How would the lifts work on a space station which worries about hull breaches?

I'm writing a roleplaying game scenario set on a space station, and was wondering how the lifts (elevators) would work? Specifically, the people who built the station are very health and safety conscious and are worried about:

• Hull breaches and airlock malfunctions (or Player Characters blowing them up!). They've got automated systems to slam shut bulkheads etc in such an eventuality. So I guess they have them in the lift shafts too.
• Fires. They don't want fires spreading, so again they can seal off sections of the station.

For context, this is a Stanford torus space station, which generates gravity by spin. Realistic tech only please - no forcefields, artificial gravity, tractor beams or Jedi mind powers.

My question is... how would the lifts work? They can't be pulled up on a cable or pushed up on a pole, if the emergency seals would slam into/through that and cut it/damage it? Or could they???

The station is too big for everyone to take the stairs! :-) Also no-one wants to haul shipping containers up the stairs...

Below is a diagram of the type of station I am talking about, with a cross section showing the lift shaft passing through all the decks.

posted almost 7 years ago

DrBob‭

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