Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agnostic Paladin" data-source="post: 480497" data-attributes="member: 575">Killmore, I'd suspect pretty near every equatorial nation would be fighting tooth and claw to get the anchor station set in there territory. The economic benefits of having all that material moving through their national would be unbelievable. As for being tied to the upper station, that thing isn't coming down easily. Breaking the cable's the easiest way to take out the elevator, and that leads to a massive rope wrapping around the globe and trashing everything equatorial, not just the anchor point. (Actually, the anchor point would be less damaged on the first pass than areas a few hundred miles further along.) And when the cable breaks, the upper station goes flying off into the solar system since it will be spinning just faster than a stable orbit to keep the cable taut. To bring it down without detaching it, you'd have to apply a serious downward thrust to defeat that same escape velocity.Edit:  Jurgen, to be safe from the cable, pretty much anywhere at least, say 15° above or below the equator would be preferable. The farther away from it, the less likely you're going to encounter debris, and the cable itself should stay pretty close to the equator. As for the base station, I don't know the actual numbers off the top of my head, but I think that the cable's going to wrap at least once if it breaks close to the top, so that's safe only for the first wrap.Orbital junk is a problem of course, and one that we'll have to find a way to deal with in any case. I think that the medical problems are likewise relatively minor problems to be overcome (or simply ignored. "We can't go crossing the Atlantic! For God's sake man, the scurvy will horribly weaken us!")And I still think Wulf's opinion of human nature is both simplistic and horribly pessimistic.</blockquote>

Verification