File: 8TOGO

8togo
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By  J. E. D. "JED/Dave" Cline    940711 Canoga Park, CA
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Does technology have the responsibility for creating optionsfor humanity's survival and well-being? Or does technology's role end with just creating that which probably will make an adequate profit and for which investors can be found?
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Civilization has been experiencing great success, and many not believe
the success is too great, the population is overwhelming the resource
base. An easy example is the cheap & fast food hamburger, which was
produced in South America and flown in by the millions; and for which
each 1/4 pound burger's meat, it cost the li
fe of 55 square feet ofAmazon rainforest including a 70 foot tall tree and all the creatures
big and small who lived upon it, monkeys, birds insects, other
plants...all gone in a razing fire which paved the way for its
conversion into 1/4 pound hamburger and 55 square feeto of infertile
wasteland in a year. Wisdom does not seem to be applied adequately in
that conversion process. And similar lacks of wisdom appears typical
of the processes going on right here in America, formerly the land of
te brave and h
ome of the free. Ranks of environmental activatists declare Population Control is the answer to increasing numbers of
humans on planet Earth.
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"Population Control" is to take the forms of fertility control, death
accelleration, massive reproductive harassment and/or migration.
Nature will use the first, second and third processes if humanity does
not consciously and wisely take control, it is said. Nature will
provide vastly increassed forms of disease, starvation, and
reproductive rivalry. Plague, famine,
 toxicity, fertility neutering,reproductive harrassment, war, resource depletion ... will surely take
control if technology does not provide real options.
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This has often happened before. No doubt when the first cave man
family outgrew the cave, similar concepts were felt, expresssed and
acted upon. However, the ones who were cast out of (or escaped from)
their cave home went on to build their own "artificial caves", vastly
more of them than nature could provide, billions of them by now around
the world,
our homes..
"Migration" is an alternative option which technology has some
potential for providing humanity, right now. Technology is in sight
of a means for transporting the vast majority of humanity to space in
close orbit of Earth. From there the door to the vast resources of
your solar system await the spark of life to be created of it.
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This task for technology would be incredibly expensive, frightfully
risky, and probably thankless. The only benefitors of the success of
this task would be the future
 humanity and the vast interlinked lifeweb of the Earth's ecosystem. None of these potential benefitors are
able or present to vote on the cost, the risk, the thankless
challenges. The productive attention of corporate power struggles,
both internal and external, is not likely to jump on this bandwagon
like it did for the Apollo Progect, or the building of the Panama
Canal.
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It is easy for civilized people to ignore the task, and dull
themselves with television fantasies and fastfoods, look the other way

while the disastor is creeping up so slowly before it strikes,mercillessly castrating and/or outright killing until the excess
population (and more) is gone. History repeats for those who have not
learned its lessons, those who have not gone on to create better
options and take those options.
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It is easier for me, too, to bury my head in the television, instead
of struggling to get people to take unfamiliar paths...there are a lot
more of those people than me, they don't like people rocking the boat,
and
they expertly know how to harrass their "opponents". So I writethis document, offer it through the computer network, and then will
sit back and say that I did my part of the job, and if this option for
humanity does not get created, somebody else dropped the ball, not
me. I am really tired of getting ignored by engineering, belittled by
the space activists to whom I have reached out to for decades, and
being ridden daily by the mischievious half-informed Luddites. If I
cannot even get a woman to sleep with
 me, I surely cannot get aplanetfull of people to get up and shoulder this task. However, I can
paint a picture and wave it at them, as a hobby.
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I am offering the following picture of a promising option which
technology could offer humanity, however. Take it or leave it. In
offering it to technology, it is technology's "ball" now, and good
luck. Of course, I desire to help more, given some encouragement, I am
still available ... however, the past shows no reason to expect that,
only receive more harrassm
ent, more intrusions into my tinyearthquake-damaged bachelor's apartment, for daring to suggest rocking
the boat.
