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Legendary Ladder
Published: 2010-05-17 03:26:26 +0000 UTC; Views: 66411; Favourites: 2848; Downloads: 0
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Description
The Legendary Ladder is a renowned structure built by a race of aliens to take advantage of their close proximity to a neighbouring and tidally-locked fertile moon. The Legendary Ladder serves as a colossal elevator between both worlds complete with a stop-off station at the near-halfway point where the gravity of both worlds is in tie with each other. It is used for both practical and leisure purposes and is the central hub of huge cities at both ends
My sole entry to TheLuminarium 's 10th online exhibit and the last "themed" one to my knowledge, given the theme Legendary. As most think of the past when they think of Legends, I deliberately went the other way and thought towards the future.
Creating buildings and spaceships often feels like such a chore to me, regardless of whether I do them in 2D or 3D (much of it was 3D though) I have no idea how other space artists handle them so well
so this is a little unusual for me. Was hard trying to get a good composition and angle too, even now - I had to "fake" the perspective to an almost fisheye-like view to be able to get the whole structure in view to appreciate its length, which almost disappears into a hairline on the other end 
Made using Cinema 4D, Vue 7 and Photoshop, oh, I'm aware the copyright says it was made a few months earlier than the submission date...that's because it was and I had to hold it for a while.
Edit: Wooo! the first time one of my sci-fi themed deviations gets a DD, it is after all one of my favourite things to do! Thanks a lot to *hoevelkamp and ^taenaron , both quality sci-fi/space artists in themselves
Artwork is my copyrighted creative property and is not to be used for any manner by anyone without my consent
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Comments: 685
The physics of an orbital tether, let alone a space elevator, are beyond anything most people can conceive. The stresses and sheer mass involved in just a simple tether makes them highly unlikely. Just think...what would a three foot wide carbon nanotube cable 22,000 miles long weigh (the minimum practical, realistic size for any moderately realistic, scientifically based tether concept I've ever read about)? What magnitude of counter-force would be required to keep such a mass stretching, taught, from the surface of earth (most likely a platform in an ocean somewhere for mobility and resilience) to geosynchronous orbit? What kind of energy and material requirements would there be to construct such a cable? How elastic must the cable be to withstand the forces that would act upon it? What kind of disaster response would be required to deal with a potential crash of the tether into earth (regardless of response, the impact would be catastrophic on a global scale.) For most of these answers, we mostly have only assumption to drive the mathematics, as we really don't know all the possible forces that may factor into such a system.
The most realistic concept for a real orbital tether that I have read involved a composite tether consisting of a multiply ribbon cable composed 2000 paper-thin nano-tube sheets around 15 to 20 feet wide stretching some 200,000 miles into space (the moon is 234,377 miles from earth), with a small station at 22,000 miles (geosynchronous orbit). The additional length of the cable was required to extend past the enough of earths gravitational influence and provide a sufficient counter-force to prevent the tether from crashing back to earth. A mobile oceanic platform was required to support mobility to move the cable away from hurricanes and other strong storms (which is itself a near impossible feat...moving 22,000 miles of cable plus a geosync station in time to avoid a hurricane, assuming you have an accurate estimate of where it will end up, is unlikely.) Crawlers used rollers to climb the ribbon between the platform on earth and the orbital station. Even this concept, using the most advanced carbon nanotube structure concievable, was only able to handle about 1/3 of the tensile strength required to support a cable so long with the forces involved. Countless logistical issues also plagued this relatively simple orbital tether concept, including teather drift, artificial sattelite trajectory conflicts, collisions with the ISS, space debris, the sheer material and energy requirments to construct the ribbon, as well as a source of material and a means to build the orbital station (launching such a structure from earth, even in pieces, would be unrealistic given most current and conceived means...or an unrealistically long period of time to move enough pieces and manpower into orbit to construct the thing.) This says nothing about the highly electrical nature of our outer atmosphere and the space surrounding earth...such a tether could create a sufficient short in the ionosphere and plasma sheath that surrounds earth, with a direct line to the oceanic platform...which sits on a highly conductive mixture of water and dissolved minerals. The electrical repercussions are undefined, but could be just as catastrophic as the cable crashing back to earth.
While I think the idea is incredibly intriguing...sadly I also think it is fundamentally unrealistic given the science behind it.
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Hmm, that's very true (unfortunately 
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It is being talked about. There have been numerous rewards set up for a working tether concept...something like a $4 million reward for another contest this year. Similar to the Ansari X prize from a few years ago. Its just that a tether is so much greater in scope by many orders of magnitude than anything else ever tried before, and the physics are extremely elusive.
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Looks like it would snap off through on of the planets rotation unless they were perfectly synced.
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Why the new account?
