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[mainiac]

Well, the danger in doing that is roughly equal to the danger in driving a car - in case of an accident up to maybe a dozen people will die.
Space elevator collapsing would probably end up being a major disaster in more than a dozen countries.

Um no.  A space elevator would be immensely heavy but that weight spread out over many hundreds of miles, most of it out where the atmosphere is very thin.  So if you severed it, most of it would continue it's orbit for quite some time.  Any collapse would have plenty of warning and would be very light damage over a wide area.

"if we had a space elevator" is about as useful of a statement as "if i had 10 billion bucks i'd totally stop world hunger"

factors sure do have a lot of potential... but that doesn't mean that they'll ever be manned

The moon doesn't make a good staging point... its a gravity well that you need to escape whenever you want to go anywhere. (though i guess with some kind of rail gun it can make things stack up better)

Considering that Unicef spends 2.5 billion dollars a year alone and there is hunger in nearly every nation in the world, stopping world hunger for even a year on 10 billion dollars would be an impressive feat.

And the moon makes a good staging point for two reasons.
A) No atmosphere to slow down your projectiles and limit your top speed
B) Much, much weaker gravity

Keep in mind that you don't need your initial launch to reach escape velocity of the moon.  You just want to get up about 100-200 km and do a relatively slow burn to move out of lunar orbit.

[TheBronzePickle]

The big thing that's cool about space travel is just knowing we could do it. A show of force to make the entirety of humankind pleased with itself.

After all, if we can't shoot the giant phallic symbols we've made over the last few millenia off into the stars, then what good is our phallic symbolism? We're humans, there's nothing funner to us than waving our dongs at the universe and reminding it just who's the boss.

[TheBronzePickle]

We already have things like horses and elephants, and we tamed them and started using them for transport and entertainment a long time ago. Whales they're still trying to study, but people don't really care about whales all that much, probably because we hunted them nearly to extinction already and have thus proved our dominance.

If we find someone more well-equipped than us, we just prove we can dominate them and move on to the next sucker until we finally meet our match.

[Necro910]

We already have things like horses and elephants, and we tamed them and started using them for transport and entertainment a long time ago. Whales they're still trying to study, but people don't really care about whales all that much, probably because we hunted them nearly to extinction already and have thus proved our dominance.

If we find someone more well-equipped than us, we just prove we can dominate them and move on to the next sucker until we finally meet our match.

And if we do meet our match, we'll nuke them. Or drive seven planet's worth of moons into their homeworld, shoot giant pods of piss at their capital, and turn the remainder of their planet into a vacation home for middle-to-low-class golfers.

[TheBronzePickle]

Then we move on until we meet our actual match, whatever godlike entity can actually solidly stomp us no matter what resources we bring to bear. And then humanity becomes the ho of our new almighty pimp-daddy.

[Necro910]

Then we move on until we meet our actual match, whatever godlike entity can actually solidly stomp us no matter what resources we bring to bear. And then humanity becomes the ho of our new almighty pimp-daddy.

The more I think about it, the more overpowered everything seems in the future 

[MonkeyHead]

Bad news if some other bunch of sentients has the same rather depressing outlook and beats us to it then huh?

[mainiac]

Then we should probably nuke everything we see just to be on the safe side.

[Necro910]

Then we should probably nuke everything we see just to be on the safe side.

Fuck nukes, let's throw rocks at them!

[Montague]

diverting astroids would be more economical. Plus, its a more natural way of destroying alien civilizations, we could turn the galaxy outside our solar system into a big nature preserve!

[Necro910]

diverting astroids would be more economical. Plus, its a more natural way of destroying alien civilizations, we could turn the galaxy outside our solar system into a big nature preserve!

Humanity: From throwing rocks, to throwing nukes, to throwing bigger rocks.

[Il Palazzo]

Well, the danger in doing that is roughly equal to the danger in driving a car - in case of an accident up to maybe a dozen people will die.
Space elevator collapsing would probably end up being a major disaster in more than a dozen countries.

Um no.  A space elevator would be immensely heavy but that weight spread out over many hundreds of miles, most of it out where the atmosphere is very thin.  So if you severed it, most of it would continue it's orbit for quite some time.  Any collapse would have plenty of warning and would be very light damage over a wide area.

Ha! Speculative! Here's more: Wherever it breaks, one part of it would fly away and the other would fall. It might not be an Earth-shattering disaster, probably more comparable to lots of planes crashing at once, but even the evacuated population centers on its path would take some damage to the infrastructue and housing. And if you think about the popular resistance to having much less dangerous objects constructed in the vicinity of populated areas(nuclear plants, radio towers) then I don't believe something potentially more destructive would get the approval of whomever might be affected.
Of course, the exact amount of damage would depend on the point of severance and how well would the thing burn in the atmosphere.

Just so you know, I only argue this point despite not having anything new to say other than what was already mentioned in this thread because:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

YOU DESTROYED MY CIVILIAN DROPSHIP!!!

[Necro910]

Well, the danger in doing that is roughly equal to the danger in driving a car - in case of an accident up to maybe a dozen people will die.
Space elevator collapsing would probably end up being a major disaster in more than a dozen countries.

Um no.  A space elevator would be immensely heavy but that weight spread out over many hundreds of miles, most of it out where the atmosphere is very thin.  So if you severed it, most of it would continue it's orbit for quite some time.  Any collapse would have plenty of warning and would be very light damage over a wide area.

Ha! Speculative! Here's more: Wherever it breaks, one part of it would fly away and the other would fall. It might not be an Earth-shattering disaster, probably more comparable to lots of planes crashing at once, but even the evacuated population centers on its path would take some damage to the infrastructue and housing. And if you think about the popular resistance to having much less dangerous objects constructed in the vicinity of populated areas(nuclear plants, radio towers) then I don't believe something potentially more destructive would get the approval of whomever might be affected.
Of course, the exact amount of damage would depend on the point of severance and how well would the thing burn in the atmosphere.

Just so you know, I only argue this point despite not having anything new to say other than what was already mentioned in this thread because:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

YOU DESTROYED MY CIVILIAN DROPSHIP!!!

Depends where you build it 

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, well. You build it on the equator for obvious reasons, and it being some 50-70 Mm long, who's to say it couldn't affect the whole circumference?

[Necro910]

Yeah, well. You build it on the equator for obvious reasons, and it being some 50-70 Mm long, who's to say it couldn't affect the whole circumference?

Hmmm...

I'm not an engineer, but wouldn't it be better to build it on the south pole? It's fairly flat, atmosphere is thin, and there is very little precipitation to wear down the cables.

And of course, middle o' nowhere.