Build A Space Elevator!

[Palanan]

Following up on an idea from another current thread:


Originally Posted by Jowgen
D&D has materials that have more than enough tensile strenght/mass to make that workable. If you can get yourself a lift, then working on slowly expanding the base and making a big space-island dome thing that you might eventually work into an actual space port will be much simpler.

So, how would you do this? What materials would make this work, and how would you deploy them to reach orbit?

And gods forbid, what could make it fail, and what would be the consequences for the surface?

[unseenmage]

Disintegrate would be very bad news.

For metallic cable a simple Rust Monster could ruin the day.

[Palanan]

This is something I've wondered about: what's the diameter of a surface-to-space tether?

I've never looked too deeply into space elevator construction, so I don't have a sense of its dimensions.

[MisterKaws]

Riverine has hardness: infinity, so you can stretch it as long as you want and it won't break or bend, unless disintegrated, so that part is solved. The issue is surviving there and ensuring no one disintegrates your tether.

[Palanan]

I was hoping Jowgen would comment, since he's apparently done a lot of thinking along these lines.

For my part, I would just as soon not include Riverine as a potential material, since it's not really "material" at all.

[Elkad]

This is something I've wondered about: what's the diameter of a surface-to-space tether?

I've never looked too deeply into space elevator construction, so I don't have a sense of its dimensions.

Ground to geosynch orbit at a minimum (22,000 miles for Terra), plus an equivalent weight beyond that point (more cable, or a counterweight) so your cable doesn't fall down. Counterweight is easier, but extra cable lets you use a whip-crack effect to launch spacecraft at other planets.

Cable has to be strong enough to support it's own weight, plus any payload (which likely won't be much comparatively), plus safety margin.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Elkad
Cable has to be strong enough to support it's own weight, plus any payload (which likely won't be much comparatively), plus safety margin.

So what does this work out to in terms of diameter?

[unseenmage]

I was hoping Jowgen would comment, since he's apparently done a lot of thinking along these lines.

For my part, I would just as soon not include Riverine as a potential material, since it's not really "material" at all.
Except that Riverine IS a material?
I understand though. 'A force effect did it' is rarely a satisfying answer and always reeks more of contrivance.

That said, Living metal is also a thing, it heals hp damage.

Make your tether a piece of Wondrous Architecture and you could arguably also make it an Intelligent Magic Item for further shenaniganery. Such as handing it a Spellblade vs Disintegrate for example.

Aninate your material first and it gains substantial defensive potentiality, though with how much easier it is to kill creatures in the game than it is to kill objects this arguably rather reduces its survivability overall.

You could build the whole thing on another plane to make collapse a nonissue. Portals to said plane (I suggest Ethereal or Shadow or the Pland of Radiance from Dragon mag) at the top and bottom of the device allow access to the otherworldly elevator.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by unseenmage
'A force effect did it' is rarely a satisfying answer and always reeks more of contrivance.

This exactly. Riverine seems very contrived to begin with (force fields keeping deep-sea water compressed) and from what I can tell, it tends to get banned fairly often.


Originally Posted by unseenmage
Make your tether a piece of Wondrous Architecture and you could arguably also make it an Intelligent Magic Item….

A space elevator that’s a magical AI? Yes please. :smalltongue:


Originally Posted by unseenmage
You could build the whole thing on another plane to make collapse a nonissue.

Possibly, but other planes bring their own hazards. Not sure if it ends up being an improvement or not. I could see the githyanki targeting this thing out of pure spite, if not reflexive territoriality. Building it through mundane space might actually be simpler in terms of defense.

[Vizzerdrix]

Id use a row boat and the suspension spell.

[Ramza00]

This is how you get everyone speaking Greek, plus all those other languages.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/394/601/585.jpg

[Malphegor]

Enough fly spells, a lot of hemp rope, and an immoveable rod, and I will build you the pulley system that will make this possible.

[Elkad]

So what does this work out to in terms of diameter?

Obviously it depends on the strength of the material. Best modern steel cable? You barely get off the ground (well, down from orbit, you build from the center) - making it only a few dozen miles, even tapering it, before the cable is impossibly wide (so wide you can't add more and support it's own weight, nevermind the problems with winds aloft).
Nylon rope is actually almost identical to steel. Not as strong, but enough lighter it matches up.

Spider silk is 20x stronger by weight than steel, so that gets you a few hundred miles.
Kevlar is 2-3x stronger than spider silk, but not enough of an improvement to make it.
Carbon fiber is 4x stronger than spider silk. Still doesn't make it.
That's the end of things we can bulk produce.


Carbon nanotubes? 1000x times stronger than steel. 5 micron thick ribbon - turned edgeways to the prevailing winds. 5cm wide at the ground (and could be smaller), widening to 12cm in geosynch, and then decreasing again away from the center point (possible just until you attach the counterweight). Of course we haven't managed more than a couple inches as a continuous strand yet, so you'd have to glue strands together. And account for the weight of the glue.
A pure graphene ribbon (well, ribbons, quilted together somehow, or you can't grip it) is even better by about 20%, but at that point it doesn't matter.