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So here is a word picture of that task for technology which would be
incredibly expensive, frightfully risky, cursed for the inevitable
learning-curve mistakes, and probably thankless. In the meantime, I
will go get one of those very cheap fast food hamburgers, and as I eat
it I will pray for the forgiveness of that 55 square feet of
rainforest that gave its all in fiery agony: the 70 foot ta
ll treethat had spread its leaves to the cool mist and sunshine, to the
family of small monkeys that had cuddled together there as their home
and had lept through its branches, the several families of bright
songful birds who lived in its branches, for the 55 square feet of
Brazilian Amazon rainforest which had been a piece of Mother Earth's
precious balanced ecosystem, now in a year converted into lifeless
wasteland washing down to the sea... with only this 1/4 pound of
hamburger to show for it ... and I
will wonder at the approaching fateof a species (my species) that had so much power and so little urge to
look at the greater picture within which each little action took
place. Is Mother Earth about to give birth into the solar system a
wonderfully creative vast civilization based on humans and other Earth
lifeforms, or is it just going to be another long agonizing
miscarriage for her?
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Civilization expands by taking the raw materials of adjacent space and
converting it into useable living space. In pr
imitive times, and alsoin current times, when people forget to look at the big picture
regarding what they are doing, the raw materials of adjacent space are
the very living stuff of other lifeform systems, such as the Amazon
rainforest ecosystem that we are currently converting 55 square feet
of trees, monkeys birds, insects...into one 1/4 pound fast food
hamburger's meat...by the millions. This document offers a reminder to
people that there is an alternative source of raw materials of
adjacent space whi
ch does not rampage destructively over neighborlifeforms.
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Each massive new expansion of civilization into adjacent space hinges
on a new technology, as well as opportunity. American forests were
felled with metal axes and saws, converting them into farmland, for
example. There is an alternative to the current conversion of Amazon
rainforest ecosystems into hamburger-plus-wasteland. There is a
technology which needs developing which would provide the opportunity
for civilization to expand into low earth o
rbital zones, even theneighboring Clarke Belt, the synchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the
Earth's equator. This new proposed technology which would massively
bridge the gap between the Earth's surface and nearby orbital space,
is the technology of kinetically-supported transportation structures,
a seemingly incredible kind of electric railway megabridge technology.
Structural support and energy transfer would use the kinetic energy of
an orbital velocity mass stream which circulates within the evacuated

channels inside the bridge structures. Eventually these structureswill be reliable enough to last for millenia, but for now, they only
need last 30 or 40 years, long enough to build a better home for
humanity, and eagerly move most of them there.
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PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT
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The purpose of this document is to communicate technological
inspiration toward an intensely revised space program which has the
potential for vastly improving the chances of survival of humanity and
the Earth ecosystem.
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ABSTRACT OF
THE PROPOSED SPACE PROGRAM SCENARIO.
It would provide for a huge expansion of human civilization while also
restoring much of the earth ecosystem balance. The proposed
technological sequence rapidly evolves from the existing space
transportation technology, through several stages of evolution based
on existing scientific principles yet requiring major technological
development, toward a thriving major civilization located around the
Earth in the synchronous Clarke Belt orbit, a civilization which is in
con
stant physical linkage with many earth surface points. The generalsequence of this technological inspiration is to use the space shuttle
engines, winged flyback technology, and wet-launch concepts, to put
a series of prefab modular sections of wheel-shaped small prototype
space settlements in LEO, to test and develop artificial gravity space
habitat technologies. Concurrently a high efficiency transportation
system would be developed and tested which moves lunar materials to the
Clarke Belt, and also concu
rrently the beginnings of the keytransportation technology of kinetically-supported structures
researched and developed initially for surface-to-surface
transportation applications. Next the kineticly-supported structure
technology is extended to circulate between earth surfa ce and the
Clarke Belt earth synchrnous orbit, and along its quasi-elliptical path
is then moved the components of the first large space settlement, made
from earth materials to test the overal habitat functionality, such as
the 10,00
0-person Island One mass-shielded design originally designedfor L4-L5 siting. Once a suitable settlement design is created and
tested, the Clarke Belt orbital ring is infilled with such space
settlements, such as 1.5 million of the Island-One type settlements,
structures made robotically mostly from lunar materials. The
15-billion-people potential of this ring of settlements is just the
beginning of the civilization there, and the Earth surface ecosystem
could become the cherished tended garden of that civ
ilization..
