GeSp689

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Number: 689 Name: SPACE HABITATS AT GEO

Address: J.E.D.CLINE1 Date: 881228

Approximate # of bytes: 8820

Number of Accesses: 12 Library: 3

Description:

A conceptual synthesis toward

near-future realization of a

true spacefaring civilization.

Utilizes dynamically-supported

space elevators or umbilicals,

at Geosynchronous Earth Orbit.

Room for at least 15 billion .

Keywords: GEO,habitat,settlement,elevator,umbilical,SSPS

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

Synthesizing GEO Habitat Ring Umbilical conceptual design

By James Edward David Cline

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

now), or run out of some essential element first.)

We Americans are most comfortable living within totally

re-worked material. Out 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 year

into 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.

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 conceptual 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 spacecraft. 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, ecologically 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 28, 1988 Van Nuys, California

Ref: GEnie Spaceport files #671,655,644,634,629,592,581,

578,563,553, and 475

An Excalator Hi page titled GeSp689 by J E D Cline started on Wednesday, April 2, 2008 5:10:24 PM US/Pacific

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