If you build it out of Force/Riverine? Any width you want, assuming it's infinitely strong. Heck, you can just make a ladder 22,000 miles high and have something tireless (and immune to Van Allen Belt radiation) climb it with a pack full of spaceship bits. Undead maybe. Loaded ones climb up one side, unloaded ones climb down the other. You don't even need to counterweight the far end.


There are other mundane means, more technically complex, but require less material strength. For example, use a magnetic accelerator to shoot a huge amount of steel balls/torus to geosynch - many per second - to just short of geosynch. They fall back to earth and you catch them (recovering some of the energy in the process with another linear decelerator - thrifty), use the end of that magnetic decelerator to make a U-turn at whatever speed we can retain, and shoot them up again. Then you have your elevator car use it's own magnets to catch a ride as they go by. Each ball only moves it a tiny bit - losing a tiny bit of it's own velocity in the process, but they stream by at a massively high speed.
It needs a tiny rocket booster at the end to make it the last few feet/miles. Of course if the power goes out mid-climb, the car falls back to earth.

Or even more difficult but better methods. A pinwheel of cables, spinning slowly (relative to Terra's rotation). You grab onto a cable as it passes you on the ground, and it swings you into orbit.

[King of Nowhere]

So what does this work out to in terms of diameter?

diameter is irrelevant. the cable must be strong enough to support its own weight. you double the diameter, you quadruple the strenght, but you also quadruple the weight, so the two cancel each other. if the material is right, a few atoms will be enough. if the material is not right, you won't ever be able to make it work.

then again, the cable must support its own weight, but it must also support additional weight if you're using it as space elevator. so, diameter depends on how much extra weight you want.

[Bohandas]

you could theoretically just magic a bunch of regular ropes to be weightless with the right item creation feats and/or spells

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by unseenmage
…Living metal is also a thing, it heals hp damage.

Looking at the entry for living metal (Magic of Faerûn p. 179), it looks like this is essentially self-healing steel, with a hardness of 12 instead of 10 and the same 30 hp per inch.

I love the idea of living metal for an space elevator, but as Elkad points out, it’s not really feasible in terms of supporting its own weight.


Originally Posted by Elkad
Carbon nanotubes? 1000x times stronger than steel. 5 micron thick ribbon - turned edgeways to the prevailing winds. 5cm wide at the ground (and could be smaller), widening to 12cm in geosynch, and then decreasing again away from the center point (possible just until you attach the counterweight).

Hmm. Where are you getting these particular figures?

In Space Elevators, Edwards and Westling proposed a carbon nanotube ribbon with a width of one meter. Their key assumption is that carbon nanotube technology “develops as expected,” meaning “progresses much farther than it has so far.”

One of the other suggestions I came across is for a living ribbon of bioengineered bacteria, which would be self-healing. Now I’m wondering how many tsochar strands you’d need to send a ribbon into orbit.

[Bohandas]

Riverine has hardness: infinity, so you can stretch it as long as you want and it won't break or bend, unless disintegrated, so that part is solved. The issue is surviving there and ensuring no one disintegrates your tether.

What book is riverine from. I keep hearing it mentioned but don;t know where it's from.


Looking at the entry for living metal (Magic of Faerûn p. 179), it looks like this is essentially self-healing steel, with a hardness of 12 instead of 10 and the same 30 hp per inch.

I love the idea of living metal for an space elevator, but as Elkad points out, it’s not really feasible in terms of supporting its own weight.



Hmm. Where are you getting these particular figures?

In Space Elevators, Edwards and Westling proposed a carbon nanotube ribbon with a width of one meter. Their key assumption is that carbon nanotube technology “develops as expected,” meaning “progresses much farther than it has so far.”

One of the other suggestions I came across is for a living ribbon of bioengineered bacteria, which would be self-healing. Now I’m wondering how many tsochar strands you’d need to send a ribbon into orbit.

Wait, how come bacteria and tsochar strands are plausible but self-healing metal isn't

[MisterKaws]

What book is riverine from. I keep hearing it mentioned but don;t know where it's from.



Wait, how come bacteria and tsochar strands are plausible but self-healing metal isn't

For anything water-related, open up Stormwrack. Page 128 in this case.

[Jowgen]

I was hoping Jowgen would comment, since he's apparently done a lot of thinking along these lines.

Oh wow! So this is what being summoned feels like? It's tingly... :smalltongue:

So we're building a stairway to heaven.

For the site of our build, I think we'd ideally want an island somewhere remote. Less chance of interlopers and people noticing the project. A couple square miles ought to suffice.