The opportunities for business in this space program are vast.
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A PRIMER ON KINETIC STRUCTURES
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There potentially is an unusual way to support the structure of
bridges. Instead of building with tensile and compressive members,
which have limits in their strength of materials and thus limits to
their size, consider the possibility of using stored energy within the
bridge structure to support it.
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Consider the immense kinetic energy of a massive pair of orbital
velocity mass streams, flowing i
n vacuum, within channels along thecirculating length of such a bridge structure. The kinetic energy of
those mass streams are electromechanically coupled to the structure of
the bridge, providing support for the bridge structure and its live
loads, and supplying energy to move those live loads along its length
from the Earth's surface up to the Clarke Belt and back down to the
Earth's surface, in a parallel pair of endless loops. Most of the
kinetic energy would stay in the loops instead of being used eac
h timearound the loop.
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Significant features of such a system are that it would use electrical
energy instead of chemical energy for transportation of payloads,
would use part of its internally stored kinetic energy to do the work
both of holding the structure up and to power payload vehicles along
its path, and eventually provide excess electrical power to associated
consumers as well as provide its own power from attached solar powered
thrusters.
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A SEQUENCE OF PROJECTS FROM THE PRESENT TO BASIC CLAR
KE BELT CITY:.
A progression from the present-day space scenario in which the Space
Shuttle routinely is used to move small amounts of people and goods
back and forth between Earth surface and low earth orbit, might be:
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1. Humanity decides to actively move the majority of people to
near-earth space, out of the direct path of the earth's fragile
ecosystem, instead of continuing down the present course of events of
depopulation of the planet through fatal disease and artificially
induced incompetance. Inst
ead, the Clarke Belt City is chosen as a wayto preserve an expanding human civilization population in nearly
earthlike artificially constructed space habitat environments, while
also preserving and healing the Earth surface ecosystem.
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2. Pre-assembled sections of a toroidal space station design are put
into low earth orbit by the creation of a flyback engine/control type
wet launch module vehicle, largely using the existing proven Space
Shuttle technology. The wheel-shaped space habitat is first built on
ºthe ground in the form of pre-fitted modules linked in a circle. Thedesign of each module is for dual use, the other use is for being the
fuel tank and payload of an unmanned engine & control module which
launches them into low earth orbit. The unmanned engine/control
module flies back to the launch site for the next module's launch,
much as the present space shuttle returns to the Earth's surface.
(Refer to Genie Spaceport library files "Centristation III" and #2931
"Centristation IV".)
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3. Use these un
manned wet-launched prefitted modules to buildartificial gravity space stations made of circles of these linked
modules to prove out the hypothesis that earth surface gravity and
atmospheric pressure in a rotating toroid can provide functional
stability in a group living situation which includes other life
forms in a harmonious synthesis. (Centristation III & IV)
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4. The bulk of the physical structure to be built in the Clarke Belt
around the Earth would need to be built out of space resources. The
Moon
is handy and has plentiful resources of such materials asaluminum and titanium. This material needs to be moved from the Moon's
surface to the vicinity of the Clarke Belt efficiently and with a
minimum of pre-industrialization of the Moon. Investigate forms of
materials-pumps utilizing the greater depth of potential energy of the
adjacent earth's gravity well, to lift materials up out of the Moon's
gravity well. One way to do this is to store the energy as angular
momentum: an Earth-Moon two-body orbiting
Skyhook one-directionmaterials pump, which picks up packaged payloads from the far side of
the Moon on a tether, payload and spacecraft tethered whirling
together around their common center-of-gravity as they continue around
the Moon and into Earth's gravity well, the spacecraft regaining its
energy through appropriately timed release of the payload from a
lengthened tether deep into Earth's gravity well. Hans Moravec created
the original spinning skyhook concept. (Refer to #475 "Space
Inspiration" and #92
7 "Longtrans 2" files.) .
