Didn’t like it, but that is typical of most of KSR’s work. I liked the story as an idea, however, which I find happens a great deal around his work.

And that damned unforgettable world ending space elevator accident at the end … everyone who reads that book savvys ’space elevator’ and they probably know why it’s a good thing and the benefits of owning one.

They also ‘know’ that if one fails it will end with a trail of fire on the equator. Which ain’t so.

Color me annoyed then at ‘Red Mars’.

And Brian? Yes, it was the cats. I started getting click-throughs from them and wondered what was up. Thanks for the link!

Nah. We just put up a big sign. “No bombs, guns, nuclear weapons, war gas, germs or improvised weapons past this point”.

What - it works at the airport.

Actually the best defense for the first one is that it (probably) will be far over the horizon in the middle of the ocean. Not photogenic. And hard to find - the ribbon is a meter wide and the ocean is a large place.

In the long run the best defense is to make more of them. Loosing the one of one is a huge disaster - financially even if it doesn’t make a huge kaboom.

Loosing one in a system is inconvenient. The legal problems and political issues are the project killer here. They always are.

I read about space elevators in my IEEE mag a few years ago. Electrical engineers are very serious about putting these into production. The biggest problem left to solve is terrorist attacks.