To up the durability I think it ought to be treated as a Stronghold. That lets us apply the Magically Treated wall augumentation, doubling Hardness and HP, which opens up a lot more materials for us. The Hardening spell can be stacked with this, adding half CL to Hardness. With those two applied, getting hardness between 30 and 50 shoul be achievable no issue, and ought to be enough for most purposes.

This also lets us add other proective features, such as permanent windwalls (against flyers) and camouflage in the way of Mirage Arcana (veil of obscurity, Draconimicon p. 85). Random flying things that unwittingly get close will probably think they hit a freak updraft and fly elsewhere. Most importantly, we can add a levitating quality to help keep the thing stable, especially during construction.

The above is applicable to any plan.

Now I personally would go a little weird going forward. We don't build a space elevator. We grow the damn thing. We take a Fey Cherry Tree as the base, as they are the naturally biggest, described as naturally strong enough for tree based dwellings ( so a base hardness of at least 10 seems a reasonable assumption), and costs 10% less to magically enhance. Plus they naturally modulate winds and temperature in their immediate vicinity, making them ideal for going real high up.

Growing the elevator out of a living plant gives us a number of advantages. First up, as living objects it is technically exempt from disintegrate. Second, it is self-reparing. Third, and perhaps most significantly, any magical upgrades we apply at the beginning should continue to apply as it grows, saving us a metric load of magical upgrading cost (i.e. a hardened, magically treated sapling should grow into a hardened, magically treated tree).

So of course the main quest is how in the hell are we supposed to get it to grow high enough in a reasonable amount of time?

Well, first up we need to turn our island build site into a God damn Fey burial ground (i.e. minor genocide), to make it into a Feymound (MoF), which "spurns plants to grow". We stack the Enrichment version of Plant Growth into that.

Next, we need an abundant source of Positive Energy, since Elder Evils p. 107 tells us that it causes plants to grow rapidly. Normally that wouldn't help us since they mature and die real quick, but Fey cherries are biologically immortal. The Bless Water spell tells us that Holy Water is infused with Positive Energy, and the Sacred Vessel (BoED) turns any water poured into it into Holy Water (should remove salt, if not we need an extra step). So we use that to turn the surrounding sea into the irrigation system. Lastly, to get us started we need the Womb of the Earth spell (Dragon 297). I causes food plants to grow to harvest maturity in 24 hours, which should work for the Fey cherry since it makes edible fruit. The Cherry explicitly only produces cherries once a decade, so adding basic maturing time to that, this method ought to net us 10+years of growth time, boosted by the Fey Mound, Holy Water, and the Plant Growth (both enrichment and overgrowth version cast during the 24 hours.

Now of course just letting it grow wild does nothing for our purposes. It needs to grow into the shape of our space elevator. For this I think we need copious amounts of at-will Wood Shape, Coral Growth and Plant Growth (suggestion on the how most welcome). Also, Speak With Plants to let the cherry know what we want to do, since it might be able to cooperate.

The Coral Growth is used to create a scaffold to support our workers as we repeatedly Plant Growth (Overgrowth) and Wood Shape it as to make it grow the way we want.

The speed of the initial 24 hour Womb of the Earth boost can't be replicated, but with a virtual oceans worth of Holy Water to positive energy juice up the tree (plus the other growth factors), the Tree's willing cooperating and our good workers using Plant Growth on specific sections to give it repeated bursts, I think the progress in terms of time should still overall outpace any non-national-level-effort construction processes.

As the tree is biologically immortal, there should be no limit to how high we can make it grow, it has the Flying locomotion quality so gravity is no concern, it comes with its own environmental adapters, and it is both wind-walled and camouflaged so security is good, and it has a Hardness of around 40 and naturally heals (speeds vary by sourcebook), so most common threats need not apply.

[Elkad]

Hmm. Where are you getting these particular figures?

Wiki space elevator, and then chase it's citations to actual scholarly articles.

The math is in them (some of which I don't comprehend well enough to duplicate, but I can follow).

Anyway, 5cm or 12cm or 100cm is so close (on the scale of a 100,000km long ribbon) as to be irrelevant. And did your reference list the thickness? Maybe theirs was 100cm by a half-micron thick, instead of 5 microns?

The problem isn't the strength of carbon nanotubes. It's growing them long enough and/or glueing them together.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Jowgen
Oh wow! So this is what being summoned feels like? It's tingly...

I had to burn some XP, but it was worth it. :smalltongue:


Originally Posted by Jowgen
We don't build a space elevator. We grow the damn thing.

First, I love this concept.

In fact, I had almost the same idea—that druids could grow a titanic tree into the atmosphere and thence into orbit. —Maybe not a tree, exactly, not with branches and leaves in scale with the trunk; but something made of magically reinforced wood that could grow into orbit, a literal beanstalk.

Trouble is, I’m not sure what could overcome the issues with strength. I’m not sure if Ironwood can be cast on living trees, and even if it could, it’s still only as tough as steel, which as Elkad noted won’t support itself very far. But I’m open to other ideas.


