Orbital elevators and long, long days

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Brett

Now that I am using (modified) GURPS Space to generate more realistic star systems I am getting quite a lot with much, much longer days. And that means longer, more massive, more expensive elevators.

So what's the story?

Beanstalks just won't work someplaces. Simple as that.

You may also be exaggerating the habitability of planets with extremely long days. It may depend on what you're calling "much, much longer" but there probably are day lengths that will result in too much temperature swing to be viable.

I don't remember my exact criteria, but back when I was trying to determine how common Earth-like planets would be according to the assumptions of Gurps Space I simply kicked planets with excessive day length out of the results.

Too long and you might not even get a really Earth-like atmosphere. Plants have to subsist on stored energy during the night cycle and algae-analogies are very likely to come before macroflora. A cycle that had many, many hours of light followed by many, many hours of darkness might be too much of a stretch for early microflora.