Stairway alternatives

Usage examples of elevators.

Like the trams, the Kharzh’ullan shuttles traveled through tunnels, but where the San Francisco trams traveled beneath the city, the Kharzh’ullan shuttles moved through the space elevators between the planet’s surface and the Ring.

Like dominoes, the elevators fell to the ground, and large sections of the Ring tumbled out of orbit and crashed into the surface.

When they made planetfall they found the Ring and elevators intact, but no intelligent life, and as the planet seemed in all respects to be capable of supporting a civilization, a colony ship was dispatched from Tellar.

Several years after the colony’s founding the mechanism for working the elevators was discovered, and a few years after that archeological expeditions placed the age of the elevators and Ring at nearly fifty thousand years.

Except for a single incident a few decades ago, the safety record of the elevators has been impeccable.

Suddenly the unelaborated mention during the mission briefing of a passenger transport accident in one of the Ring’s elevators made sense.

A study I did on the elevators from an engineering standpoint won me a doctorate.

If Eevraith’s was the definitive study of the construction of the Ring and the elevators, she decided that comparing the study’s analysis of the elevator’s composition, particularly its structure and flexibility, to the newly fashioned shell would be of immense aid in the repair job.

Theoretical models formulated of space elevators prior to the discovery of the Kharzh’ullan system relied upon ungrounded skyhooks that reached into the upper atmosphere, space tethers, or extensive cabling systems to counteract the gravitational effects a structure the size of an elevator would experience.

Second, while the Ring itself orbits at a geosynchronous altitude and has an angular momentum to remain in place at that altitude, the elevators move at a greater angular speed than they should at all altitudes because they’re held in place by the anchoring effects of the base and the Ring.

At a geosynchronous orbit it will stay in place, and it will hold the elevators up.

You always had to know more about the Ring and the elevators than anyone else.

Kharzh’ulla had receded into the distance, and the Ring was prominent, but the elevators were invisible against the blackness of space.

They hadn't had elevators in 1912, and even if they had, they wouldn't have had one on board a ship.

Aspinall and Guadalupe had gone into the room, and the aide was headed back toward the elevators, carrying a piece of equipment.