Safety First

The difficult part of constructing extremely tall buildings and other large structures is not, despite initial appearances, the use of dynamic compressive members, electromagnetic coupling, paragravitation, and other such tricks to make the entire structure hang together. That part is child’s play.

The difficult part is arranging that, should all your clever dynamic trickery fail, along with its auxiliaries and backups, the building will come apart in a safe manner that both doesn’t result in any casualties, and preferably permits the building to be easily reassembled afterwards.

And if you aren’t clear on why this is considered difficult, consider well the design issues of a long-term-stable, instant-use-no-fail, one-shot rocket motor capable of pushing a twelve-storey slice from the stratosphere into a stable recovery orbit, while being safe to use around all the other building segments doing the same thing.

– Cessír Claves-ith-Estenv,
Octarthius Professor of Megastructural Engineering