@air: thanks for opening a discussion into chat. I wasn't quite sure how to do this... Perhaps you could explain to me how i can do this in the future. In any case, i have a concern about my question on the maximum tallness of a structure. You mentioned "fishing for a real question" being a bad thing. In my opinion, i was refining my question as the comments made me realize things that i didn't think about before. Please help me to understand your perspective on this.

@Paul This chat room is always open for discussion, we have no formal rules other that basic standards of decency that apply to the whole site.

To link to the room, just put the text in brackets and the URL immediately after in parentheses, like this: Here is [a link to the Engineering chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20403/engineering)

Here is a link to the Engineering chat room

As far as "fishing for a real question," I was referring to Real Questions Have Answers.

RQHA is concerned mainly with polls and subjective questions. On its surface, your question appears to be neither subjective nor a poll—but it has some similarities, because it's so unconstrained. That leaves it very open to interpretation. Also note that the "specific guidance" quoted in RQHA calls out "open-ended, hypothetical question[s]" and said guidance is still part of the Help Center.

The heart of the issue, as it applies to Engineering SE specifically, is that our goal is to be a practical resource for engineers. Answers that you can't get elsewhere, or better than you can get elsewhere, that help to solve practical problems.

@hazzey I would have probably started with a carbon-fiber composite over diamond, myself

Do you know something I don't, or was it just easier to use a simple, rigid material?

@Air It was just something that I could find properties on first. Is carbon fiber good in compression? It seems to be used a lot in tension.

Once I found the physics.SE question, it seemed like a good direction to go. And really, the exact material didn't matter too much since the base could be as wide as required.

@hazzey Well, it's anisotropic, so it really depends

But I was thinking just make it long enough for rotational forces to put it in tension :)