#PennedPossibilities 1071: What is something you wish existed in the real world that exists in your WIP?
Space elevators! Because fuck Elon Musk.
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@cstross rotavators have potential for even more cinematic failure modes. It's a shame Robert Forward didn't live longer.
(Musk probably thinks space elevators are woke...?)
@cstross
Would be nice.
The materials don't exist ; it's not clear if the materials *can* exist, using chemical bonds.
@cstross Musk would buy it and say he built it
@cstross Also space elevators are just fucking cool.
@fskornia @cstross
One requirement of building a space elevator is cleaning all the junk out of LEO (nuts, bolts, screwdrivers, gloves, Starlinks, power reactors, etc). Otherwise the elevator won’t last a day before being hit by some high-velocity discard.
Speaking of elevators, we don’t need wonder materials to build them on the Moon or Mars, high tensile steel will do. 2 elevators on the Moon, at L1 and L2 will allow low cost traffic to/from Earth and launch/return from interplanetary space.
@cstross I've always been a fan of space elevators. Until I watched that scene from the TV version of Foundation.
@jeffzugale @cstross Another interesting concept -- I knew the fellow usually attributed with the concept in fact I used his terminal to do some work when I'd visit the original Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) site -- is the orbital skyhook. Of course, it has its own issues as well.
@jeffzugale @cstross Many years ago I used to go over to Jerry's house to help him with his CP/M system he used for writing (Wordstar I think). He kept a handgun on the table to the left of the CRT.
