First, you've gotta toss the point source model for gravity that works best outside gravitic objects - a=µm/r² kinda breaks down at the center of an object where it tries to divide by zero and predicts an insane acceleration right next to the center, while a quick check with first principles will allow you to realise that gravitic acceleration at the center is actually zero because you're surrounded by equal mass at equal distances in all directions so it all cancels out.

See this stackexchange answer for a neat graph of Earth's gravity gradient vs depth

When a large star goes supernova, the explosion sheds the outer layers but compresses the core, which increases the core section's density at and below the boundary layer - which also serves to increase the gravity since you have the same core mass with a much smaller radius.

If that new stronger amount of gravity is sufficient to continue collapsing the core, you get a runaway effect that ends up with a neutron star or black hole.

Smaller stars can't hit those runaway thresholds, and just leaves white or brown dwarves behind (see Chandrasekhar limit) - but if the escape velocity reaches the speed of light, a black hole will pop into existence where the hyper-compressed core once was, containing all its mass, angular momentum, and charge.

> We never took pictures of exoplanets. These pictures are illustrated and fake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets ;)

Sure they're no artist's rendition, but they are legit pictures of exoplanets :P

> I assume some rock types would be unsuitable for anchoring (maybe it’s anchored so deep it doesn’t matter?)

Well the tension on the base station from the cable would be ~0 due to how the orbital physics work, and we're pretty good at deep-drilling to lay foundations for large buildings, so I don't see too many concerns there

> definitely not near tectonic plates

The Japanese have some pretty good anti-earthquake building technologies, like big shock absorbers in the foundations, plus the end of the cable could be anchored with a floating mount - so maybe not as much of an issue as you might think

> presumably not in any type of water?

The romans built stuff in water and we do too.

> Would need to be close to a major port or shipping hub

Those would be built as required if there isn't already a suitable one nearby - consider the financial allure of a space elevator, and the number of countries that are already making artificial islands and reclaiming land from the sea.

> probably some other criteria

The most problematic criteria is the strength of the cable (due to taper ratio) - we don't currently have the technology to manufacture the cable, although carbon nanotubes are theoretically strong enough to do the job if only we could work out how to extrude insanely long nanotube fibers en masse from a facility in orbit.

> If someone builds a space elevator, what is its clear night visibility distance?

A bit less than a quarter of the way around the earth, since geostationary altitude is significantly larger than Earth's radius.

Strangely enough, Wikipedia's equations give nonsensical results in that they exceed Earth's circumference, but my own calculation using basic right-triangle math gives a far more reasonable ~9Mm

> If a station was grounded in Los Angeles

Can't.

Space elevators can only be built at 0° latitude (ie exactly on the equator) so its base would have to be in one of these countries

That's why all the moon landing photos have such long shadows and why the suits and craft were all painted white - they tried to land near the terminator to simplify thermal management ;)

Without any atmospheric scattering, it's pitch black unless you're looking directly at a light source (gravitational lensing aside)

Still enough sunlight to make thermal management very important though - consider that the surface of the Moon hits 120°C during its day, and -130°C during its night ;)

Well the sun appears white rather than yellow because its blue light doesn't get scattered by the atmosphere, faint stars are more easily visible, and stars don't twinkle - but they're still a fairly similar absolute brightness to how they appear from the ground.

You may want to peruse /r/HFY or other sci-fi subs for this sort of thing, /r/space isn't a suitable place for wild speculation.

> If there is no oxygen in space does that mean bodies in space can stay preserved?

Well they won't rot, but there's still heaps of various types of radiation and micrometeorites that'll slowly cook and chip away at anything left in space.

A body in space would mummify first from vacuum dessication before all that has much effect though.

> Seen a Tik Tok about the amount of people deceased in space and they’re floating about

Zero? There are zero intact human cadavers in space.

No.

Quantum computers excel at problems where the math is simple and the inputs are simple, but discerning a result requires exploring a bazillion possibilities - like solving sudoku or factoring large numbers.

Space travel is not this sort of problem - although there will certainly be heaps of small problems within space travel's massive problem stack that quantum computers could help with, such as finding new alloys and meta-materials.