Looking back across 10 years of space

Recently I ran across a file I wrote in 1995, ten years ago, when i had just gotten my first formal technical paper presented and published, and was readying to go on to similarly communicate to the world re my kinetic structure transportation concepts. I copy the file below, but first, what caused the apathy evident in the lack of change, as of ten years later? I think it has to do with egos and business interests; yet also, that it may suggest "future shock" in an already overloaded mental state: too much change to cope with. That it could make the future so very much easier, does not address today's needs for stability.

Here is that file:

6space96.txt Rough Draft of Abstract, 500 words max
950813 JEDCline

"Segmental Wet-Launch of a Prefab Toroidal Space Habitat: Toward an Aggressive Space Colonization Option for the Near Future"

by James Edward David Cline e-mail: j.e.d.cline1@genie.geis.com Independent Researcher

The possibility of building a true, fully functional space settlement in the near future is improved if there is a way to build it cheaply, safely, and with the potential of being an obviously significant step toward solving many of humanity's impending problems. Such a way is found by backtracking over technological ground which was bypassed in the heat of the race to a different goal, and re-assembling the technological building blocks toward the subject goal. The proving-out of the long accepted concept of a nearly self-sufficient, nearly earth-normal interior space habitat is a necessary milestone toward large-scale expansion of human civilization off-planet; three such scenarios are itemized below. A one-centrepetal-g-interior rotating toroid of 1 mile diameter, research home for 1,000 people, could be built of segments consisting of pre-assembled modules each 100 feet long and 30 feet in diameter. Before launch of the modular prefab segments, the entire set of segments would be tested linked in the toroidal configuration while yet on the ground to initially optimize the myriad interacting systems of electromechanical and living natures. Through designing each as a pre-assembled habitat module which serves as its own fuel tank during launch, most of the airframe and tankage penalty is eliminated. The engines used during the launch of the module could be built into just enough airframe to glide them back to the launch site after each module's launch; the flight and docking would all be teleoperated from the ground. A strap-on airbreathing booster module would also return after each launch. These prefabricated segments could be emplaced on site in LEO docked end-to-end in the spoked wheel configuration, thusly built prior to the arrival of the first human presence there so as to greatly lower cost and increase safety. Three forms of large-scale potential near-future space colonization include (1) the original L4 and L5 locations of habitats built largely of lunar materials, requiring a strong lunar infrastructure first; (2) conversion of near-earth asteroid material into space habitats aggregating in internal area equal to 1,000 times that of the Earth's surface, needs to be done by highly sophisticated robotics or by human presence at high initial risk; and (3) a scenario utilizing active kinetic structures continuously linking surface equatorial sites with the synchronous Clarke Belt, where millions of the subject space settlements could be built, housing tens of billions of people with their agriculture and light industry, including any or all of the present surface population. All of these scenarios hinge on the functionality of the near-earth-normal-interior space habitat concept, provable by this project.

Over To

So the November 30 day project time is up, that phase over. This entry is to wrap it up, and say that these writings have been continued, put into normal reading sequence (by changing the dates on the entries to enable that sequence, thus false dates mostly) and so the result, still a Work In Progress, yet much further along than in this blog, can be found at: http://novelwayproto.blogspot.com

Cheers,
Jim Cline
December 18, 2004

Chapter 16: Exodus and the Pirates

outline: (This is from the incomplete sci fi I've been writing, titled "Spacetrains are for peacetime" on my www.kestsgeo.com website) Despite efforts to bring in off-planet resources to offset past ecosystem errors of civilization, the earth surface ecosystem clearly is going down. Decision is made to move most of humanity temporarily into the Clarke Belt Ring, which has plenty of room for everyone on the earth; Stanford Torus cities built mostly of lunar and asteroidal resources. The plan is to bring the worldwide ecosystem back into balance using whatever has to be done, once people are off the planet for the duration. However, a glitch happens, and a group of men take over just as most of the people have gone to orbit cities. The pirates claim earth is theirs, and begin a war with the Clarke Belt people, and block the restoration of the ecosystem in their power-crazed greed.

Chapter 15: Establishing Mars Colonies

The smaller version of the Stanford Torus would be built first, in one of the high spaceports in GEO, to be used to go to Mars. It would be put in orbit there as base for permanent presence in the Mars system, enabling industrial and hospital full resources out there to ensure success of the Mars expedition, no mere adventure after all, there for real and to stay.

