GeSp953

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Number: 953 Name: EARTHBOUND KESTS

Address: J.E.D.CLINE1 Date: 890813

Approximate # of bytes: 6300

Number of Accesses: 15 Library: 3

Description:

The urgent application of KESTS

(Kinetic Energy Supported Transporetation

Structures) is to provide the near-

future efficient high-capacity link

from earth surface to GEO, where a

15 billion person space colony

could be then built. However,

to counter current public apathy, technology development

can be done first for surface applications

providing bridge and commute functions.

Keywords: KESTS,microelevator,transportation

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

EARTHBOUND KESTS

Earth surface applications of Kinetic-Energy-Suported

Transportation Structures

By J. E. D. Cline August 12, 1989

Although the primary application of Kinetic-Energy

Supported Transportation Structures (KESTS) in the near

future would best be to connect earthsurface with

Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) where a vast space colony

would be built to take the environmental load off of the

earth surface, so as to maintain an ever-improving quality

of life, preliminary applications of KESTS may well be to

connect points on the earth surface together.

Ground-to-ground applications would provide the

development of the technology, and supply solid working

experience with KESTS. The technological niches appear to

be in competition with bridges and air commute routes. The

specific forms of KESTS technology actually put into

hardware will control the ultimate range of applications, of

course. Much hinges on the weight/deflection angle ratio

of KESTS stream benders. Will this ratio limit uses to

those using benders as attachment nodes as on an

arch-suppported bridge, or will the ratio be low enough to

provide a flyable reverser, as in the "Microelevator"

concept?

At the present time, work needs to be done in

envisioning potential capabilities and associated

side-effects, such as I am doing. Right now a lot of work

could be done in mathematical analysis of suborbital

mechanics and engineering design, primarily electromagnetics

and materials technology, with electronic servo concepts

readied for use in automatic adjustment due to varying loads

along the length of the KESTS. Modular components need be

somewhat standardized providing a small stream size as is

practical, and providing for bundling many of these small

ones to provide the higher carrying capacity of the

application. Enough technology needs to be developed to

build demonstration functional models for people to look at

and touch, perhaps ride upon. A ride in an amusement park

might quickly get public awareness of some of its

possibilities. in the beginning.

Next a full-scale over-water bridge could be built,

perhaps linking two islands or an island with the mainland,

such as connecting Long Beach with Catalina Island, some 27

miles of water to cross. Early ones will fail, just as in

aircraft and rocket development; the failure modes of KESTS

is likely to be fast and spectacular with the stream mass

being quickly burned up when suddenly having to travel

through the atmosphere without its vacuum shielding, so

early ones might best be built in unpopulated areas. What

must be done to compensate for coriolis forces will be

discovered and proven out. Maintenance procedures and needs

would get worked out. An ongoing creative process of

envisioning, design, analysis, experimening, engineering,

manufacturing, trying out...and back to the envisioning

function again, forms an endless loop ever perfecting the

KESTS to meet real-world needs and resources functionality.

As confidence builds as the KESTS meet the real world

environment ongoing, ever greater projects can be attempted.

Intercity KESTS bridging remote unpopulated areas might

then be built, such as linking a new super airport in the

Palmdale area with Los Angeles, a KESTS connecting Hawaii

with the California coast and with Alaska also. Other

countries would be involved by this time, such as Japan

would find KESTS island hopping quite effective in their

transportation network. With experience of KESTS in high

storm conditions such as hurricanes...assuming their

multiplicity of servos is able to compensate for such heavy

wind loads...would open up possibilities for

transcontinental KESTS transportation. The relative

advantages of high kinetic energy flatter trajectories

would be balanced with the lower velocity high arching

trajectory KESTS. Delivery of materials, such as bringing

glacial water to the deserts of Australia, North Africa, and

the Middle East, opens up another version of KESTS, where

the KESTS primarily provides support for the vacuum tubing,

and the materials being delivered are themselves moving at

suborbital trajectory velocities within the vacuum stream

tubing enclosed in a high velocity hose structure that

unzips at its delivery terminal, disgorging its water cargo,

and then is whirled around along with the KESTS stream for

the return trip to the inlet terminal.

By now hopefully humanity will have acknowledged the

potentials of KESTS, and, with the end in sight, be

investing in protecting its natural resources such as its

wide diversity of lifeforms, genotypes, and have largely

halted the destruction of rainforests and inadvertant

crowding out of lifeforms...currently each week we are

losing one species of lifeform irrevocably forever. These

lifeforms will be needed to restore the earth surface to a

balanced ecology of rich diversity as soon as the primary

human civilization has moved to the GEO Habitat Ring's

resourceful comfort. Those lifeforms, genotypes, will also

be needed in the very closed ecology of the GEO Habitat

Ring, and then later on beyond the near-earth spatial

environment, as we expand out into the solar system...and

perhaps beyond.

It is urgent that this KESTS technology be developed

ASAP, so as to minimize the eventual peak destruction of the

earth ecology by the present human population, prior to

providing the efficient transportation link from

earthsurface sites and the GEO Habitat Ring suburb.

REFERENCES:

"The Launch Loop" by Keith Lofstrom, L-5 NEWS Aug. 1982 pp

8-9.

"Microelevator Vers 2", by J. E. D. Cline, GEnie Spaceport

Library file #581

"Passive Stable KESTS" by J. E. D. Cline, GEnie Spaceport

Library file #880

"GEO TREEHOUSE" by J. E. D. Cline, GEnie Spaceport Library

file #881

"Longtrans 2", by J. E. D. Cline; GEnie Spaceport Library

file #927

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