Originally Posted by Jowgen
First up, as living objects it is technically exempt from disintegrate.

Are you sure? Is “living object” an actual category? Is it explicitly different from a creature?

In both the 3.5 PHB and the Pathfinder CRB, the spell’s description mentions creatures taking damage, so I’m not sure if this exception would work.

Originally Posted by Jowgen
…a Feymound (MoF), which "spurns plants to grow".

Hmm. On p. 34 of Magic of Faerûn, the description for fey mounds mentions that, “Some claim the resulting mulch has magical properties that spur plants to grow.”

Trouble is, there aren’t any mechanics listed that increase plants’ growth rate…and there are some side effects of being near a fey mound (lesser geas, sleep, etc.) which could interfere with groundside operations. Is there an updated version of the fey mounds somewhere else?


Originally Posted by Jowgen
…the Sacred Vessel (BoED) turns any water poured into it into Holy Water….

So we use that to turn the surrounding sea into the irrigation system.

Let it never be said that you don’t think big. :smalltongue:

That said, is Sacred Vessel a spell or a magic item? Either way, I can’t find it in BoED. Also, does the entire ocean basin become holy water? Or just a Zone of HolinessTM around the island?


Originally Posted by Jowgen
As the tree is biologically immortal, there should be no limit to how high we can make it grow….

True, but how long does it take to reach orbit? You might get a head start with Womb of the Earth (and props for using one of the most obscure spells ever), but after that it’s a very long slog.


Originally Posted by Jowgen
…it has the Flying locomotion quality so gravity is no concern…and it has a Hardness of around 40 and naturally heals….

I’m looking at Dragon 357 and not seeing these features. Was the fey cherry updated somewhere else?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the overall concept, just wanted to follow up on these particular points. I could see this as being a grand generational project for a conclave of druids—and I could easily see a tremendous crusade launched against them by a coalition of faiths that, for their own varied reasons, all vehemently deny the right of the druids to reach the heavens.


Originally Posted by Elkad
The problem isn't the strength of carbon nanotubes. It's growing them long enough and/or glueing them together.

I hear you on this, and it’s one reason why I like the tree-growing approach, because the wood is by definition a smoothly integrated substance. But as I mentioned above, I’m not sure if wood alone—even hardened, magically infused, positive-energy-juiced fairy wood—is strong enough to reach orbit on its own.

Now I’m thinking some sort of enhanced crystal lattice interlaced with the wood might work, or maybe a fine metal filigree that carries some stabilizing force. Are there any mechanics to support this idea?

[Maat Mons]

Not to derail the thread, but... why would anyone do this in a setting that has teleportation?

If you have a spaceport, just use a pair of teleportation circles or portals to get people between it and the ground. But, actually, don't bother with the spaceport, because you could just make the teleportation circles/portals go straight to whatever planet you want.

I guess, mass transportation of cargo could still be an issue, since neither teleportation circles nor portals will transport unattended objects. But for that you can just build a stronghold that can fly and greater teleport. That, right there, is a spaceship with hyperspace ability. No, it's better, because hyperspace still takes time, and usually you can't safely enter or leave hyperspace while sitting on a planet's surface. So you've got cargo ships that just appear wherever they're needed for loading/unloading, regardless of which planets those places happen to be on, no mucking around with space at all.

[Bohandas]

Does Shrink Item affect tensile strength? If it doesn't that could be used to reduce width and weight

[Jowgen]

Trouble is, I’m not sure what could overcome the issues with strength. I’m not sure if Ironwood can be cast on living trees, and even if it could, it’s still only as tough as steel, which as Elkad noted won’t support itself very far. But I’m open to other ideas.

Feycherry lends itself for a variety of reasons. One, it is a fantasy scale large tree. The "common" variety reaches over 500 ft, which is a good 100 ft taller than the actual tallest tree ever, so I assume its fair to assume that the thing already defies IRL plant physics by itself. The "supernatural strength that makes them ideal platforms for tree-based dwellings" is not defined as such, but its the best we got.

Another option I would personally love to make work is the Deeproot, or Sussur tree from Underdark p. 108, as they generate massive Antimagic fields by feeding on magic, but as they are Faerezz/Underdark dependent and I am yet to find a way to generate the stuff, not to mention to the trouble of making this project work in an AMF, doesn't look likely.


Are you sure? Is “living object” an actual category? Is it explicitly different from a creature?

In regards to objects disintegrate specifies "the ray simply disintegrates as much as one 10-foot cube of nonliving matter.". The Players handbook distinguishes "living tree" in the Tree Stride spell, which is only one of many examples. It is dumb, but by RAW trees can be alive and are thus immune.


Hmm. On p. 34 of Magic of Faerûn, the description for fey mounds mentions that, “Some claim the resulting mulch has magical properties that spur plants to grow.”

