ALL SCI-FI

[Pye-Rate]

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A 20 mile tall building! Now the fun part — the bottom of the building is 1/2 mile above the ground.


_____A plan to hang a skyscraper from an asteroid




Caption: The orbital path would swing the tower in a figure eight pattern between the northern and southern hemispheres each day, taking residents on a tour through different parts of the work, including New York City (pictured) - all in just a 24 hour orbital cycle.
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The road to tomorrow runs through yesterday.

[Bud Brewster]

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Okay, so that's the SCIENCE. Now let's add the FICTION!
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As beautiful as this concept and that building might be, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that this is the ultimate terrorist target!

Here's the terrorists' plan.

(1) Two well-trained teams of suicidal fanatics take over both the highest and lowest levels of the hanging skyscraper and then announce to the world that if either team is threatened, they'll either blow up the top level and cause the entire structure to drop to Earth, destroying whatever is below it at the moment —

— or —

— they'll blow off a significant segment of the low end and cause both the asteroid which anchors the structure and the structure itself to rise upward and drift off into space.







(2) The terrorist would hold the millions of occupants within the structure as hostages, and they would execute large numbers of them if any efforts are made to retake control of the structure.

If the terrorist have taken over the nerve center at the top level it would give them control over things like the high-speed elevators and the environmental systems. That means the terrorist could asphyxiate the people in entire sections!

Remember, the entire structure would have to be pressurized against the near-vacuum of space, since the majority of it is well above the part of the atmosphere which is anywhere near the air pressure at sea level.

(3) As the low end of the structure passes over populated areas during the structure's figure-eight path across the surface of the Earth, the terrorists would begin using the lower level as a roving bomber, dropping powerful incendiary bombs whenever the structure is above an important target, like a major city.

Dropping a series of these bombs across New York, for example, would soon have a large portion of the city in flames.





Dealing with this threat would be a real challenge for the governments of the world . . . and no matter what we do, a terrible tragedy would probably result.

Unless we're able to retake the structure and neutralize the terrorists, the only option might be to use missiles to blow the upper section of the structure free from the asteroid while it's over the ocean and let it fall, sacrificing the millions of occupants.

Remember, the terrorists have vowed to do this anyway if they feel threatened! But if this drastic measure is done by us over the ocean, it will prevent the terrorists from doing it over a populated land mass. We can reasonably assume that the structure will collapse in on itself during the impact, just like the World Trade Center buildings did when they fell.

However, the structure is 31,068 miles long, and dropping it into the ocean would actually cause a tsunami!

All things considered, once the terrorists have taken over the top and bottom sections, they can cause a global disaster no mater what we try to do to stop them!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Uh . . . seriously . . . no member of this board has even a small comment to make about my elaborate post above?

Heck, I thought it was fascinating!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

Fine idea for a motion picture Bud.

It'd be one of those lavish, splashy visual FX extravaganzas like Armageddon.

Now, as to the casting...

[Bud Brewster]