Although Boeing's earlier mandate to provide a Mars expedition in the 2024 time frame, using massive rocket launches from the Earth's surface, was obsoleted by KESTS to GEO, they were able to keep aerospace personnel employed until the high spaceports in GEO were built and operational, and then reaction engine technology resumed with gusto, no atmosphere to require compromise in nozzle design, only 9% of the Earth's gravitational well remained to climb from GEO; the Sun's field then becoming the primary energy sink for commerce to the planets beyond the Earth. The energy once needed to lift the Space Shuttle from the ground to only Low Earth Orbit, could now move a spacecraft the size of a battlecruiser off from GEO to the Moon and beyond. Although spacecraft designers still needed to sometimes create small robotic mission spacecraft, at other times the size restrictions had so vanished that other spacecraft design engineer creations rivaled those of WWII shipyards, vast new life into the field.

Mankind's visions turned away from squabbles with their international kindred for land and resources, and instead became fascinated with the spread of life throughout the Solar System.

The study of biodiverse living systems needed for long term sustainable life in the GEO habitat rings and forming harmonious living systems on the Moon and Mars and beyond, was able to guide the restoration of the wonderfully biodiverse balanced ecosystem of the Earth surface herself, as civilization accepted the responsibility for the well-being of the planet-wide living system upon which it had previously been merely Predator Supreme.

Chapter 14: GEO Stanford Torus Finally; Mars Too

(continuing outline of chapters, timeline divergent at 1973)

With the KESTS to GEO having finished with building initial Satellite Solar Power Plants in GEO, and basic Total Recycling plants up and running there, by 2010, the huge transportation capacity was turned to building space colonies in GEO and enabling commute there equivalent to conventional subway commute systems capacity back in the 1990's; and for outfitting a solid expedition to Mars.

The passively shielded Stanford Torus design of the 1976 era seemed now constructable in GEO from earth surface resources, allowing development R&D before lunar and asteroidal resources fully opened up. Although those resources would be needed to build large numbers of the 10,000-person each space cities, complete with sustaining agriculture. One ring in GEO of such cities would be nice living room for 15 billion people., and the KESTS could provide the push, referenced to the Earth, to keep the ring from collapsing from orbital degradation in the distant future too.

A smaller version of the Stanford Torus would be built first, in the high spaceports of GEO, to be used to go to Mars, to be put in orbit there as base for permanent presence in the Mars system, enabling industrial and hospital full resources out there to ensure success of the Mars expedition, no mere adventure after all, there for real and to stay.

Chapter 13: Deserts and Rainforests Bloom

(continuing with outlining chapter technical focus outlines)

With the oil countries restoring their ecosystems by biodegrading the oil and using SSPS electric power to bring purified water to the deserts, the rainforest countries also began to choose to preserve what remained of their precious ecosystems, now that abundant electric power was there for them too, from space resources.

The bacteria which had once threatened WWII aviation by growing within aircraft fuel tanks, they now were employed to pre-digest the crude oil pumped up from below the desert floors, producing biomass able to slowly restore the barren deserts to abundant life, plenty of sunlight for photosynthesis, and water purified and transported to the deserts from the sea, powered by electricity from the GEO Satellite Solar Power Plants.

New fields of college degrees ranged from KESTS transportation technology research focused, to the technologies required to re-plant the edges of what remained of the rainforests of the world, tenderly caring for that growth, and knowledgably using oil-derived biomass and purified distributed seawater to transmute deserts into farmlands and gardens.

Chapter 12: New Uses for Petrochemicals

With the slump in demand for fossil fuel oils, the Middle Eastern nations, which had a huge bank savings from past decades of sale of oil to other countries, started a research project in their deserts.

Bacteria had been found in the fuel tanks of aircraft in WWII, which lived on the gasoline; these bacteria were now utilized and selected to munch oil direct from the oil wells, and convert the material into organics edible by cattle.

Richly supplied by biomaterials, the energy-abundant deserts became new farmlands, and using abundant inexpensive electrical power delivered from the space powerplants, sea water was purified and pumped to water those farms, growing into vast oasis and popular vacation spots, where war had once raged over mere oil.

Chapter 11: Building Up

By 2000, the space access structure had been expanded until it had been able to lift construction materials so that Satellite Solar Power Plants had replaced half of the previously fossil fueled electrical sources.

