Description:
Taking the reader through the
thought processes toward a
design for moving civilization
mostly off-planet, using "space
elevator" concepts to connect
Earth-surface directly to
Geosynchronous Earth Orbit,
where a string of Stanford
Torus habitats provides room
for 15 billion people.
Keywords: habitat,elevator,synthesis,torus,SSPS,GEO,energy ---------------------------------
 

GEO Habitat Ring Umbilical conceptual design synthesizing

          By James Edward David Cline
 
What would you think if someone told you there exists
technological concepts that point the way to a near-future
scenario that eliminates the need for fossil fuels and
nuclear energy to be used for electrical power generation
here on Earth, while providing an efficient path and place
for an greatly expanding human population, while allowing
the Earth's ecological system to return to balance? Probably
if you heard it on the news, or was told that by a famous
scientist, you might consider it as possibly true, and get
really excited about it. But hearing it from a quiet
technological dreamer like myself? Well....  Anyway, I am
going to tell you how I think those things can be, by
describing a "technological conceptual synthesis" I have
created as a hobby:

     Putting together concepts is like using a child's
tinkertoy/Leggo/Erector set, the way one puts the pieces
together.  One starts with a rough image in mind of what one
wants to build, and then works the pieces available until
one has a sufficient resemblance to one's mental image, or
else have stumbled into something more interesting along the
way. So starting with the mental image of saving the
Earth's ecological system along with human civilization, by
moving human civilization mostly into off-planet space
resources, let's look at the pieces in our current
conceptual "erector set".

     (Alternatively one could instead design for a picture
of planet-surface-limited-civilization, maximizing recycling
and drastically reducing the human population...perhaps
using the aborigine population density and lifestyle as if
spread worldwide, since only they have found total symbiosis
with the planet. Otherwise we finishing turning the planet
into a garbage dump (currently we produce one billion tons per year worldwide, US alone makes 400 million tons a year
and this would be even if we had Zero Population Growth
now), or run out of some essential element first.)
     We Americans are most comfortable living within totally
re-worked material.  Our homes and workplaces are no longer
the limbs of jungle trees and natural caves; we build their
large counterparts out of sawn lumber, hardened steel, and
artificial rock-like concrete...all painted over thoroughly.
Many of our indoor living and work places could have been built out of the stuff the Moon is made of, properly
re-worked, and it would look the same.  Even the lawns,
trees and valleyside dwellings envisioned in the interior of
the Stanford Torus space settlement designs could give the
exterior of homes a comfortable landscaped suburban feel,
and the slow rotation of the mile-across torus would provide
artificial Earth-like gravity.  Theoretically it all could
be built of stuff found on the Moon and elsewhere in space. Room and solar energy abound nearly endlessly there too.  So
civilization could flourish there.

     How do we move there, and move the raw materials for
building this space settlement civilization?  Let's
see...current transportation concepts call for chemical
reaction engine propelled vehicles, like the space shuttle.
The cost per pound and per person is incredibly
high...something like $2,000 per pound... and there aren't
enough space shuttles existing or probably buildable to ship
even the hundreds of millions of people born now each yearinto space. And while the SSME (Space Shuttle Main Engine)
is non-polluting, the Solid Rocket Booster's (SRB's) are
terribly polluting. So to build our scenario for saving our
planet and civilization too, we must look more into our
conceptual grab bag.

     Space elevators look possibly useable.  While the tower
to reach the heavens attempted by the ancient Babylonians,
and the centrifugally-suppported earth tower envisioned by
Artsutanov, require unearthly strength of materials, the recent dynamically-supported earth- to-space transportation
structure concepts of Rod Hyde and Keith Loftstrom remain as
near-future possibilities. These dynamic structures utilize
the enormous stored kinetic energy of an orbital-velocity
stream of mass to support the stream's enclosing tube, and
magnetically induce energy to move payload elevators along
the outside of the tube.

     Rod Hyde's version would have the high velocity mass
stream essentially go straight up, turn around at some
altitude, return alongside its upward path, and be re-accellerated at the Earth's surface where it is
re-directed back upward again.  His vision of one would
consume as much electric power to run as does a large city,
while being able to lift mass equal to every human being now
alive out into space over a two week operating period.  If
they all had somewhere nice to go, that is.

