GeSp881

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Number: 881 Name: GEO TREEHOUSE

Address: J.E.D.CLINE1 Date: 890618

Approximate # of bytes: 26460

Number of Accesses: 17 Library: 3

Description:

Compilation of most of the

material on KESTS (Kinetic-

Energy Supported Transportation Structures)

and their link to GEO (Geosync-

ronous Earth Orbit), where

a ring of space settlements

like Island 1's fill

GEO, comfortortable living

space for at least 15 billion

people; project for our time.

Keywords: KESTS,elevator,GEO,microelevator,settlements,habitats

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

GEOSYNCHRONOUS EARTH ORBIT TREEHOUSE

by J. E. D. Cline SSN#[removed] June 18, 1989

This file describes the conceptual basics of an unusual form

of transportation, applicable to movement of payload

to/from Earth surface and Geosynchronous Earth Orbit. The

component scientific principles are well known; so from the

folowing conceptual basics it is reasonable that a general

purpose technology can be developed by aerospace industries.

Also, some of the ramifications of the actualizations of

such Kinetic-Energy Supported Transportation Structures

(KESTS) will be explored. For example, KESTS being a

pivitol capability for enabling true space

colonization--could be even in our time---which could

provide the room and resources for a massive human

civilization expansion, with the concurrent return of earth

surface to a wholesome, fully alive ecological balance. An

example form of space colonization which is made possible by

the KESTS concepts will be described, which provides

comfortable living for 15 billion people occupying a ring of

Island-1 Stanford Torus's in Geosynchronous Earth Orbit. A

simpler version of a KESTS could be built for lifting

construction materials from the Moon to a high Lunar orbit,

greatly improving efficiency of using Lunar materials for

building most of the space colony ringing Earth in GEO. To

give a gut-level feeling and sense of purpose and adventure

of such a project, the analogy of childhood memories of

helping build a treehouse is applied, bringing out the sense

of participation, adventure, and feeling of high haven

above the ground in the treehouse. The potential ability of

KESTS to move truely massive amounts of materials directly

between Earth surface and GEO radically upgrades the

capacity for true space colonization in our time.

Did you have the experience of helping build a

treehouse with the neighbor kids? With the specific sense

of adventure in climbing the tree, with the instinctive

sense of haven felt while being in the treehouse high above

the ground below you?

From that specific kind of sense of adventurous haven,

I hope then to lead you through the mental creation of an

analogous technology that has the potential of making

possible a continuing expansion of civilization with ever

higher standards of living, while enabling the restoration

of Earth's ecological balanced system of a teeming variety

of lifeforms. Surely these are worthy goals to act as guide

lights in today's planning.

Hopefully a rich use of experiential archtypes, like

the treehouse adventure, will break through the mental

barriers of the fears of the unfamiliar, the unorthodox. For

I will be asking you to consider the risks of a certain

kind of major change of way of life for oneself and loved

ones.Change can be stressful, even change for the better.

Let me now show you a glimpse of the seemingly outrageous

scenario that perhaps can provide this continuing high

level comfortable civilization for a teeming humanity while

taking the load off of Mother Earth's ecological system.

Skipping the many middlepoint scenarios, the treehouse

adventurous haven grows into people building the tree-like

KESTS...Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation

Structures...all the way from the ground up to the Clarke

Belt...GEO, Geosynchronous Earth Orbit...where the treehouse

haven becomes an earth-ringing necklace of space

settlements, each one perhaps like the Island-One Stanford

Torus design, each of which provides home and living fr ten

thousand people. Each loop of this "necklace for Mother

Earth", the vast treehouse haven, holds up to 15 billion

people comfortably along with the agriculture to support

them in their suburb-like environments. With the ground now

no longer needed to build more suburbs, without needing to

slash-and-burn the rainforests for space to grow crops, no

need to cut forests for making newspaper pulp, no need to

find places to dump the mountains of garbage each year, no

need to burn the fossil fuels for daily transportation..the

altruistic of us can become gardeners to help the earth's

ecological system to return to a balanced wholesome

aliveness, abounding with all of the kinds of living

creatures that we haven't crowded out of existence before

civilization moves to the treehouse haven they so

adventurously built.

The treehouse components analogously are:

Treetrunk: The KESTS (Kinetic-Energy Supported

Transportation Structures);

Treeleaves: Satellite Solar Power Stations, receiving

sunlight and using its energy to empower the transportation

process within the treetrunk...KESTS...and provide the

energy for the constructive processes within the system;

Treesap: the flow of materials along and within the

KESTS;

Ground: Earth's surface;

Treehouse Haven: ring of rotating space colonies

filling geosynchronous earth orbit.

