Posted on 10/29/2006 9:14:07 PM PST by SunkenCiv
As pointed out in my recently published paper "Kinetically Strengthened Transportation Structures" in the proceedings of ASCE's Space 2000 and Robotics 2000 conference in Albuquerque NM, we need to start the development of what could be called "Sliding Armature Energy Transfer Technology", using it to centrifugally strengthen and stiffen a masive transportation structure (KESTS) physically connecting the earth's equator with earth's synchronous orbit, then using that transportation system to raise huge solar-electric power satellites up to there, to power that transportation sytem thereafter and to provide electric power to the world's electric power utility grids, thus enabling the preservation of oil reserves to be kept for petrochemical resources instead of burning them to merely provide energy.
When this massive transportation and electric power system is in place, the way is open to enable people to commute to new real estate which can then be built in the Clarke Belt, much as were the luxurious 10,000-person space settlements originaly designed in detail in the mid-1970's for construction at the L-5 site in space. There is room for over a million of these 10,000-person luxurious earth-surface-like space habitats in the Clarke Belt, 20,300 miles above the equator, comfortable room for more people there than are now on our whole planet, along with their built-in agricultural and industrial base, with material resources of both the earth surface and lunar / asteroidal resources within relatively easy reach from there.
(Excerpt) Read more at home.earthlink.net ...
not the same Jim Cline, although I found that one (above) by looking for this one:
The Big Idea That Won't Die
Ottawa Citizen | Monday, October 23, 2006 | Jim Cline
Posted on 10/30/2006 12:01:35 AM EST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1728303/posts
not surprisingly, his link had gone bad; found his paper for sale here:
Kinetically Strengthened Transportation Structures
by James Edward David Cline
http://www.pubs.asce.org/WWWdisplay.cgi?0000573
The Space Elevator will never happen : LIGHTNING : both the 400,000V potential difference(average flow 1800A worldwide)and the Debye effect(reactive ions in orbit). If there is even a HINT that these science fair teeny boppers will short out that spherical capacitor and drastically change our biosphere(no 50V/meter electropotential gradient)with their elevator cable, the cuffs will be on them pronto........Yes, one pound to LEO runs about $20,000 on the shuttle. The actual energy value(mv^2/2 + mgh)of one pound in LEO is 4 KWH, or about 40 cents @ 10 cents/KWH. Arthur Clarke began to expound on that during an Apollo launch when Jules Bergman(remember him?)cut him off like a meat cleaver, NASA doesn't want you know how BIG their markup is : $20,000 for 40 cents worth of work......Thus it was that in the 1980's, during the salad days for SDI, a small slice of the aerospace community proposed EMSL : ElectroMagnetic Space Launch : shooting artillery projectiles into LEO at some 10% efficiency($4/#). The best idea, in my opinion, was the quenched superconducting ring-cannon(about 300 ft long to achieve 5 mps injection velocity). The studies were quite extensive, it looked very feasible, but nasa squelched it : it was too good of an idea which meant the ROCKET SCIENTISTS might have been out of a job. It's called VESTED INTERESTS, and no VESTED INTEREST ever funds its competitor...
Nope, not a space elevator (although he may discuss that on his long, long page). Space elevators won't work, and it hasn't to do with material strength, it just can't be deployed and/or stay put. Not too sure about the lightning problem "timer" mentioned, that might be fun to watch (from a safe distance). ;')
By my calculations 5 miles a sec in 300 feet means an acceleration of 36000 G's. Sounds like you need a much longer tube if your not going to crush your payload into a pandcake!
During the component testing phase in the 1980s they tested everything that would go into the projectile up to 100,000 g's; only a delicate clock was fractured/damaged. As you may know, Gerard O'Neil at MIT did extensive work on the mass driver, getting short acceleration bursts at about 1,000,000 g's and finding out that ATTRACTION works much better at keeping the sabot/projectile centered than REPULSION. That then led to the idea of the quenched superconducting rings-concept : you turn each ring off, just ahead of the sabot-ring, with a lasar pulse. The only possible technical problem might be an AC current if the lasar pulse isn't precisely timed. Other than that though, there are no TECHNICAL problems, only NASA problems. There is of course a vacuum within and thus some 15 film-divided chambers at the top(1 psi differences)so that they roll to the next frame, like advancing camera film, when the sabot/projectile punches thru. The projectile nose has lithium pores, or cast-in Li beads, for ablation heating during the 2-3 seconds until the tropopause. We had it all worked out TECHNICALLY, VESTED INTERESTS at NASA shot EMSL, the freight train to LEO at $4/$....down....
Except for the little matter of acceleration and what it does to the delicate payload (e.g., astronauts). Anything but pig iron is probably too fragile to launch. That and Congressmen.
--Boris
Let me bring you up to speed as to EMSL. This is the freight train to space, no flesh is accelerated up to 100,000 g's, only solids/liquids are in the projectiles(minimum size = 10 kg). Most of the payload is cryogenically frozen WATER : H2O for drinking, washing, steam engines, H2+O2 hydrolysis, ice blocks for solar flare protection, hydroponics, etc. We had it all worked out. With a system efficiency in the range of 10%($4/#)to 1%($40/#)you put up hundreds of shuttle loads in LEO/year at a tiny fraction of the cost of the lumbering 3g rocket.....But sadly, NASA rocket scientists didn't want to be shown up as rocket scientist IDIOTS, and Reagan's Star Wars/evil empire strategy worked, the USSR collapsed, and thus no need for the expense of SDI. Thus the EMSL concept died and now CHINA is taking the lead in space development. Sigh, it always takes a swift knee to the crotch to wake america up(sputnik)(911)( ).....doesn't it?
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