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Space elevators are a long, straight cable connecting a satellite in orbit of a planet all the way to a root station on the ground. An elevator is able to ride up the cable, providing easy and cheap access out of the planet's atmosphere and into orbit.[1][2] They were nicknamed "beanstalks”, and Frank Wood jokingly calls the day that the technology was discovered "Beanstalk Day", in reference of Step Day.[3]

Appearance[]

Beanstalk cables are made of a super-strong material, about half an inch in diameter, and coloured a bright eggshell blue. Willis Linsay speculates they don’t actually need to be that thick; perhaps the thickness and bright colour are safety precautions, to make sure vehicles don’t accidentally collide with them.[4] The cables are strong enough to survive millions of years without maintenance, but can be frayed slightly by collisions with high-speed objects.[5][6] Space elevators must be constructed close to the equator so that the upper satellite can hover permanently over the root station; on Mars, they were constructed close to the great Tharsis volcanoes, while in the US, they were built in Miami.[7][8]

Discovery[]

Willis Linsay deduced that a space elevator would exist somewhere out in the Long Mars. Here, he believed, any life would only have occasional short periods of time to develop before the planet would inevitably become uninhabitable once again. However, because of Mars’ lower gravity and thinner atmosphere, a space elevator would be much easier to build than on earth, allowing these hypothetical lifeforms an easy way to escape their dying planet. Linsay therefore believed that if he travelled far enough across the Long Mars, finding a space elevator would be inevitable, and if he brought a sample back to Earth, he could speed up the process of inventing a space elevator strong enough to work in Earth’s gravity by decades or centuries.[9] So, he set off on a mission across the Long Mars with Sally Linsay and Frank Wood. Around eleven weeks after their arrival on Mars, they found what they were looking for on Gap Mars East 3,000,000 Plus Change, and took a sample back with them.[3]

Construction[]

Space elevators were constructed by the LETC in various stepwise footprints of Miami, namely Miami West 4, to give work to the many Yellowstone refugees flooding into the city from the Datum.[8] Willis Linsay also believed that constructing beanstalks would help the Low Earths industrialise and explore the cosmos while avoiding many of the environmental damages previously suffered by the Datum Earth.[10] By 2048 the city in West 4 had been transformed into a construction site, and in 2051, the terminus of the station had been built and put into orbit. The space elevator workers were nicknamed “stalk jacks”.[8] Working on space elevators was a difficult and dangerous job, however. People like Ben Abrahams’ parents were killed in orbital decompression disasters, and as the years passed, many former workers left to the much easier life of becoming combers.[11][12]

Trivia[]

The nickname "beanstalk" is a reference to the fairy tale called Jack and the Beanstalk where Jack climbs a giant beanstalk to reach a land high in the sky.

Frank also calls the space elevator "Jacob's ladder", which is a reference to a part of the Book of Genesis where Jacob dreams about a connection between earth and heaven.

References[]

  1. The Long Mars - Chapter 37
  2. The Long Mars - Chapter 38
  3. 3.0 3.1 The Long Mars - Chapter 36
  4. The Long Mars- page 358
  5. The Long Mars- page 354
  6. The Long Mars- page 370
  7. The Long Mars- page 350
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 The Long Utopia - Chapter 1
  9. The Long Mars- pages 350-352
  10. The Long Mars- page 353
  11. The Long Utopia- page 96
  12. The Long Utopia- page 122
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