In the comment (which is useless now since V7 hides that I think) it mentione dthat indeed the planets are orbiting around each other in such a way that the same sides always face each other
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The other one had a useless name, BTW it's my 17th birthday so felt like starting over, ye know...
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Wow, I didn't even get my first account until I was already past 17...ugh, so much developing time wasted joining too late
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lol, don't be too hard on yourself... I've been here since I was like 14. Plus on the old account, because I watched so many people I had like 2000 deviations messages per day. Which is annoying since you have to go through all these deviations just to find something you might actually want to see. I'll restrict myself from devwatching on this account.
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I know how you feel, I watch around 200 people which 'm sure is much less than you did. But these days I'd be lucky if half of them still produce the art I watched them for in the first place...the ratio of deviations I actually want to look at seems to drop a little more with each person I add
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Love the cloud city below (or is that above?).
I was wondering: If they have to go from one surface to the other, wouldn't they be upside down when they get there?
(sp? sorry)
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Hmm, I always like to say there's no such thing as up or down in space 
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that's a really cool picture
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The feeling of vast space 'beneath' the cloud cover shows how truly massive this building must be. An excellent job, creatively and visually, well done!
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I'm glad you noticed that, in space art it's easy to forget the sheer scale of distances that seem small on the image, true there would be a lot of depth between the ground and the clouds, most buildings don't even make it high enough to go through them
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marvelous, beautiful and very creative.
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Beautifull, and interesting work 
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Your'e telling me 
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Yes its beautifull
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Beautiful work!
Reminds me of a space elevator(was that your intention?) :3
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Not my intention, but kinda my inspiration
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Again the ridicules awesomeness of your art leaves me speechless. Great job man
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Thankyou, well you had enough speech to at least say that
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Well I felt bad always just faving your art then not leaving a comment..So I came up with the best I could
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Dang this is like your best work ever you really put alot of work into it and it shows. Good luck inthe contest :thimbsup:
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Thanks a lot, glad you noticed the work involved 
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your welcome lol who could not notice? oh well then it's a great pic.
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Really amazing how much time and effort went into this. It truly shines. Beautiful job, the planets look great. And creating visually interesting cities is a task but this looks fantastic, really nice job.
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Thankyou, yes it was certainly more time consuming than usual, I could have gone even further but after a while you just get sick of the same work after a few weeks
Yeah, cities are hard, if only I could do them as fast and as easily as landscapes, I'd double the amount of potential illustrations I could do
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Wicked piece man! The concept is fantastic, and from your description and from the comments I've read I understand this is a realistic concept at that. Unbelievable! Wouldn't mind some vacation in zero gravity
One thing though, the fish eye perspective seems to affect the city buildings to greater degree than anything else, making them all lean inwards towards the spire. So much that I don't doubt this was intentional. It looks a bit odd IMO though. Ah well. A great piece nonetheless.
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It's good when science fiction is believable, it's what seperates it from fantasy
All buildings and the lower planet they're on were rendered as-is out of 3D with the camera zoom set to cover a wide area (hard to explain, damn I wished you were a Vue user too lol) but it basically warps the view to allow more of the scenery to be seen like a fisheye lens, admittedly - the spaceships were made and rendered seperatly at near-normal camera settings, and the planets on top and in the distance were postworked too so all these things I can move around freely without doing a ton of test renders...So basically - it was highly experimental and I had no idea what I was doing
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I am Im a VUE user too these days priteeboy, as you should know commenting some of the pieces I've made with VUE elements
But than that's just the thing I guess - I do pieces with VUE elements, not VUE scenes. I'm slowly getting to known the program, and though I've fiddled with the camera settings for instance, I never actually bothered to test render scenes with different zoom settings, just like I've never touched most settings in vue thus far.
I kinda understand the issue here though, and though it isn't overly bothersome, the fact that the "fisheye" warping only affects part of the image do stand out a bit to me.
Experimenting is the way to go though!
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ahh this one is so greatt XD!!
It loks like Star Wars !
OMG, that city on below is amazed me,you design it !!oOo
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Thanks, I'ms surprised Star Wars hasn't done ths already 
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Looks like a ladder from Terra to Luna. (Earth to moon.)
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Only the planets are very different, these guys have way more opportunity on their side than we do - the contents of our Moon are hardly worth building something like this to
Thnaks for faving
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wow, friggintastic job, an awesome piece of work
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Excellent work! Great painting and atmosphere. I really like the perspective.
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Glad you like it, and thanks for faving too
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I'd hate to get stuck in there
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Especially of they play that irritating elevator music
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well that could be fun 
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excellent detail and a brilliant idea.
Let's see easy jet compete with this.
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Very nice job here mate. Looks good.
I agree on the space craft thing, it's very very hard. I never posted some of my sci-fi pieces with heavy machinery 'n such for you to view, maybe it was for the better as well 
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