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Message: <blockquote data-quote="alaric" data-source="post: 75147" data-attributes="member: 296">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.</blockquote>

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