GeSp4969

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Number: 4969 Name: 8TOGO

Address: J.E.D.CLINE1 Date: 940710

Approximate # of bytes: 20284

Number of Accesses: 3 Library: 7

Description:

The possibility of mass migration of humanity into near-earth orbital

habitats is made possible by the concept of kinetically- supported

transportation structures. Such structures could carry millions of

people daily to and from rings of space habitats in low earth orbit

and especially in the Clarke Belt or GEO. Contrast is made to other

overpopulation measures expected otherwise.

Keywords:

KESTS,habitat,mooncable,launchloop,bridge,transportation,SP413,

overpopulation,rainforests

---------------------------------

8togo

By J. E. D. "JED/Dave" Cline 940711 Canoga Park, CA

Does technology have the responsibility for creating options for

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?

Civilization has been experiencing great success, and many 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 life of 55 square feet of

Amazon 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 home of the free. Ranks of environmental activatists declare

Population Control is the answer to increasing numbers of humans on

planet Earth.

"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.

This has often happened before. No doubt when the first cave man

family outgrew the cave, similar concepts were felt, expressed 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.

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 life

web 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.

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.

(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 write

this 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 a

planetfull of people to get up and shoulder this task. However, I can

paint a picture and wave it at them, as a hobby.)

(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 harrassment, more intrusions into my tiny

earthquake-damaged bachelor's apartment, for daring to suggest rocking

the boat.)

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 tall tree

that 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 fate

of 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?

Civilization expands by taking the raw materials of adjacent space and

converting it into useable living space. In primitive times, and also

in 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 which does not rampage destructively over neighbor

lifeforms.

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 orbital zones, even the

neighboring 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 structures

will 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.

PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT

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.

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

constant physical linkage with many earth surface points. The general

sequence 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 concurrently the beginnings of the key

transportation 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 10,000-person Island One mass-shielded design originally designed

for 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 civilization.

The opportunities for business in this space program are vast.

A PRIMER ON KINETIC STRUCTURES

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.

Consider the immense kinetic energy of a massive pair of orbital

velocity mass streams, flowing in vacuum, within channels along the

circulating 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 each time

around the loop.

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.

A SEQUENCE OF PROJECTS FROM THE PRESENT TO BASIC CLARKE 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:

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. Instead, the Clarke Belt City is chosen as a way

to preserve an expanding human civilization population in nearly

earthlike artificially constructed space habitat environments, while

also preserving and healing the Earth surface ecosystem.

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

the ground in the form of pre-fitted modules linked in a circle. The

design 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".)

3. Use these unmanned wet-launched prefitted modules to build

artificial 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)

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 as

aluminum 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-direction

materials 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 #927 "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")

6. Fabrication of a kinetic bridge to low earth orbit. Using this

bridge, install a complete ring around the earth in orbit at the peak

altitude 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 kinetic-energy supported bridge from

Earth 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.)

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 features as

possible. 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, including 45 square yards per person for residential

and 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")

8. Long term electrical power to support the kinetic energy bridges

needs 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 below

synchronous orbit. (Refer to related information on Solar Power

Satellites, as well as files like #2466.)

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.

10. Massive transportation of lunar materials to the Clarke Belt using

lunar stored kinetic energy bridges for the major part of the trip.

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 atmosphere

components, then the interior outfitted in the way things are built on

earth surface by people and machines.

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 lifeforms, our

biological partners in space as well as on land.

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.

An Excalator Hi page titled GeSp4969 by J E D Cline started on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 5:39:50 PM US/Pacific

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