Trouble is, there aren’t any mechanics listed that increase plants’ growth rate…and there are some side effects of being near a fey mound (lesser geas, sleep, etc.) which could interfere with groundside operations. Is there an updated version of the fey mounds somewhere else?

They don't appear anywhere else, sadly. The defensive effects of the mounds might be a nuisance, but they also add a bit of defense to Elevator Island to the unwary interloper. Also, the Hallow effect goes well with the Holy Water irrigation by flavor.

As for the plant growing effect, the lack of quantification is a pity, but there aren't really any other plant growth boosting effects in game, so I included it. It's not vital.


Let it never be said that you don’t think big. :smalltongue:

We're literally trying to pierce the heavens, small thinking must be left at the door.


That said, is Sacred Vessel a spell or a magic item? Either way, I can’t find it in BoED. Also, does the entire ocean basin become holy water? Or just a Zone of HolinessTM around the island?

It's a relic from page 37, "Water placed within it becomes holy water.". Also, evil things that drink from it contract a kind of evil-only supernatural disease, but that's neither here nor there.

As for how to industrialize it, there's a bunch of ways. You could pump ocean water through a machine that places it in the vessel and then pumps it out again. You could encircle the island with a massive dam (e.g. with Coral Growth), dry out the inside, and then make a small inlet where all the water that comes in has to pass through a bunch of sacred vessels. Or you could do away with the ocean all together and just make a contraption with a Decanter of Endless water. Many options.


True, but how long does it take to reach orbit? You might get a head start with Womb of the Earth (and props for using one of the most obscure spells ever), but after that it’s a very long slog.

Time is difficult to estimate. We don't know how fast it normally grows. Plant Growth Enrichment gives us one third more than normal. The Fey Mound "spurs to grow". Positive Energy makes it "grow rapidly". How fast do these factors combined make the tree grow on a daily basis?

The only part we can potentially quantify in a decent way is the Plant Growth Overgrowth function. As it affects all the squares in its range as to make them highly difficult terrain, we can estimate that a casting produces at least half a 5 ft square of bio-mater in each affected square, so about 15 cu ft at a conservative estimate, which is actually in line with what a CL 5 Wood Shape can affect.

Considering how many squares of our tree a single overgrowth can affect, the real question is how efficiently can we wood shape the hell out of it to make it not just go wide but up as well. That'll become a function of many people you have with access to at will Wood Shape (which we still need to get somehow). We deduct how ever much the tree is willing to cooperate with the whole "just grow up" idea (via Speak with Plants), which if we're real lucky takes the brunt of it. The result of that gets added to the Feycherry's natural growth rate, giving us our progress/day.

In any case though, I don't see a normal construction process with metal and factories and whatever out-pacing our tree on steroids.

An entirely different approach would be to see if we can stack Fey Cherries on top of each other. Flatten out the top of one, make a little "natural clearing" that works for Womb of the Earth (yes, it is SO obscure, and I love it), plant a see there, and begin the starting process anew. A sufficiently skilled herbologist should be able to graft the two together, so that the next tree up doesn't so much sprout roots as integrate itself into the metabolism of the last one. Of course this means re-applying all the upgrades made to the first tree. And I can see a lot of things go wrong with this compared to just taking



I’m looking at Dragon 357 and not seeing these features. Was the fey cherry updated somewhere else?

These are the features after the stronghold upgrades to the initial tree, adding the Hardening spell (CL 20) followed by the Magically Treated augmentation, the Flying augmentation, and so forth. Even if the base wood is treated to only have hardness 5 (which doesn't track with the "supernaturl strength" part), that still nets us Hardness 30 on the end result.


Don’t get me wrong, I love the overall concept, just wanted to follow up on these particular points. I could see this as being a grand generational project for a conclave of druids—and I could easily see a tremendous crusade launched against them by a coalition of faiths that, for their own varied reasons, all vehemently deny the right of the druids to reach the heavens.

Add a Wizard in there to cast Energy Transformation fields, tied to our plant growing/shaping spells. The druid enclave (plus their resident endless-invocation user) keep funneling magic into the thing and it keeps juicing up the tree.

In that vein, an alternative to the Wood Shape x Plant Growth Combo.

Cast Hallow at the tree and tie the Energy Transformation field to it. Now every spell cast at the tree charges up the Plant Growth (overgrowth spell), set to always target the top portion of the tree (going straight up the direction we want it to grow). Every time the field is charged, the top layer specifically becomes thick and overgrown, adding about 2.5 ft of height.

WIth this, any at will SLA or SU ability, or even an at will magic item with the right level, can be used to fuel the tree's growth. Assuming we can get 10 people who can prude 3 levels worth of magic each round, that gives us an approxmiate growth rate of 25 ft/round, 250 ft/minute, or 2.84 miles per hour. A bit under 8000 work hours to grow ourselves up high enough. A 100 workers could do it in 800 hours, i.e. 100 8 hour work days.

