Space Elevators

A space elevator is a giant rope, or ladder, three times taller than the diameter of the Earth. At its top, a space station in geostationary orbit acts as a counterweight, pulling on the ladder through centrifugal forces so that it doesn't fall back to Earth. The space elevator then becomes a tether between the ground and outer space.

With regular rockets, one would normally need to spend millions just to put something in orbit - but with space elevators, the rocket is both built, and launched, already in orbit.

Thanks to the advent of space elevators, the space industry experienced a renaissance in the second half of the 21st century. Giant space stations meant for tourism were assembled in orbit, and small colonies of scientists were built on Mars and on the Moon.

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Hardlight Chains. In the past, space elevators were thought impossible to build, because a material strong enough and cheap enough to resist the immense tension required to keep the space elevator from breaking apart, simply didn't exist. But when it was discovered that hardlight was indestructible, a race started to be the first to build space elevators.

These mega-structures can only be built near the equator. In the end, the two countries which were the first to build space elevators ended up being Brazil and Singapore.

Their two space elevators are both made up of a chain of about 50 massive sub-generators, each powerful enough to maintain a hardlight scaffold a kilometer long, and just a couple meters wide. At the top of each of these chains, they built a space port the size of a small city: Novo Rio in Brazil, and Awan Bandar above Singapore.

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After the Flare. The sub-reactors making up the two tethers were engineered, from the start, to resist the heavy radiation of outer space, and operate with minimal maintenance. Thanks to this, they weren't affected by the Flare. They will keep on running until one of the generators runs out of deuterium - something which could happen at any moment since they presumably haven't been refueled in 20 years.

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However, the Brazilian elevator snapped at the base: the surface-bound facility, where the ladder was attached, wasn't protected from radiation. With its ground tether severed, the elevator was sent flying by the centrifugal forces. It is now in an oblong orbit around the Earth, and the fate of the inhabitants of Novo Rio is unknown. Every now and then, a long green streak can be seen in the night sky - the tail of a man-made comet.

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1d10	Adventure Seeds
1	You need data that was stored on the moon.
2	You need the password of a wealthy person - but at the time of the Flare, they were doing space tourism!
3	You need to bring massive quantities of deuterium to Awan Bandar, to prevent the elevator from collapsing.
4	Novo Rio's hardlight generators could fetch a fortune, if only you could bring them back to Earth. Time to build a rocket.
5	The people of Awan Bandar have been acting like tyrants over your surface-dwelling community. It's time to teach them a lesson.
6	A shuttle just crash-landed in your territory. They were full of people from the Moon. Every raider and scavenger group in the area will now be fighting over their scraps.
7	You were stranded on the moon for the past 20 years, but managed to build a shuttle which you've just crash landed back on Earth. The world is very different from what you knew.
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