, we do need to see the thing in operation. Might even take a gander at the herding youth by lamplight while we are at it.
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