Of course that only gives you the bare bones connecting thing, still would need to get worked into something useable.


I hear you on this, and it’s one reason why I like the tree-growing approach, because the wood is by definition a smoothly integrated substance. But as I mentioned above, I’m not sure if wood alone—even hardened, magically infused, positive-energy-juiced fairy wood—is strong enough to reach orbit on its own.

Now I’m thinking some sort of enhanced crystal lattice interlaced with the wood might work, or maybe a fine metal filigree that carries some stabilizing force. Are there any mechanics to support this idea?

That is the main reason for using the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, which lets us give the stronghold the ability to "float adrift in the air, immune to the call of gravity" (p. 48). Even if you can't swing it so that the augmentation made to the initial small tree grow in size with the whole thing, you'd only need to apply this upgrade every 500 ft or so (we know the tree stays stable at those heights even without extra hardening), so that those can add a buffer zone that holds up the parts beneath and supports the ones above. It simply being made from Fey Cherry nets us a 10% discount on the cost, and other cost reducing feats/tricks can get this number much lower.

[ekarney]

So construction materials, and the process of doing so are definitely important.

But what I'm definitely interested in, is how we're going to construct the actual carriage part.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Jowgen
It's a relic from page 37, "Water placed within it becomes holy water."

Okay, I see it now. I was looking under Magic Items, but I’d forgotten Relics are a different category.

This is only the size of an ordinary chalice, so it would probably be a little cumbersome and non-cost-effective to try mass-producing enough of these to treat water for a space-growing tree.


Originally Posted by Jowgen
You could encircle the island with a massive dam (e.g. with Coral Growth), dry out the inside, and then make a small inlet….

I like this approach, but instead of a series of Sacred Vessels, it would be great to have a way to convert the entire inner ring to holy water. Sadly, this may be even less cost effective than a Sacred Vessel, since each pint of holy water needs 25 gp of powdered silver, and there are a lot of pints in that inner ring.


Originally Posted by Jowgen
An entirely different approach would be to see if we can stack Fey Cherries on top of each other. Flatten out the top of one, make a little "natural clearing" that works for Womb of the Earth (yes, it is SO obscure, and I love it), plant a see there, and begin the starting process anew.

I think you’re onto something here. There’s nothing preventing you from hollowing out the top of one fey cherry, packing the hollow with soil and nutrients, and then Wombing a fresh seed with all the trimmin’s.

The hollow might not qualify as a “natural clearing,” but I’d say this is what a Spellcraft check is for. If that doesn’t work, then researching a new spell based on Womb of the Earth, but modified for this project, is a small price in R&D compared to the benefits overall.


Originally Posted by Jowgen
Cast Hallow at the tree and tie the Energy Transformation field to it. Now every spell cast at the tree charges up the Plant Growth (overgrowth spell), set to always target the top portion of the tree (going straight up the direction we want it to grow).

So, I assume you mean something like a warlock, continually hitting it with Eldritch Blasts?

But what role does Hallow play?


Originally Posted by Jowgen
Every time the field is charged, the top layer specifically becomes thick and overgrown, adding about 2.5 ft of height.

I think the Enrichment function of Plant Growth might actually be a better return for the investment in casting. We’re sort of guesstimating that each use of Overgrowth gets us another couple of feet—but Enrichment gives a solid 33% overage on a full year’s growth, which is probably a lot more than 2.5 feet.


Originally Posted by Jowgen
Of course that only gives you the bare bones connecting thing, still would need to get worked into something useable.

For my part I’m thinking some sort of habitat parked at the far end. I would expect the last segment of fey cherry would serve as the basis for a more radically modified growth that provides an enclosed habitat, breathable air, etc.


Originally Posted by ekarney
But what I'm definitely interested in, is how we're going to construct the actual carriage part.

Meaning, the conveyance that moves from surface to orbit? I’m open to ideas on that as well.

[Elkad]

So construction materials, and the process of doing so are definitely important.

But what I'm definitely interested in, is how we're going to construct the actual carriage part.

Undead climbing the force ladder would work. At 30'/round (both fast-climbing and double moving on a straight ladder. DC of -5 seems right, fastclimb takes it back to 0), it takes them about 9 months for a one-way trip.
Undead climbing a 5-micron thick ladder would find their fingers and feet missing. Of course you want some shenanigans to have LOTS of undead. One every 10' for 22,000 miles. Or 10 million climbing up, 10 million climbing down, for maximum payload capacity.