The "treetrunk": development of the general concept of

KESTS (Kinetic-Energy Supported Transportation Structures:

Historical background: 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 presented

a radical new approach. 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 some of the

kinetic 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.)

Their concepts pointed the way toward a true high-

efficiency transportation process, Earth surface to space.

Most of the energy in chemical rocketry

is used just to lift the fuel itself; relatively little of

that fuel energy is used to lift payload itself.

Eliminating the fuel used just to lift most of the

fuel, would make the process far more efficient. If a

vehicle is already moving fast enough, say 18,000 mph, as it

leaves earth surface, that would put it into orbit without

lifting fuel just to lift fuel...if our atmosphere were not

in the path, that is. Trying to punch its way through the

air at 18,000 mph would consume its velocity and destroy it

with the heat caused by shoving that much air aside that

fast. Like a meteor burning up. So...let's move the air

aside first, out of the path. Move the vehicle through a

tube which has had all the air pumped out of it, ahead of

time.

A very long tube it would be, and surely very heavy

altogether. How to hold it up? By converting our 18,000

mph vehicle into a steady stream of vehicles, each of which

drags upward a little on the tube as it rises toward space,

the tube can be supported in the earth's gravity field.

Shifting our thinking a little more, convert the vehicles

into just a mass stream moving at the 18,000 mph within the

vacuum inside of the tube, the mass stream supports the tube

by giving up a small part of its velocity, its kinetic

energy, as it flows through the tube. The tube then becomes

a fixed structure, attached to the earth's surface on one

end. This structure could be used to move vehicles along

its outer surface, like an elevator does.

The elevator cars on such an elevator could lift upward

by electromagnetically dragging against the upward stream

of mass within the tube. Low friction tracks, such as

magnetic levitation tracks, would make the process more

efficient. No fuel for this process is needed to be lifted.

The mass stream in the tube travels in a circuit,

returning back and forth between earth surface and somewhere

in space. Ideas are built on ideas; a version proposed by

Keith Lofstrom would cycle from one point on earth surface

upward, across some great distance, then return to surface,

be reversed, go back along the route to the starting point,

all in a continual flow. Expanding on this, Earle Smith

proposed a continuous flow from one point on the earth,

circling out to geophysical earth orbit (GEO), continuing on

around the earth to return to the intiial point on the

earth, again in a continuous stream. Rod Hyde proposed a

version that would essentially go straight up; the stream

would be reversed in direction at its upward end, returning

down alongside the upward part of the stream, back to the

starting point on earth, back and forth between earth and

space.

All these versions are powered by electricity. The mass

stream is pushed along by magnetic fields interacting

between the stream and magnetic fields alongside the tube.

Rod Hyde envisioned the stream as being composed by vast

quantities of berylium disks, each with a magnet attached.

The stream would be powered by electricity, and a large

version consuming as much electricity as a large city, would

be able to lift all the billions of humans on the planet

now, out into space in just two weeks' operating time. Hyde,

Lofstrom and Smith presented these concepts in 1984. Their

structures are very big and expensive, and untried. Putting

such structures up seems a major undertaking with much

risk, even worldwide. However, these structures have the

potential of being able to move the bulk of humanity out

into space. If they had somewhere to go, that is. It would

take a lot of courage to put such structures up, it seems.

Perhaps by reducing the concept to conceptual basics,

we can plan a path from the here & now situation to a real

operational system capable of lifiting people and

construction materials into space. The KESTS,

Kinetic-Energy Supported Transportation Structure, boils

down to the following basics:

A stream of mass spends most of its time in a

trajectory bridging Earth surface and some area in space.

This stream of mass travels withing an atmosphere-

excluding tube while in Earth's atmosphere; some of the

kinetic energy of the mass stream is used to support that

tube.

The kinetic energy of the mass stream in trajectory is

coupled electromagnetically to objects near it, such as the

aforementioned tube, and to payload vehicles riding along

the mass stream's tube.

Thus some of the mass stream's energy is used to power

the payload lifting process.

The mass-stream travels in a closed loop, conserving

the mass and energy within the system. Only the

upward-moving part of the mass stream is used to couple

energy to support the tube and paylad. Thus there must

everywhere be pairs of mass streams, one downward, the other

upward moving.

The air-excluding tube could be merely a skin,

separated from the mass stream by electrostatic/

electromagnetic fields, perhaps using incompressability of

the mass stream to support the tube skin against the

atmospheric pressure and wind loads. Or the tube might need

to itself resist the pressure differential of a hard vacuum

at sea level.

The KESTS could even be very small, say a glass fiber

moving in a carbon-fiber-composite tube perhaps only 10

thousands of an inch in diameter. Such a KESTS could

demonstrate feasability of the concept, provide a seed

system carrying materials for an ever-larger KESTS, and

even deliver useful amounts of glass fiber to the

destination point in space...for example it could deliver

18,000 miles of glass fiber per hour to the construction

site in space, useful amounts of material.

