America built another elevator at Panama City to go along with the Canal down there. That was part of the arrangement that included Panama joining the United States and gave us an elevator fully under our control. The British Commonwealth built one in Australia as well, and the South Africans lifted one of their own into orbit. That gave us six total orbital elevators on Earth when the Peloran made Contact. Adding the Russian Polar Elevator and we currently have seven Earth elevator complexes, running every hour of every day of every year. We can move significant tonnage on and off Earth without ever lifting a single spaceship off the ground, and the elevators are far cheaper. They have made space travel safe and inexpensive.
I need to talk with Aneerin. Yeah, I know. He can be real hard track down when he doesn’t want to be found. And lately it seems like he’s been even harder to track than normal. But I have a few questions I need to ask him. Starting with what exactly that Shang ship did when it ran away from us. Because I don’t believe for a minute Aneerin has no knowledge of it. So I’m going to need to track him down and get some answers from him for a change. Yeah, I know. Answers from Aneerin are like standing on a two-edged sword while drunk. But maybe for once I can get a straight one from him.
The joint Japanese-American defense of Okinawa was nearly as vigorous as the defense of the Japanese Home Islands. The only difference was that the defenders knew they would fail long before it started. Every single one of them was a volunteer, and they handed their dog tags to those who left on the ships. They were dead men walking and they knew it. Twilight dramatized that scene for America and then showed us the last of the Japanese mecha, thousands of American servicemen, and an entire squadron of American warships holding the line against the Chinese invasion as the evacuation fleet set sail. And true to life, none of them ever returned home.
We were the first to build an orbital elevator. That was the Port Harcourt Elevator in Africa. For once we actually beat the Chinese to something. They were right on our heals at Singapore though. And the Russians built one in Sri Lanka not long afterwards. One of the problems with being a far northern nation was that they never were able to build an old elevator on their territory. They did build one over the North Pole after Contact though. That is the only Earth elevator that does not orbit. It is held in place by a series of gravitic generators. Severnyi Polyus is I do believe the most amazing piece of engineering ever built by the Russian Federation.
I’m starting to realize there’s all kinds of things we don’t know about interstellar travel. I used to think we knew everything there was to know. But now I’m thinking the Peloran left a few things out for us to figure out on our own. I should have seen that coming. I guess I just assumed they unlocked everything back during The War. But then they never did tell us what was so important about the Hyades until the very end. They never like to give us the whole story you know. They can be bloody annoying in that way.