Of course that's really slow. If we use two thin ropes (or one in a loop), we can put a ring with a strap around each one. Other end attaches to your crates so they can't get too far from the elevator cables, and you hang resetting Reverse Gravity spell traps along the way (triggered by the ring dragging over them, and reversed at the other end). You can make the trap cover both ropes near the ends, so it decelerates the package on the "wrong" rope before it hits the ground. This gets you there in hours. In the middle of the rope, once you are up to a couple miles/second and outside the thick part of the atmosphere, the traps can probably be many miles apart.*

*note, this requires us to ignore the strict RAW of reverse gravity, and allow the falling objects to be decelerated normally by gravity and air pressure when they reach the top of the spell effect, instead of just stopping and "oscillating slightly" at the boundary. The alternative is to put a trap every 100' (CL20), which is a much bigger undertaking.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by ekarney
But what I'm definitely interested in, is how we're going to construct the actual carriage part.

For traveling up the fey cherry, I was thinking a capsule with spidery legs, that could climb up at a steady pace. No need to rely on undead, who wouldn’t mix well with a fey tree raised on holy water; just a self-climbing capsule that could be fitted out for several days’ journey.

In fact, you could run a whole train of capsules, all interconnected and each with their own legs, like the segments of a centipede. You’d essentially have centipede-trains crawling up and down the exterior of the fey cherry beanstalk.

Those would work for cargo transport, as well as people who don’t mind taking in the view for several days; but for rapid transit, a modified Tree Stride spell should allow for magical transport between the segments of the fey cherry.

[thethird]

We don't build a space elevator. We grow the damn thing. We take a Fey Cherry Tree as the base, as they are the naturally biggest, described as naturally strong enough for tree based dwellings ( so a base hardness of at least 10 seems a reasonable assumption), and costs 10% less to magically enhance. Plus they naturally modulate winds and temperature in their immediate vicinity, making them ideal for going real high up.

Is that Teldrassil?

Anyway for the positive energy thingy, it will be easier to put a manifest zone to the positive plane at the base of the tree. With manifest zones you could also add a fast time trait to make it grow faster.

If you also want to improve the soil, because why not, use incarnate earth (magic of incarnum pg. 203), it is not directly linked to positive energy but has a similar effect.

Also, I don't think wood shape would work, the tree is necessarily bigger than what can be targeted with the spell.

[Telonius]

The point of the space elevator idea is to reduce the amount of force and effort involved in moving something into orbit. Whatever the solution ends up being, it needs to be less resource-intense than a Permanencied Teleportation Circle, or a casting of Nailed to the Sky (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/nailedToTheSky.htm).

[unseenmage]

The point of the space elevator idea is to reduce the amount of force and effort involved in moving something into orbit. Whatever the solution ends up being, it needs to be less resource-intense than a Permanencied Teleportation Circle, or a casting of Nailed to the Sky (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/nailedToTheSky.htm).

Or Wish-transport or a SU fly speed or beginning play in space adventuring on the moon. :)

[Jack_Simth]

The point of the space elevator idea is to reduce the amount of force and effort involved in moving something into orbit. Whatever the solution ends up being, it needs to be less resource-intense than a Permanencied Teleportation Circle, or a casting of Nailed to the Sky (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/nailedToTheSky.htm).

Doesn't the Teleportation school largely require you put things on a surface capable of supporting them? Until after you get your space station, you may not be able to use a TC to get folks up there.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Telonius
The point of the space elevator idea is to reduce the amount of force and effort involved in moving something into orbit. Whatever the solution ends up being, it needs to be less resource-intense than a Permanencied Teleportation Circle….

These are good points, but not every world may be amenable to using Teleport as a shortcut into orbit.

For instance, Teleport is clearly intended for casters to move quickly around the surface of a planet, and it’s reasonable to assume that the wizards who first developed the spell were thinking in essentially two-dimensional terms. Yes, the planet’s surface is curved and the spell would take that into account; but there’s a difference between moving across the surface of a world and moving straight up for hundreds of miles—something the early teleporters would probably want to avoid.

It’s also entirely possible that in a given world, Teleport is keyed to the near-surface environment: perhaps it requires the force of gravity to stabilize the transport, and with less gravity comes an exponentially greater chance of an error. Or it requires access to ley lines to keep it on the rails, a stabilizing element which wouldn’t occur above the atmosphere. Obviously these aren’t restrictions that come up in most games, but for a particular world it could make sense.

So in-world, there can be plenty of reasons why Teleport would either be not suited or not favored for this kind of operation. Even without setting-specific restrictions, there’s also the issue of teleport errors, which are a relatively minor inconvenience when moving around the surface—give or take the occasional nest of undead—but which could be disastrous when attempting to reach LEO.


Originally Posted by Telonius
*Nailed to the Sky*

Nice catch, I’ve never heard of this one. I think I glanced through the ELH in about 2004, but since I’ve never been in a game that’s anywhere close to epic, I’ve never looked into it more thoroughly.

The Playground’s opinion of epic-level play seems to be pretty low anyway. Now that I’ve been assimilated by the Pathfinder Collective, the ELH seems a pretty low-priority read.


