A solution is proposed for widely opening up the resources of civilization to include the space near the Earth, so as to enable the restoration of the planetary ecosystem while also greatly expanding human civilization. The current trend, however, is to cope with dwindling resources and accumulating toxic waste material poisoning the planet, by interacting in the worst manner of aggressive men and herdbeasts. But exciting fighting until the best men win won't work this time, we have made too big a mess in our nest, we must work together to restore it or we all will perish, in strife some sooner than others. A possible project that we all can work together worldwide on, for our mutual well-being and improved ecosystem survival chances, is described in this website. By using known scientific and technological principles in a very different way than we now do, there is a possibility that we can create a transportation system adequate to the task of solidly expanding our civilization into the space near the Earth, anchored not so much on Earth ecosystem resources anymore, but largely on abundant space resources of energy, raw materials, and vast room to build and grow.
Like riding on a railroad, yet lifted by externally applied momentum more like an elevator... specially designed spaceworthy railcars would travel from cities around the world to connection sites on KESTS to GEO, where they would connect into the armature mass stream kinetic energy flow along the KESTS and be lifted along it up to Geostationary Earth Orbit, where the railcars would leave the KESTS and enter a Clarke Belt rail system linking vast solar electric powerplants, total recycling waste material processing plants, agricultural and rotating small cities (10,000 people each) in space, there in the Geostationary Earth Orbit, 22,300 miles above the Earth's equator.

Just as the railroads made possible the transportation for utilizing the vast resources of the interior of the United States in the horse-based transportation system existing before then, an analogous jump in transportation technology is explored as a central theme here. Can structures be supported by energy stored within them? Yes, consider inflated structures, even child's balloons, supported in shape by the random kinetic energy of the gas molecules stored within them. Making the kinetic energy nonrandom opens up some vast interesting possibilities for supporting the weight of structures, and the same directional characteristics of that stored energy can be used to move payload up and gently down along such structures. This is ideal for immense lifting structures, of particular interest to transport between the ground and GEO, the place where the angular velocity matches that of the earth's rotation, of key significance to a ground transportation structure accessing earth orbit, useful for far more than just lifting the immense solar electric powerplants to GEO for supplying the world with abundant clean electric power so as to preserve remaining petrochemical reserves for material uses in the future.
Total recycling of civilization's waste

--either by the Earth's hydrocarbon natural recycling mechanisms, or by technologically derived total recycling mechanisms. Much of our toxic waste products which stymie us now, can be totally recycled using abundant solar power and hard vacuum chemical element separation plants in orbit, in this proposed scenario. Understanding the purpose, technological principles, socioeconomic considerations, potential futures enabled depending on how it is implemented, and overall costs/benefits/costs are presented here.

Next is an outline of Research and Development paths that are currently foreseen.

The actions which can be taken now, in the near future, to proceed to explore what can be done with this vision for the best possible outcomes for all concerned... a world full of people and wider biosystem is involved.

Construction is a Civil Engineering task of monumental proportions, enlisting specialists from fields as diverse as electrical engineering, astrophysics, aeronautical engineering, materials sciences, reliability engineering, and security considerations.

Although the primary means of energizing and strengthening the key transportation system are not particularly dependent on strength of materials, the kinds of stresses upon materials used in the construction are sometimes unusual and need to be optimized.

An overall encompassing vision needs to b e the guide for all aspects and phases of the envisioned project, because there is a vast amount of interactivity among functions and disciplines involved, and there needs to be some means for blending it all into a harmonious whole, to maximize the potential for an overall long term wholesome outcome.

The planetary biosystem has functioned as a vast recycling machine for hundreds of millions of years, yet this recycling machine is unable to cope with much of the kinds of refuse material spewed out by mankind's increasingly sophisticated civilization. The ancient earth recycling system has depended on an extremely diverse biosystem, from the global scale to the local scale, yet the spread of civilization overruns these bio system’s territories and exterminates species comprising the biodiversity, further hindering the ability of the planet to recycle civilizations heaps of waste material of foreign nature to the ecosystem, sometimes quite toxic to it. The vision here is integrated with the purpose of restoring the biodiversity of Earth's natural recycling system, while integrating the unique qualities of the space nearby the earth to provide room for expansion, vast solar derived energy, solar powered immense hard vacuum total recycling plants in orbit, and overall total recycling of civilization as it takes up increasing residence in orbit around the earth. and major raw materials not too distant energy-wise from there.

This project needs to have a life of its own, as almost a living entity with its own means of gestation, birth, growing up, wide achievements, settling in, and becoming supplanted by whatever has newly become enabled by its life.

So this vision is developed here to provide knowledge and understanding of its intended purposes, technical functional principles, and intrinsic nature; plans for exploring and implementing the project in the socioeconomic systems existing in the world; some of the ranges of R&D to be explored, the action which can be taken in the present time and near future so as to implement it quickly enough to have the necessary continuing viable energy bioresources and gusto needed for success; construction methods and materials to be evaluated for the applications and operating environments, the overall encompassing project anchored in the distant future’s optimum usage; the merging into the existing earth ecosystem and thereby harmonious expansion of the earth surface ecosystem into nearby high earth orbit, and the establishment of the project as a living entity in itself.

So, thank you for coming in here to explore with me this vision, so different from the present-day vision of progress. May you provide your own portion of the project, utilizing your unique wisdom.

References:

Cline, James E. D., "Kinetically Supported Transportation Structures" Space 2000 Conference proceedings, published by ASCE, 2000.


J E D Cline: Revised 2001 11 17

Copyright © 2001 by J E D Cline