The structure, now called a Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure, began to lift materials for test systems for a new kind of use of space in GEO: taking analogy to early types of Mass Spectrometers that sorted out plasma components according to their mass-charge ratio as they bent around a magnetic pole at constant velocity, large scale versions were built in GEO. Materials toxic to the Earth environment were brought up there along the KESTS to the Total Recycling Plants, where focused solar energy turned the material into a plasma, then set to constant velocity, arched past a magnet and was collected in buckets place where mass-charge ratio tossed the elemental particles thusly purified, to be used again in manufacturing. Whole computers were recyclable by this technique, otherwise their materials entropy was too great to recycle on the ground.

Chapter 10: Looking Up to Space

In 1988 the beginnings of an application of the Pull-Band technology's centrifugal force structural support capability was envisioned being developed to extend entirely around the planet, along an Orbital Transfer Trajectory shape extending from the equatorial surface around the planet up to GeoStationary Earth Orbit, 20,300 miles above the equator on above the opposite side of the planet. Initial purpose was to lift construction materials to build the 1960's-envisioned Satellite Solar Power Stations, finally, direct access to power of the Sun up there, converted to beam down to Rectennas on the ground, to be converted and sent to commercial power grids to every country choosing the clean energy source. The idea began to flesh itself out, and NovelWay Prototype shop was enlisted to create the technology for the energy supported structure that would lift vehicles along itself up and down between ground and GEO.

Since the pull-band technology used magnetic bearings, electromagnetic drag coupling to vehicles, and centrifugal force to arch over obstacles, it was relatively simple to extend it for the space access task.

Convergence of nanomachine development and micromachine advances, enabled such pull-band tubeways built of a few tens of millimeters diameter, so a warehouse sized structure could house the entire structure coiled on the ground, ready for a dynamic lifting through reaction principles. It took many tries before it was finally linked into place, a seed structure upon which ever larger capacity could be built.

Chapter 9: Faster pull-bands

The NovelWay Prototype Shop licensed out the pull-cable and Pull-Band commute technology for only a token fee, figuring the faster the system could get Los Angeles up and in business again, so equally would their regular business get going again.

Their reputation grew as creative experts on moving things around by distributing energy via high spoeed moving cables and bands. Their innovation extended into technologies for coupling that high velocity movement to move along much slower objects and vehicles. As the Pull-band commute system expanded, increasing the number of users, the need to deliver much higher energy to the overall system at first involved stronger cables and bands, then high speed became necessary, the kinetic energy stored in the moving bands increased as the square of the velocity, so the same band at three times the volocity could deliver nine times the amount of energy to the movement of people and goods.

Next, magnets attached to the moving bands enabled electrodynamic drag to pull vehicles along without mechanical roller contact with the "graspers."

Permanent magnetic levitation bearings next allowed the magnetic bands to slide along without mechanical contact to anything, enabling higher velocities and efficiencies; the bands were broken up into short segments and the number of them launched down a pathway was in proportion to the system energy demand ongoing, especially useful along hundred-mile straightaways.

The curves of the structure soon required strengthening due to the high centrifugal forces of the high velocity band segment aggragate mass changing direction; then that property was utilized deliberately in the vertical plane to arch the structure over obstacles and canyons.

With mechanical contact elliminated, wear dropped, and reliability was stressed in R&D for awhile, eventually the pathway of the segmented "bands" was enclosed in a hard vacuum, enabling electromagnetic energy coupling through the non-conducting tubing through which they traveled at ever higher velocities, energy losses now less than equivalent long distance electric power transmission wires.

Chapter 8: Toboganning

In 1985 the first tent-tube enclosed thruway between Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay area was installed, one direction per tube, a single stream of pulled vehicles so fast that they were lifted by air cushion, wheels no longer in contact with the ground, whizzing along at several hundred miles per hour, upper air column moving along with them as they tobogganed along down the environmentally isolating tube.

Personalizing one's Pull-band car became an art. Its external shape and interface to the Pull-band system was standardized along with total maximum weight of occupied vehicle; otherwise, the personal vehicles were modified as one pleased. The seat would be up for leaving room to haul groceries and a child or two; would recline for relaxed sleeping during long commutes. Artwork often adorned exterior surfaces, and artists gained a new profession, hand painting the Pull-band cars, some owners likely to change their art design as often as their wardrobe styles.

By 1995, Los Angeles had recovered economically enough to begin construction of a light rail system connecting downtown with Long Beach, North Hollywood, Pasadena and Santa Monica. Those light rail trains mostly pulled platforms where Pull-band cars would be carried for the trips, although some seat cars were available for people on foot.

