Peasants, how do they work?

Wouldn’t jumping off the top of a space elevator just put you in orbit? Or, if by top you mean the point where the space elevator anchors to its counterweight, in orbit around the sun.

OK, you’ve got space elevators wrong, and that’s OK.

The counter-weight doesn’t orbit the sun. It orbits earth. If it orbited the sun it’d rip the thing apart. It sits somewhere above a geostationary orbit, as a geostationary orbit is where the orbit point is always over the same point on the ground, which would be where your elevator is tethered.

The station part is somewhere below this. The higher it is the heavier or further out your counter-weight needs to be —and since it’s already impossible around earth no matter what, this needs to be as low as possible.

Because of this setup, your velocity (while below the geostationary line) is always less than the orbital velocity at that altitude. For example, the ISS orbits the earth 15.5 times a day. Our point on the space elevator cable stays at the exact same position over the ground, so it orbits 0 times. At the same altitude as the ISS you need to be moving the same speed as the ISS or you’ll fall down. It only doesn’t while attached to the cable because it’s being pulled by the counter-weight.

Basically, stuff dropped off a space elevator falls, unless it’s at geostationary altitude. It needs to be given some extra horizontal speed to stay in orbit.

The peasant railgun is kinda weird tbh.

It first uses game rules ignoring physics (using the ready action to pass the object super fast along the line of peasants), to then flip and ignore game rules while using physics (not applying the rules for throwing an object but instead claiming that physics “realism” demands that the object keeps its speed and does damage according to the speed, not according to game rules).

Fun meme, but really doesn’t make sense in game.

You say that as if nuclear energy isn’t also just boiling water

The counterweight orbits above escape velocity, pulling the space elevator’s cable taut. If the cable were severed the counterweight would drift off into space into a solar orbit. So if you jump off at the counterweight, you’ll enter solar orbit.

At geostationary orbit (which could be considered the “top” of the space elevator as that’s where you would normally get off, presumably) the space elevator orbits at exactly orbital velocity, so if you jump off there you end up in orbit. Below that your velocity would be below orbital velocity and you’d fall back to Earth.

That’s what I love about solar energy. Its like the only energy source that doesn’t boil water to turn a steam turbine, use water to turn a water turbine or use wind to turn a air turbine.

Except for those liquid salt solar plants that boil water …

I think it’s totally valid to run a realistic game where realism takes precedence over game rules, but then the “passing of the object” part fails.

It’s also totally valid to run RAW game, but then it fails like you said.

So no matter what game you run, the railgun makes no sense.

What would make sense with a RAW game is to use the railgun for fast travel/fast transport, but then again for it to give a decent advantage, you need thousands or millions of peasants who willingly cooperate, which also won’t really work in most games.

I get the feeling the 4 million grain Revolving Peasant Gun with the velocity of 1% the speed of light will have the desired effect on any target.

Well, the “top” of the elevator could be anywhere. That’s why I said it needs to be as low as possible, because it’s already physically impossible for Earth. The lower and lighter the station is, the less impossible it is, though it’s impossible even with no station and just a cable.

Above geostationary orbit isn’t suddenly in solar orbit though. It’s still got quite a ways to go. It could be at escape velocity, but that’s not necessary.

This is all impossible on Earth anyway though, so if you’re making a story where this is taking place it could be any of these outcomes you want. Whatever works best for the story.

The peasant railgun is kinda weird tbh.

It first uses game rules ignoring physics (using the ready action to pass the object super fast along the line of peasants), to then flip and ignore game rules while using physics (not applying the rules for throwing an object but instead claiming that physics “realism” demands that the object keeps its speed and does damage according to the speed, not according to game rules).

Fun meme, but really doesn’t make sense in game.

Pure theory, likely never ever going to be real, but could a bullet move so fast that it goes through someone without even damaging them?

It’s not “physically impossible” on Earth. The forces involved are great, sure, which means you can’t build it out of any present-day material like steel, but they’re not so great that constructing a space elevator would be physically impossible using non-exotic matter like it would be on, say, the Sun, or possibly even just Jupiter. We already know of materials that could be used to make a space elevator cable on Earth if they were available in sufficient quantities – namely carbon nanotubes.

The “top” can’t be anywhere, because not everywhere along the length of the elevator will put released objects in orbit. Turns out on Earth, an object released off of the elevator would reach a stable (but very eccentric) orbit 2/3rds of the way to geostationary orbit – below that, it would fall back to Earth. Conversely escape velocity would be reached at about 53000 km, which is past geostationary orbit but much closer than where the counterweight would be (in most designs?). Objects above escape velocity will by definition escape Earth’s orbit, which most of the time means ending up in a solar orbit.

No, it’s physically impossible. Even the most advanced material possible couldn’t hold the strain that would be required for Earth. Technically it’s right on the limit, but that’s ignoring that we have an atmosphere that’s going to exert forces on it too. On Luna it might make sense.

The top can be anywhere. It would just require adding force to it at/after release. That’s trivial. We already know how to make rockets, or it could be something that pushes or throws it. Compared to building a space elevator, speeding something up is easy.