     A derivative of Keith Lofstrom's Launch Loop concept,
as described by Earle Smith, would have the high velocity
mass stream
circle the Earth, touching the surface at one point, and orbiting out to GEO before returning to be
re-accellerateds at its Earth-surface contact point.  As in
Hyde's concept, people and payload ride along the outside in
elevators running along the sheath that encloses the mass
stream.  Magnetic levitation (maglev) tracks provide
low-friction movement for the elevators along the tube.
     (The energy contained in a closed loop dynamically-
supported space elevator is the kinetic energy of the mass
stream,
the potential energy of the mass stream as it rises, plus the energy extracted from the stream to support its
evacuated tubes and lift-energy for exterior loads such as
the payload elevators.  To calculate the system energy, for
simplicity let the accelleration all be done at the Earth
surface contact point.  The energy within the system then is
equal to the energy exiting that accellerator, integrated
to the upper terminal and back; although the stream slows as
it rises, the energy remains the same since s
ome of thekinetic energy is converted into potential energy as it
rises, then is reconverted back into kinetic energy when it
is in the falling direction in the endless loop.  The system
energy being integrated around the loop is equal to 0.5
times the mass density at the accellerator's exit multiplied
by the length of the loop, times the square of the velocity
at the accellerator's exit.)

     There is one place in space where such space elevators
can go, such that both the Earth-surface end of the
structure as well as the space end of the structure are relatively stationary as the planet rotates.  That is the
imaginary ring around the planet known as GEO,
Geosynchronous Earth Orbit, because its rotational rate is
identical to that of the Earth surface.  This is where our
TV and telephone relay satellites are located right now.  So
here is where space settlements could be built with direct
continuous connection with the Earth surface at all times. A
place where a flourishing human civilization can expand
while remaining in intimate contact with the Earth. Stanford Torus type space habitats of the 1975 design, each over a
mile in diameter like a wheel with inside girth of some 427
feet, provides comfortable living for 10,000 people each
with their agriculture and light industry.  There is room
for 1,475,000 of these Stanford Torus's per ring around the
Earth...room for up to 15 billion people per ring layer. All
present humanity could enter such a habitat ring and not
even begin to fill it.

     So the concept
ual tinkertoy takes shape.  How to power all this?  Earth cannot long be expected to provide its
power burning precious chemical feedstocks for fuel as we do
now.  The technology proposed for orbiting SSPS, Satellite
Solar Power Stations, seems ready-made.  Instead of beaming
their solar-energy-derived electric power Earthward via
objectionable microwave beams, their electrical power
instead is used to electromagnetically accellerate the space
elevator mass streams.  Even surplus energy could be tapped
off
on Earth by slightly slowing the mass stream where it contacts the Earth surface, and supply the Earth with
non-polluting abundant electrical power...without microwave
beams to worry about.

     The first Stanford Torus Space settlements could be
built from materials from the Earth, perhaps one could be
built for each nation, with its own elevator to/from Earth.
The vast majority of the Stanford Torus's would need to be
built out of materials found off-planet.  GEO would be a
great place to build great spac
ecraft.  So from the first space colonies at GEO, we would launch hunter-gatherer
spacecraft to go get asteroids for building more Stanford
Toruses and create a major transportation system from the
Moon's surface, providing oxygen, aluminum, titanium for
their structures, and rubble for the passive shielding
around each torus.

     I would like to think that we can find 6 billion
peaceful, harmonious, mutually supportive, constructively
productive, technologically creative, scientifically
competent, ecol
ogically reaponsible individuals to conceptualize, design, engineer, build own, operate, and
live in the first GEO Habitat Ring with its space elevators.

     In this tinkertoy construction scenario of concepts,
the space elevators have an initial function analogous to
the umbilical cord of a birthing...in this case, the
birthing of bourgeoning human civilization into off-planet
space, to allow Mother Earth to return to her previous
shape, while nurturing her offspring in space.

  By J. E. D. Cline; December 29, 1988; Van Nuys, California
 
  Ref: GEnie Spaceport files #671,655,644,634,629,592,581,
578,563,553, and 475.

Copyright C 1988 by GEnie, Spaceport, and J. E. D. Cline