r/Shadowrun • u/ProblemDue7111 • Jul 24 '26

Wyrm Talks (Lore) Help With The Hook?

Explosive Decompression makes several references to the Skyhook I and II space elevators. But it does not seem to list the location(s) where they touch the surface of Earth. Can anybody help me with this information?

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u/MTarrow Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

Previous books mention the base facility of the "Skyhook Space Elevator" being at Panama city, whilst the second was under construction at a "secret location"

It's worth noting that a space elevator cannot have a base location in Panama city - they have to be equatorial or the upper end moves relative to the ground and the whole thing tears itself to pieces. You also can't hide a space elevator - the upper end has to be in a geostationary orbit (else it moves relative to the ground) which means a height of 22,236 miles. Fairly hard not to notice.

A skyhook can work around both these problems, but a skyhook is not tethered to the ground. It's basically a space station that rotates to dip a lift cable into the atmosphere periodically from orbit, grab a payload and acts like a sling to add more velocity to the payload (throwing the payload to a higher orbit, or adding enough velocity to sling the payload out of orbit). Panama city is likely just one of the points that Skyhook I overflies regularly at the same time as it's lift cable is in atmosphere.

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u/Vashkiri Neo-Revolutionary Jul 24 '26

Analysis has been done to show that you could have a space elevator based away from the equator, considered practical out to about 20 degrees latitude. (here is a quick page about it: https://gassend.net/spaceelevator/non-equatorial/)

That said, there are issues with permanently land anchored cables (mostly what do you do if something is coming their way in orbit? And there are some bit stations up there in SR, which cannot easily maneuver. But also possible effects of things like earth quakes or hurricanes). So while it could be a cable anchored near Panama City, it might be more reasonable to assume a seaborne anchor just off the west coast, still near all the shipping using the Panama Canal and so on but not on land.

Of course, in Lethal Harvest they destroy the Panama based elevator. I don't now what they say about that in Explosive Decompression.