There are two basic configurations of KESTS: one that

forms essentially an orbital ellipse with one apex at the

space destination site, and also contacting the earth

surface. The other configuration essentially goes straight

up and down, using powerful stream reversers at each end.

The mass stream is electrically accellerated, as a

linear motor, initially at earth surface contact terminal,

later powered by SSPS, Solar Satellite Power Stations.

Energy needs to be inputted to the system to power the

lifting of payload and to continually support static loads

such as the tube/skin.

The mass-stream can be composed of discontinuous

packets; or else a springy continuous material. The mass

stream travels slower at its high end, and therefore must be

lenghtwise-compressible to some extent.

There are limits to where these elevators can

go, for they are essentially compression structures,

depending on compressive force to hold them together. Thus,

they would not be able to go beyond the geophysical orbit;

in fact, Hyde's version depends upon earth gravity to

reverse the flow back toward earth surface at its upward

end, thus not able to reach GEO by itself. And anything

getting off these elevators short of GEO would fall back to

earth, fast, unless accellerated adequately first, as in

Lofstrom's Launch Loop versions. GEO, geosynchronous earth

orbit, seems ideally suited for the upward terminal of such

elevators, because GEO is stationary relative to the

earth's surface. Thus one end of the elevator is on the

earth, motionless; the upward end is stationary at GEO.

Anywhere else would require relative orbital motion; the

connection between elevator and upward orbital terminal then

would become high-velocity, requiring complex energy

exchanges as payload moves between them. At GEO, payload

directly connects to the orbital terminal. Hyde's version

of the space elevator might use a long tether balanced

across GEO, the tether's downward end reaching the top of

the elevator, so as to span the remaining distance to GEO.

Here at GEO we can build space colonies, space habitats

or settlements. If we build the wheel-shaped Island One

Stanford Torus space settlement design envisioned by NASA in

1975 (ref. NASA SP-413,although for use at L-5 then), there

is room for 1,475,000 of these wheels, if strung together

like pearls on a necklace for mother earth, circling the

earth above the equator, 5 earth radii above the planet's

surface.

The space habitats each provide comfortable near

self-sufficiency for 10,000 people each, as designed by the

1975 summer faculty fellowship program in engineering

systems design (ref NASA SP-413). These habitats rotate to

provide artificial gravity and are passively shielded. In

geosynchronous orbit, they sit stationary relative to the

Earth's surface. There is room in the first string of them

in GEO for 1476000 of them, providing a comfortable limit

population of 15 billion people...room enough for everyone

now on Earth and for whales, elephants, redwood trees, and

mosquitoes too.

We could, for example, use a continuous

coaxial string of "Island One" space habitats, or a "banded

Torus" stretching all way around GEO.

Each Island One Stanford Torus space habitat provides

space for housing, agriculture, community activities, and

light industry within a 130 m (426.5 ft) diameter tube bent

into a wheel 1800 m (5906 ft) in diameter. Passive shielding

is 6 feet thick on a side, and with 150 feet for sunlight

input, each habitat or layer uses up 590 feet of GEO. The

circumference of GEO for one layer of these habitat sections

is pi * diameter; diameter is the radius of Earth 3950

miles plus geosynchronous orbital altitude of 22300 miles,

times 2, equals 52500miles; times pi equals 165000 miles,

which multiplied by 5280 ft/mile, gives 870850000 feet. Each

habitat layer uses up 590 feet apiece, so that is room for

1476000 Island Ones. Since each habitat layer comfortably

houses 10,000 people, the comfortable population limit for

this first layer is 1476000 * 10,000 people, or 1.48E10

people, or about 15 billion people, 4 or 5 times the whole

Earth's present population. Plenty of room!

Each umbilical elevator is connecting a point on the

Earth's surface to a point in space that orbits stationary

relative to the equator, connecting with a set of tubes that

carry construction materials, blueprint information, and

the construction's byproducts. The umbilical transmission

line provides the connective path for the flow of energy,

materials,and information between Earth and geosynchronous

Earth orbit (GEO). The transmission line consists of

bender-accellerator-joints linked by

trajectory-stream-tubes, where electromagnetically coupled

kinetic energy flows from place to place. It is powered

sometimes from the Earth surface bender-accellerator, and

mostly by engines in space consisting of solar energy

converted (either by huge solar cell arrays, or by

helium-brayton cycle solar-electric powerplants) into

electric power which is used to electromagnetically

accelerate the kinetic energy storage stream within the

umbilical-like KESTS.

