[Dragonstar] The 65 billion gp magic item, or the Magic Beanstalk

[alaric]

Assuming 100 star systems with spellcasters, and an average population of 4 billion in each star system, and further assuming that only 1/10th of 1 percent of the population is a spellcaster, and that only 1% of those would have the appropriate spels and feats (3rd level spell caster and the levitation and mage hand spells) and be willing to work for the company for a few months, then that gives us 40,000 spellcasters per planet, or 400,000 available spellcasters in the Dragon Empire.

I have a couple of problems with the numbers your using. First it appears you made a mistake in your calculation of spellcasters. Notice that you said 100 star systems with 40,0000 casters a piece, but you only ended up with 400,000, instead of 4,000,000. I also think (i haven't been able to find the Galaxy Guide yet so i don't know) that 100 star systems seems incrediably small for Dragon Star, they way they talked in the Starfarers Guide i assumed somewhere on the order of 1000 habited systems. If one or both of my alterations are correct this reduces build time to a much smaller number (and even with your 9x increase in size it would still leave you at around 3 years to build).
Secondly, the recoup cost. 1cr/ton of cargo? That's one steal of a deal. I'm not sure how much the current space tugs would cost but 1cr/ton sounds amazingly low, 100cr/ton sounds cheap to me. The whole reason the space elevator concept is being seriously looked at is the massive costs involved in moving cargo to space. I would assume the same would be true for a Magic Space Beanstock, you wouldn't build the thing if it was going to only cost 1cr/ton to move cargo.
Both of these things added together make the concept both more economical, and worthwhile over the short run. This could mean a corp owned by humans or elves may be just as likely to build on as a dragon corp.

 

[alaric]

Another thing i just thought about is using Reverse Gravity instead of Levitate. My high school physics class is completely forgotten by now, so someone may want to check out the math on this, but here are the changes it would make to the bean stock.

If you move the caster level to 14 instead of 10 you can now use Reverse Gravity. With reverse gravity from a 14th level caster you can move as much weight as you want as long as it fits in 70 sq ft of floor space. With spells to decrease the size of the cargo, and boxes piled on boxes you should be able to move quite a bit of cargo.

You'd also be moving much more rapidly. While levitate moves at around 3 ft/sec, in a few seconds time RG should get you up to terminal velocity of around 290 ft/sec assuming your using some kind of aerodynamic casing to transport the cargo and keep it from flying all over the place (a human in a ball reaches terminal velocity at 200mhp, so that's the speed i used). A 14th level caster's RG lasts for 84 seconds. So we get a guestimate (since i don't know how to figure how long it will take to reach terminal velocity) of around 4 miles high for each use of the spell. Since you are traveling massively faster than with levitate you should be able to move alot more cargo in a day, which increases the speed at which we can recoup the initial costs.

Another benifit is that since each casting takes you 4 miles higher you wouldn't need nearly as many magically rings to make up the beanstalk. Most of the stalk could be made of a non-magically high-strength material. If it's length is 2000 miles, then you only need 500 magical segments to get into orbit, this brings down the cost and the number of mages needed down significantly.

At the top of the beanstalk you could make the originally designed levitate segments to catch the cargo as it reaches the top, you could let the last segment be a little long cause the cargo to have it's RG run out while still moving at 200mph upward. Gravity would slow the assent, and the levitate segments could handle the final docking precedures.

It's possible that the down bean stock could just be a free fall with a reverse gravity and a levitate catch on it's in, this would be just as fast as the assent.

I'll let the physics guru's explain with this will or won't work though.

 

[Caliban]

My original concept was that of using mostly 1st through 3rd level casters, not 10th level casters. They achieved the 10th caster level by using ritual magic to combine their caster levels.

Using a 7th level spell would require many more high level casters, who are harder to find, harder to convince to work for a corporation (or so I'm assuming), and much more expensive.

As soon as I get some time I'm going to sit down and rethink the whole Beanstalk, using more tech and less magic. It might turn out to be more cost effective to use the Reverse gravity technique for the lower portion of the ring, but I don't think it will be effective for the upper portions, as the force of the planetery gravity is much less at that height.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Why all the magic?

Space elevators are theoretically possible, at the level of technology listed in Dragonstar. I thought the whole concept of Dragonstar was "use technology to do the possible, and magic to do the impossible"?

So why not simply design a true space elevator? Maybe with some enhancements from magic, but primarily just technology?