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. Using this tether between the ground and outer space, it is much easier to put heavy loads in space.

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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 required tension simply didn't exist. But when it was discovered that hardlight was virtually indestructible, two countries started building space elevators: Brazil, and Singapore.

Each of these space elevators is 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, a space port the size of a small city: Novo Rio in Brazil, and Dearah Awan 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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Space Tourism. Until the Flare, the two space elevators brought about a new age of space exploration. The space ports made it much cheaper to bring equipment into space. A few scientific colonies on the Moon and on Mars have been built, and multiple space stations were deployed in orbit around the Earth - usually just for tourism purposes.

At this point, it is unknown what happened to any of the people who were in space at the time of the Flare.

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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 Dearah Awan, 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 Dearah Awan 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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