Referring back to the 1975 design for the Stanford

Torus habitat for 10,000 people apiece, there are some

significant changes required for this application. The

original design required all of the structure to be built of

Lunar aluminum, requiring Lunar development first. In the

currently proposed scenario, the lifting of large amounts of

payload economically from the Earth, the first several of

these space habitats can be built from Earth instead of

waiting for development of Lunar or asteroidal resource

availability. The direct connection from GEO to Earth also

means more room for experimentation with the habitat system.

Changes will have to be made in the method of getting solar

light into the habitat for the agricultural areas: (each

torus is divided into 6 equal sections, configured as 3

residential sections separated by 3 agricultural sections.

The agricultural sections each contain some 20,000 chickens,

10,000 rabbits, 500 cattle, and 90,000 fish. The fishwater

irrigates the fields of corn, sorghum, soy beans, rice

alfalfa wheat and vegetables, on the tiers attached to the

sides of the 130 meter tube, per the original design by the

1975 engineering study group. It required, for each torus,

10,000,000 tons of rubble for the passive shield, 156,000

tons for the torus shell, and 48,000 tons for the glass

solars.) Lunar and asteroidal resources can be started to be

developed after the first habitats are built from Earth

resources, and would be used for the great majority of the

rest of the space habitat GEO string. The spring-shaped or

banded-torus structure could eventually grow to occupy GEO

entirely around the Earth. Need umbilicals built from every

nation up to it, to speed up completion and guarantee

international occupancy. Standardization in the

endless-torus is necessary, so that when one section grows

to meet with an adjacent section, the two will join together

smoothly. Rail tracks the entire length of it, so as to

provide direct internal transportation throughout the living

area. Need airlocks periodically along it for use in case

of severe damage to some place, that causes loss of internal

pressurization. Question: should living area be alloted

to the various nations in proportion to existing population,

land area, overpopulation urgency, or percent of

contribution to the creation of this gigantic space

settlement?

The economic impact of this endeavor is impressive.

Virtually every industry on earth will need to be adapted to

function in the space habitat environment. There needs to

be a higher ratio of technologically-skilled people to take

on the responsibilities of creating and maintaining

self-sufficient closed ecology multi-lifeform habitats. The

habitats are essentially closed ecological zones, so the

knowledge learned in their development and operation will be

useful during the restoration of the Earth after most of

civilization has moved off-planet.

It would be well for there to be many such elevators

connecting earth to this GEO habitat ring, perhaps each

nation would have at least one elevator. The initial

Stanford Torii would be built from materials lifted up from

the earth, along with the robotic machinery to continually

build more of these habits.

Once there are these space settlements up there, a few

at least, with 10,000 people each, the picture of space will

look different. Building spacecraft up there, it will be

relatively easy to return to the moon, from where we will

get most of the structural raw materials for most of the

Stanford Torus habitats to be built in GEO. Trips out to

get asteroids for more material would become as commonplace

as airplanes now land and takeoff at airports. Water and

other valuable chemicals might come from the moons of the

outer planets, if we choose not to take the water from earth

glaciers instead, to water the agricultural areas in the

space habitats.

Electrical power to run the space habitats comes from

solar power stations, designed in the '60's. The same

technology might well be used alongside each of the space

elevator structures, supplying power to operate the

elevators, instead of using energy from earth. Indeed, the

solar power satellites could put extra energy into

accellerating the elevator mass streams in the downward

direction, which could be drawn off from the stream's

kinetic energy at the earth surface contact sites, to supply

electrical power to power whatever human civilization

remains on the planetary surface. However, hopefully

humanity will be responsible enough to have people only on

earth surface to restore the planetary ecology, and run

vacation resorts for GEO ring residents.

This overall design of kinetically-supported space

elevators linking a ring of space habitats located at GEO,

all powered by solar power station technology, and with

transportation materials link from the ring to the moon and

elsewhere in space, seems cohesive. Thus it is due further

design work.

References:

GEnie Spaceport Library files:

475 Space inspiration 553 Power + Transportation

563 Energy/Transport

578 Microelevator Vers 1

581 Microelevator Vers.2

592 Microelevator Import

629 GEO's Umbilical

634 Conceptual Synthesis

644 Elevator 3

655 Space Ad

671

689 Space Habitats at GEO

690 GEO Habitat Umbilical 2

747 Hwy to Earth GEO Ring

819 High Suburbia Commute

880 Passive Stable KESTS

Also see: "The Texas and Universe Railroad" By Earle Smith,

L-5 NEWS, Nov.85 pp9-11.

"Space Settlements, A Design Study" NASA SP-413, 1977

J. E. D. Cline. Permission is granted for material to be

distributed without restriction, provided credit is given to

GEnie, SPACEPORT, and J.E.D.Cline.

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