How does Space Spiral work?

...and any other observation tower of the like? I was curious, after reading about how the cabin sits about in line with its counterweight during the off-season. I don't see any external cables or anything, so how does she work?

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Tommy Penner - Variable X
Cedar Point FanBoy since 2001. || Cruiser Boy since 2002.
"Pessimistic people are the happiest people on the planet. They're either right or pleasantly surprised."

Basically there's about 8 or so cables attatched to the cabin itself. They go up to the top of the tower and back down to the counterweight inside. The actual motor is at the top of the tower, where the cables transition from the outside of the tower to the inside. As the cabin travels up, the counterweight goes down, and vice versa. If you watch the ride run from nearby Transport Refreshments you'll hear the chains on the counterweight get louder as it nears the bottom. You can even peer inside the hatch and see it.

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2002 Raptor Crew
"Hey, Cool. My voice is on the lift"

Just because you don't see any external cables doesn't mean they're not there; it just means you're not looking hard enough.

The center core of the Space Spiral cabin is just a doughnut-shaped elevator attached to the hoisting cables. The hoisting cables extend upward to the top of the tower, presumably over the motor drives, and attach to a counterweight inside the tower. If you stand on the Disaster Transport side of the ride, there is a circular opening in the bottom of the tower with a grille over it. If you look through that grille as the cabin reaches the top of the tower, you can see the bottom of the counterweight.

The passenger cabin is hung on the outside of the elevator and can rotate; I don't know whether the rotation motor is mounted on the cabin or on the part that goes up and down. Slip rings are used to transfer electric power and telephone from the cabin to the elevator; cables are used to go from the elevator to the bottom of the ride.

It's really just an elevator!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I worked the ride last year, and from what I can remember the rotation motor was mounted on the part that goes up and down. Some mornings the cabin would rotate very slow and be off by as much as a few feet when it stopped. Maintenance mentioned the weather, but I never understood what that'd have to do with it.

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2002 Raptor Crew
"Hey, Cool. My voice is on the lift"