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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wil" data-source="post: 517559" data-attributes="member: 3502"><p>Not indestructible - hard to destroy.  Running an airplane into the cable won't sever it.  Can you imagine what the tensile strength of a 20-ton cable stretched over a hundred miles is?  It would cut the plane in half.   A nuke would bring the cable down, or taking down the orbital station.  However, "terrorist target" is a poor excuse for not building it - if you need enough terrorists to take over the ground station, hold it for a few days while enough of them make the climb to the orbital station to take it over so they can destroy it or detonate a nuke in the middle of the cable (BTW, I'd have doubts as to what destroying the ground station would actually do.  One plan for an orbital cable doesn't even call for it to be anchored to the ground - it's actually suspended right off the surface of the Earth) then there isn't much that *is* safe from these uberterrorists.  In fact, they might as well be a "let's destroy the world cult" because any concerted attempt to bring the cable down would most certainly result in widespread destruction as the cable slams into the equator.  Or...well...as it slams into the Pacific Ocean.  Hrm...not much out there to destroy, really.  Even then, against these uberterrorists we might as well give up right now.</p></blockquote><p></p>