Aircraft of the Pacific Armada overflying the Southeast Asia launch bridge, a 80km tall, almost 2000km long railway magnetically suspended above ground by an iron wire shooting through it at 15km/s. The bridge helps reduce waste by cutting the need for rocket boosters for the great majority of launches - space trains can reach orbital velocity before they reach the end and lift off. Only big ships that don't fit on the tracks have to lift with power beams or nuclear pulse engines. Space garbage and micrometeors don't threaten the bridge since it's not quite outside the atmosphere, nothing can keep an orbit around this height. The bridge doesn't threaten anything below it anymore than a normal bridge would. The photograph is edited by the Ministry of Culture - the space freighters are, in reality, rarely more than a kilometer long and wouldn't look so big at the puny altitude of 40km that the Va-108 can reach.
