To a layman, building an orbital ring was simply a matter of joining beams in a circle until the ends met. To Austin, an unanchored ring was a planet-sized hula hoop waiting to drift into the atmosphere and saw off a mountain range.
“An orbital ring without radial anchors is unstable,” he explained into his field microphone. He stood before a thirty-foot blueprint projected on the inner wall of Dreadnought Foundry 01. “If it slides ten miles off-center, the planet pulls harder on the near side than the far side. The offset grows. Eventually one side scrapes through the upper atmosphere while the other swings into deep space. You don’t leave a hundred-and-sixty-five-thousand-mile steel ring floating on good intentions.”
Representatives from every major power on the planet stood around the planning table: Emperor Yan Ming of Great Yan, High Sovereign Ling Feng of the Western Jade Lands, Patriarch Ao Run of the Abyssal Ocean Sect, Grand Judge Xuan Ming, and three dozen ancient clan leaders. Giant orange safety vests covered their flowing silk robes.
“So we’re installing twelve primary tether spires around the equator at exact thirty-degree intervals,” Austin continued, tapping the blueprint with a wooden ruler. “Think of them as guy-wire anchors. Each one is fixed to bedrock or massive marine anchors. The spires rise one hundred thousand feet, and carbon-nanotube and silver-steel cables carry the load from there to the orbital track. Each cable must hold a constant static tension of four point five million tons. If one…
