. They say that if we really put out minds to it, a space elevator would be feasible within a century.
Actually, if we had spent the $3 trillion on the war on a space elevator, we'd probably have about a dozen operational space elevators by now. We already have the tech, its just an engineering problem at this point. A somewhat expensive engineering problem, but really thats just an issue of budgeting...
I don't think anyone's figured out how to make carbon monowire long enough quite just yet. The strands they've succeeded in making are more like fibers. But yeah, 3 trillion dollars.
I've never played the pre-z axis version, but I also never dig out large rooms without intentionally leaving natural pillars as 'support'. What would be great, actually - instead of a simple constraint, the game could do periodic checks for rooms over a certain size - with larger rooms having a higher chance of stability-weakening cracks - and warn you that the ceiling has begun to sag + highlight where the problem is. That way, if you irresponsibly dig out huge rooms without supports, the punishment is that the pillars will need to be put in really inconvenient places, rather than being a horrible dwarf-killing collapse. And of course, if you ignore the warnings and let it get too bad, the collapse happens anyway.