Now this is a BOMB!!! I read that yesterday in the newspaper 5min - a 452m high TV tower will get built in Minsk, Belarus - financed by the goverment, it will cost about a 100million $...

But if we consider how poor and un-democratical the situation in this country is, maybe the goverment is trying to get a better reputation in the people's eyes, or what???

Hell - 452m!!! :skull:

I am not an engeneer, but are TV towers still necessary for transmitting? Aren't there any new technologies? Sattelites for example, cables and so on? if you want to build a tower to surprise everybody maybe you can find other function for it. But if you really care about television, maybe you can invest these 100 million dollars in new technologies and not in a oldfashioned TV tower

^^^ No you are both mistaken - the tower will be a secret nuke missile launch facility, as it will be so high in the sky - no radars or detectors will be able to detect anything... ;)

I am not an engeneer, but are TV towers still necessary for transmitting? Aren't there any new technologies? Sattelites for example, cables and so on?
Not many people use sat TV (not to count hackers), and even not everybody have cable TV (mostly in cities). Others use convensional type of transmitting/receiving - TV tower/TV antens ;)

Maybe its going to be a signal jammer of foreign TV and radio stations?
A lot of Belarussians like to watch Polish TV. And in few weeks the new free Belarussian radio station is going to start broadcasting in Bialystok.

I think, no need to build up conspiration theories ;) Belarussians just need to affirm themselves to the world - they don't have the best reputation nowadays and large buildings is established habit of dictators to unite the nation and create prestige. Building one enormous structure is much easier than creating democratic and stable state.
TV tower nowadays still has many uses. F.e. Riga TV tower is overloaded with equipment and they complain that there is no place for everything on it.
Regarding the spending of money... this way of spending is better than investment in agressions, dirty political influences abroad or just plain corruption. At least some real use for money.
The project of this TV tower looked very OK.

As far as I know, the political system In Belarus hasn't really changed after USSR's collapsion and this sort of project were rather typical in USSR - all Baltic capital's got their own tall TV Towers for example.

I'm looking forward to see some renderings. Will that one be the second tallest TV tower in former Soviet Union after Moscow's Ostankino?

Tallest Freestanding Structures

1 CN Tower Toronto, Canada 553 m 1976
2 Ostankino Tower Moscow, Russia 540 m 1967
3 Oriental Pearl Tower Shanghai, China 468 m 1998
4 Menara Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 421 m 1996
5 Tianjin TV Tower Tianjin, China 415 m 1991
6 Central Radio & TV Tower Beijing, China 405 m 1992
7 Kiev TV Tower Kiev, Ukraine 385 m 1973
8 Tashkent Tower Tashkent, Uzbekistan 375 m 1985
9 Liberation Tower Kuwait City, Kuwait 372 m 1996
10 Alma Ata Tower Almaty, Kazakhstan 371 m 1983
11 Riga TV Tower Riga, Latvia 368 m 1987
12 Fernsehtrum Tower Berlin, Germany 368 m 1969
13 Stratosphere Tower Las Vegas, United States 350 m 1996
14 Macau Tower Macau, China 338 m 2001
15 Dragon Tower Harbin, China 336 m 2000

BUT GUYS!
Maybe we all can put our knowledge in one place: wikipedia?
for example here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_and_structures_by_country
or here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towers

I think we all can build this article easy!
I am working with latvian highest structures right now, are You with me?