5. Creation of stored-energy bridges on Earth surface to develop the
technology into a high reliability system, while also providing new
mmdes of long range transportation of large amounts of fuels, water
and other resources. Development of emplacement techniques. Keith
Loftstrom conceptualized related structures of "launch loops." (refer
to files #475 "Space Inspiration" and #2466 "Kinetic Structures III")
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6. Fabrication of a kinetic bridge to low earth orbit. Using this
bridg
e, install a complete ring around the earth in orbit at the peakaltitude of the bridge. Spinning that continuous ring faster than its
orbital velocity will enable it to support extra mass besides itself,
which is non-moving relative the the earth surface and the bridge.
Build relatively unshielded space habitats there for research. Then
fabrication of the first stored energy bridges to the Clarke Belt
create the links to the new land: the Clarke Belt. Historically, Earle
Smith conceptualized a form of kine
tic-energy supported bridge fromEarth surface to the Clarke Belt, and this was expanded up by the
author. (Files #475, 747 and 2466 are are some of those on the
subject.)
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e7. First Clarke Belt "Island One" type 10,000-person space settlement
built from Earth materials, brought up on a stored-energy bridge. This
develops the functional structural design with components built
comparatively easily on the Earth's surface. Outfitting the interior
of the space settlement to include as many earth-normal feature
s aspossible. Tests out agricultural systems, condominium homes on the
interior slopes, and creative stable harmonious social system...and
millions of the other necessary things needing to be tested out there
too. Each colonist effectively has 26 fish, 6.2 chickens, 2.8 rabbits,
and 1/7 of a cow, and the plant diet for these animals is grown on the
habitat in lunar soil about 1 foot deep. Housing of the colonists is
on terraced condominiums along the sides slopes inside the rotating
wheel habitat, includin
g 45 square yards per person for residentialand community life, 5 square yards per person for mechanical and life
support systems, and 21 square yards per person for agriculture and
food processing. (This general type of complete space habitat
structure can be found in detail in NASA SP-413 "Space Settlements: A
Design Study", and also in "The High Frontier" by Gerard K. O'Neill.
See also GEnie Spaceport Library files such as #747 Hwy to Earth GEO
Ring")
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8. Long term electrical power to support the kinet
ic energy bridgesneeds to come from space resources instead of relying on Earth
resources, so development of solar power electromechanical thrusters
supporting these bridges needs to be done. They would use solar energy
converted into electrical energy to accelerate the downward direction
of the kinetic mass stream so as to replenish the energy consumed by
the support of the bridge structure and for moving payloads along it.
The thrust of that acceleration would be against the weight of the
power converter
, being located along the bridge at points belowsynchronous orbit. (Refer to related information on Solar Power
Satellites, as well as files like #2466.)
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9. Lunar industrialization, with a stored energy bridge transportation
system to replace the two-body orbiting Skyhook. Lunar-to-Clark-Belt
materials transportation systems include the 2-body skyhook, O'Neill
mass driver, Mooncable fiberglass electrical siphon through L1 point,
as well as kinetic bridges.
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10. Massive transportation of lunar materials
to the Clarke Belt usinglunar stored kinetic energy bridges for the major part of the trip.
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11. Robotic construction of more Island One space settlements in GEO,
the Clarke Belt. These 10,000-person-each wheel-like space settlements
would be linked together like the chairs on a ferris wheel, eventually
all the way around the planet in the Clarke Belt. Robotic construction
builds the repetitive toroidal shell structures, then would be spun up
to earth normal interior gravity, pressurized from Earth atmosp
herecomponents, then the interior outfitted in the way things are built on
earth surface by people and machines.
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12. Great living for humanity in the Earth-surface-like Clarke Belt
City! It is essential that the functionality and appearance of the
interior of these space settlements resemble normal Earth environments
as much as possible, not only to maintain our long term humanity
there, but also to enable ecological balance with the other imported
diverse current Earth surface ecosystem balancing lifefo
rms, ourbiological partners in space as well as on land.
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13. Restoration of Earth surface ecological balance by City dwellers
would become vacation volunteer activity, a periodic pilgramage back
to Earth surface to heal the wounds we have inadvertently already
given to Mother Earth. The rainforests can be restored using whatever
species that still live.