Originally Posted by unseenmage
…or beginning play in space adventuring on the moon. : )

This would be a non-ideal starting point, at least in terms of reaching Earth orbit, since you’d be 220,000 miles from LEO instead of just 200, and without options like fey cherries or holy coral reef aqueducts. :smallsmile:

But you do point out an underlying assumption. I’m looking at this from a world-building perspective, thinking about in-world decisions, rather than designing it as an encounter for a specific party level.

[Bohandas]

Doesn't the Teleportation school largely require you put things on a surface capable of supporting them? Until after you get your space station, you may not be able to use a TC to get folks up there.

I believe the teleport circle is meant to get people directly to the final destination that they're going to, not merely into orbit.

The spell kind of breaks the entire Spelljammer setting.

[Maat Mons]

... Our reason for avoiding teleportation is "magic might not work normally at high altitudes?" You know that's not a teleportation-specific problem, right?

My default assumption is that the material plane is one big dead magic zone, with a small "normal magic zone" that moves with the Earth and extends about 7 miles above and below sea level. It's the only plausible reason that the setting would be anything like what it is.



If you're going to start coming up with non-rules reasons for things to somehow not work...

You can't grow a tree into orbit, because the physics that get water from the roots to the branches break down long before that.
You can't grow a tree into orbit, because plants die outside the atmosphere.
You can't grow a tree into orbit because it freezes solid at high altitudes, and thus dies.
Undead can't climb a space ladder, because corpses freeze at low enough temperature, so they stop being able to move partway up.
Constructs won't work, because of the icing problem (https://youtu.be/hHgkVOOTl_Y?t=196).
A riverine cable won't work, because because force effects have some finite strength.
After a certain distance from the ground, immovable rods start using the solar system itself as a reference frame instead of the Earth, so placing a rod 200 feet off the ground results in it moving 30 km/s relative to the Earth.
Magical flight can't go further from the ground than 400 feet, plus 40 feet per caster level, because the magic has to be able to reach something solid to push against.
Living creatures can't go into space, because all life is dependent on a mysterious bio-energy emitted by Mother Gaia.
Ao doesn't want mortals in space, so he intervenes to prevent any space elevator from working.

And the ones of those based on physics might even be reasonable points. But teleportation isn't based on physics, so if the objections don't stem from the rules or physics, where does that leave us?

[Elkad]

Doesn't the Teleportation school largely require you put things on a surface capable of supporting them? Until after you get your space station, you may not be able to use a TC to get folks up there.

Geosynchronous orbit is supporting you. Well, sorta. Or not. Since what is actually happening is you are falling towards the ground, but you keep missing by a very precise amount. Forever.

Or if I put a rock in orbit first, that can "support" you.

[Tvtyrant]

I believe the teleport circle is meant to get people directly to the final destination that they're going to, not merely into orbit.

The spell kind of breaks the entire Spelljammer setting.

Except for the Dwarves, who in setting generally prefer space to planets and have flying uncrackable space fortresses flying around.

The big thing about Spelljammer is the ships are preposterously cheap, the small ones are bigger and cheaper then airships are in the settings with those. Having flying warships is nearly always a good thing for you, and lots of groups would want to live in areas where there aren't major civilizations anyway.

[Jack_Simth]

Geosynchronous orbit is supporting you. Well, sorta. Or not. Since what is actually happening is you are falling towards the ground, but you keep missing by a very precise amount. Forever.

Or if I put a rock in orbit first, that can "support" you.

The possible problem comes from the conjouration school itself:
Link to SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/spellDescriptions.htm#conjuration):
Each conjuration spell belongs to one of five subschools. Conjurations bring manifestations of objects, creatures, or some form of energy to you (the summoning subschool), actually transport creatures from another plane of existence to your plane (calling), heal (healing), transport creatures or objects over great distances (teleportation), or create objects or effects on the spot (creation). Creatures you conjure usually, but not always, obey your commands.

A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.

The creature or object must appear within the spell’s range, but it does not have to remain within the range. (emphasis added)

Now, technically, it says "brought into being or transported to your location" (emphasis added), so nominally it doesn't apply when you're sending creatures or objects elsewhere. But if a 1st level Benign Transposition spell lets you swap your flying familiar with an elephant, there's a rather significant balance problem.

There's no "surface" there.

Another potential problem:
To get geosynchronous orbit, you need to be moving... or maybe stationary in relation to the ground. It depends on the frame of reference. And therein lies the rub: Neither Teleportation Circle, nor any of the spells from which it inherits, specify a frame of reference for motion.... and you're very deliberately getting rather far from anything solid. If after the teleport you're stationary relative to the bit of ground you left from, you're fine (it's the desired goal). If you're moving at the same rate you were relative to, say, the star, you've got serious problems.

[Maat Mons]

Teleportation Circle skirts the reference frame issue rather nicely. On both ends, the circle itself serves as a point of reference.

[Jack_Simth]

Teleportation Circle skirts the reference frame issue rather nicely. On both ends, the circle itself serves as a point of reference.
Teleportation circle is one way. There's nothing on the other end.