Ah, but that’s the thing it’s not compression it’s tension. Try hanging the same steel cube from the ceiling with a scrap of paper and things get decidedly more difficult.

And even if you can find some magic superglue left in the tube to hold it there, it has to hang there for weeks: A cubist sword of Damocles.

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ben_w 3 days ago | parent [-]

The tether is always in tension, in general the payload is allowed to be in either tension (if attached to the tether on the "top") or compression (if in a pouch of the same material as the tether, e.g. shepherd's sling configuration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sling_(weapon)), at the preference of the system designer.

	▲	EndsOfnversion 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		It’s a good point: I’d assumed that the plan was to make the payload of basically the same material as the tether/structure, and have it destructively tear-off at the right moment (maybe by having a watching supervisor structure lasering a weak point) But I think pouching the payload (presumably forming the structure around the payload) just translates the problem into holding a 8kg steel block to the ceiling with 1cm square of paper formed into a harness, and expecting it to hold for weeks. Either way - hopefully it will be addressed in a follow-up