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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greenfield" data-source="post: 5563926" data-attributes="member: 6669384">Okay.First, the bad news.  The hamster died.Even if it had the hit points of an elephant, it's dead.  It burned up in the atmosphere like a small, cute, fuzzy meteor.  And then it turned back into a mule (or elephant) and lost all that extra velocity.The good news is that the boulder is immortal, and is the basis for our new mass driver used to fire projectiles into orbit.A little math to determine how big a payload it can carry, and the old orbital mirror array is back online!  You need to calculate the final mass of the shrunken boulder, and then determine how much additional weight is needed to slow it down from relativistic velocities to simple orbital speeds, and we can launch payloads into space with a relatively low level spell.  We just need to make sure we have a way to eject the "booster" once we're in orbit, since it will lose all that orbital speed when the spell wears off.Now for a 5th level caster, they can reduce 1,660 lbs of stone (10 cubic feet) to about 0.4 lbs.If we use lead, we start with 7,800 lbs., reducing to just under two pounds.For Iron, we get 4,500, which reduces to just over a pound.  Iron is good for this.  We can create it with Wall of Iron, and 10 cubic feet is easy to get.  At 12th level caster (you need to be 11th, minimum to cast it anyway) you get 3 inches of thickness per 5x5 foot square, which works out to 6.25 cubic feet, or 75 cubic feet total.  At 50 gp per casting, Iron is a cheap solution.Reducing 10 cubic feet get 1 lb at 260 million miles an hour, and we're trying to get to about 20,000 mph at launch point to attain geosynch at 18,000 mph.That gives us a payload of about 13,000 lbs.  Allow 3000 of that as heat shield (we'll use the leftover iron) and support structure, intended to burn away as it does a reverse-falling-star, and that gives us a 10,000 lb payload.That works out to about 7 gp per launch, in actual coin out of pocket.  Eat your heart out, NASA!So here's the next challenge:  Find a way to pack the payload so it survives the zero-to-20,000 mph launch.  And no, you can't shrink it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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