Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
but I can't imagine that even in vacuum freefall a feather would hurt that much.
Depends how long it has to accelerate in vacuum freefall. Given sufficient distance, a featherweight object left to fall on the Moon would reach a speed of 2.38km/sec (Lunar escape velocity) or nearly so. A typical feather might mass 0.01g, and travelling at 2380m/s would have a kinetic energy of about 56J. Doesn't sound like much, but it's in the same ballpark as an arrow fired from a short bow, and since we're not talking about an actual feather but a broken fragment of the space elevator, it'll probably be quite sharp as well, and may also be heavier than that 0.01g figure I mentioned above--we only have to increase that to 0.1g to have an object with the same kinetic energy as a .45 ACP round fired from a pistol.