Cables


Keeping Gaea from flying apart are one hundred eight cables/ connecting the hub and the floor. Each cable is comprised of one hundred forty four strands. The strands fan out once they reach the floor, securing the rim. They also act as conduits of fluids and gases, like a vast circulatory system. They provide heating and cooling for the varying regions and circulate out to the fins for access to the heat available from the sun.

There are 15,552 strands. In Demon, Gaea herself notes there are 200 visibly broken strands (that changes by the end of Demon), as well as 400 unseen broken strands inside the cables/. All but the south central cable in Hyperion have up to five visible broken strands (again, by the end of Demon, that's changed). The broken strands fall to the ground and are one to seventy kilometers long, depending on how high the break was. Strands are also visibly broken at the hub, where all the cables/ are anchored.

The broken strands are described as curling upwards like split ends. Keeping that in mind when modelling them. Above is a first attempt at modeling the strands.


Above can be seen the 'strand forest' at the base of the central Hyperion cable. The strands once reached the floor as a uniform, tightly wound cable. Gaea is in an advanced state of... well, let's just say the old girl ain't what she used to be. The stresses the cables/ are resisting are incredible. Through a process dubbed 'millenial sag' the cables/ have stretched. As a result, the strands can be seen to be unwinding, starting about ten kilometers above the ground, meeting the surface as seperate entities.

The central strand of each region's central cable contains a stairway that spirals down five kilometers below the surface to a chamber housing the region's brain.

Would you like to meet Hyperion? Usually none but the Wizard may enter a regional's chambers, but I think we can make an exception... ==>

Cable Arrangements



I've tried to be nauseatingly accurate in regard to cable placement as sited throughout the trilogy. There are three different groupings; central night, central daylight, and slanting cables.





To the left is the central night layout - five cables in all, equally spaced across the width of the rim. The north, south, and central cables are all vertical. The two cables between the verticals angle up and 'braid' together with the central cable. The middle cross section shows the central daylight layout - thee vertical cables, one in the center and the north and south cables located 30 kilometers in from the nearest wall. The cross section on the right shows the slanting cable arrangement. There are two sets of five slanting cables associated with each spoke, touching ground 20 degrees to the east or west of the central night cables.





Here's a window into my anal retentiveness: The Braiding cables. They are sited as 'braiding' together as well as running 'ruler straight' up the center of the spoke. Shit. The two ways I see this happening are that 1) the strands of all three cables wind together forming a composite cable, OR 2) like this pic - the three cables winding around each other as seperate cables. Reminds me of some titanic amuzement park ride.





Here's a close up of the rough model of the junction, where it meets just below the lower spoke valve. I tend to prefer this version, if for no other reason than space. Between the climb up the spoke in Titan and the Big Drop in Wizard, I just can't seem to figure out what the heck they look like.





Having made a quick animation pass down the spoke in a test of the Big Drop, the braided version seems huge - the intertwined version, much slimmer (easier to miss on the way down :) Naturally, of course, I don't reeallly know how the braided cables look :) Any suggestions?





Here's a good image of the slanting cables coming together. They are sited in Titan as being 200 meters apart, so that's the way they are here. The north and south slanting cables are offest slightly from the center due to the curve of the spoke wall, but meet the ground in a straight row, twenty degrees east or west of the central cables

The Hub



Here ya go, all 108 cables. Awesome to think what a Titan must look like in her death throws. Full cables snaping and whipping around like serpentine megalithic skyscrapers, the walls tearing and rupturing like a derigible in a hurricane, the floor rending itself asunder, all pinwheeling away from itself...

The rigging cables that support the mirrors are the only cables not shown here.



Here's a closeup of the mighty anchor of Gaea. All the cables fasten to the hub, holding the body of Gaea together, resisting the fantastic centripetal forces generated by her nearly once an hour spin rate. The hub is also the resting place of the great muscle that was used shortly after her birth to pull out and form the rest of her body. In the model, I've made it 10 km thick. It may need to be thicker, but the 10 km thickness lets it match to a certain degree the approximate 20 km distance from the Mad Tea Party sited a couple of times