Peasants, how do they work?

You say that as if nuclear energy isn't also just boiling water

Only if you have a peasant chain leading up to the building

unless it’s cool

Still won’t stop you from eventually reaching the same speed tho.

...yes it will. Terminal velocity occurs when the forces pulling ng you and pushing back at you are in balance. The drag force is a lot higher when you're a larger profile. The balancing will occur sooner

Often and for little pay.

OK, you've got space elevators wrong, and that's OK. The counter-weight doesn't orbit the sun. It orbits earth. If it orbited the sun it'd rip the thing apart. It sits somewhere above a geostationary orbit, as a geostationary orbit is where the orbit point is always over the same point on the ground, which would be where your elevator is tethered. The station part is somewhere below this. The higher it is heavier or further out your counter-weight needs to be —and since it's already impossible around earth no matter what, this needs to be as low as possible. Because of this setup, your velocity (while below the geostationary line) is always less than the orbital velocity at that altitude. For example, the ISS orbits the earth 15.5 times a day. Our point on the space elevator cable stays at the exact same position over the ground, so it orbits 0 times. At the same altitude as the ISS you need to be moving the same speed as the ISS or you'll fall down. It only doesn't while attached to the cable because it's being pulled by the counter-weight. Basically, stuff dropped off a space elevator falls, unless it's at geostationary altitude. It needs to be given some extra horizontal speed to stay in orbit.

The counterweight orbits above escape velocity, pulling the space elevator's cable taut. If the cable were severed the counterweight would drift off into space into a solar orbit. So if you jump off at the counterweight, you'll enter solar orbit. At geostationary orbit (which could be considered the "top" of the space elevator as that's where you would normally get off, presumably) the space elevator orbits at exactly orbital velocity, so if you jump off there you end up in orbit. Below that your velocity would be below orbital velocity and you'd fall back to Earth.

So does that mean whatever universe this is is non-relativistic?

I think someone came up with the passing things really fast thing and then tried to come up with a use for it.

That's what I love about solar energy. Its like the only energy source that doesn't boil water to turn a steam turbine, use water to turn a water turbine or use wind to turn a air turbine.

Well, the "top" of the elevator could be anywhere. That's why I said it needs to be as low as possible, because it's already physically impossible for Earth. The lower and lighter the station is, the less impossible it is, though it's impossible even with no station and just a cable. Above geostationary orbit isn't suddenly in solar orbit though. It's still got quite a ways to go. It could be at escape velocity, but that's not necessary. This is all impossible on Earth anyway though, so if you're making a story where this is taking place it could be any of these outcomes you want. Whatever works best for the story.

Yeah, skipping straight to the turbines we truly care about, the electron turbines we create in loops of wire. It’s turbines all the way down.

Live by the jank, die by the jank. Make an improvised ranged weapon attack with 20/60 range lol

I use my reaction to activate the IRL-physics-inator when the object reaches the last peasant!

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

I actually had that in mind, hence why I kept it limited to 1%

It's not "physically impossible" on Earth. The forces involved are great, sure, which means you can't build it out of any present-day material like steel, but they're not so great that constructing a space elevator would be physically impossible using non-exotic matter like it would be on, say, the Sun, or possibly even just Jupiter. We already know of materials that could be used to make a space elevator cable on Earth if they were available in sufficient quantities -- namely carbon nanotubes. The "top" *can't* be anywhere, because not everywhere along the length of the elevator will put released objects in orbit. Turns out on Earth, an object released off of the elevator would reach a stable (but very eccentric) orbit 2/3rds of the way to geostationary orbit -- below that, it would fall back to Earth. Conversely escape velocity would be reached at about 53000 km, which is past geostationary orbit but much closer than where the counterweight would be (in most designs?). Objects above escape velocity will by definition escape Earth's orbit, which most of the time means ending up in a solar orbit.

It's just one of those times where you have to accept that D&D is a boardgame, and the small details fall apart when you try to make "real" stuff fit the rules. A round is six seconds. If you want to apply logic to it, the DM would just say that the ball/rail/tungsten rod only moved up a few people in six seconds.