Chapter 7: Merging transportation

Chapter 7:

Winter of 1975 (of this storyline starting with a "what-if" in about 1973) found Greater Los Angeles waking up, employees getting to work and grocery store by the towed scooters and roller skates, and had become new manufacturing industries. Department of Transportation had insisted the pull-cable system be harmonious with the existing bus system, so the cable system was confined to residential areas and surface streets, and was shut down twice a day for an hour while delivery trucks accessed residential areas.

The next evolutionary change, that to include home-garaged streamlined minimal-engined vehicles, was required to also be integrated into the existing vestiges of gasoline powered vehicles: car carriers originally carrying nine new cars, now carried thirty of the pull-band cars, along express routes between downtown and the suburbs. The railroad modified train boxcars to carry the pull-band vehicles, and featured a restroom and snack bar for each. By 1980 Detroit had bought into Pull-Band commute technology, Los Angeles being unable to manufacture the new vehicles fast enough for the whole nation, especially since they were exporting them to the Far East while those countries also built up their own manufacturing capability.

Ethanol powered external combustion flash boiler engines began to replace the recycled automobile engines which had been keeping the system running most places up until them. Thin bands had long ago replaced the round cables, and higher-speed bands circulated towoard the center of streets. The Pull-Band had built-in gripper acceleration locators along them, and the entire pull-band coordinated so gaps would allow cross trraffic to pass through without thought.

Executives had Pull-band extensions installed spiraling around taller buildings, delivering their management personnel direct to each one's office, their personal car parked just outside.

Chapter 6: Pulling Rollerskaters

Winter of 1975 found John and Gerardo had finished assembling the prototype system past the front of Gerardo's house in San Fernando Valley, a cable installed along pullys and idler wheels, one cable around each nearby residential block, and kept moving by an engine pulled out of one of the cars abandoned where they had finally run out of gas in the street, half a year ago. The pull-along scooters with seats and carrying case were not yet ready for it, getting parts was very slow; so this test was to be done by using roller skates, heavy gloves and a pair of long grabber poles held by hand.

Several very skeptical members of the City Council were there to watch. The four converted automobile engines were started up, their throttles set for constant speed despite varying load, reminiscent of the original Watts steam engine governor mechanism.

Marsha insisted on being the demonstrator, she would not miss the chance for anything; besides, her cute physique would perhaps distract attention from the inevitable glitches happening in any prototype test.

She stepped out of the house, with her roller skates already on, skated down to the cable which was now continuousy running past along the street in front of the houses on the block. She skated under the cable, turned to face the direction the cable was moving, reached up with one of the pair of yard-long grasping sticks and slowly increased the grasping pressure on the cable with it, the cable accelerating her up to its speed, and down the street she went rolling along on her skates effortlessly, pulled by the cable.

A couple of minutes later she re-appeared, having gone all the way around the block; now approached the street intersection corner shared with the other three neighboring block-encircling cables. Just as the cable was to bend around the corner pulley, she let go with the grasping stick, coasted across the street intersection, and with a bit of unpracticed effort she managed to re-attach the grasping stick to the next block’s cable, proceeding on down the street, intersection passed.

Gerardo explained that this could be expanded block by block all the way to downtown Los Angeles and beyond, a way to start getting at least the somewhat more athletic people back to work. And the roller skates soon would be supplemented by the pull-along scooters with seat and carrying case, for use by most of the rest of the commuters. And he continued to explain that as the workforce began to ramp up the available goods, a lightweight streamlined home-garaged type vehicle would replace the scooters, complete with automatic graspers and an automatic routing grasper interchange system coordinated to avoid collisions between vehicles crossing intersections. And that the commute system would be able to continue to evolve to far beyond that.

Marsha re-appeared coming down the far end of one of the blocks, came to a stop in her cute ice skater’s outfit in front of the staring City Council members, and said to them “Well, is this better than what you have got now?”

Chapter 5: The Creative Juices Flow

They began to bicycle to work from her place, and then they could comfort each other weeknights as well as weekends. And their creative juices flowed more and more. “Let’s brainstorm about how the problem can be solved”; no one was apparently preparing for shutdown of the personal automobile use, so they might as well have a go at, if only for creative fun.

Two weeks later, Marsha went to her Dad with a plan in hand, that she and John had produced during their nightly snuggles and daily long walks together, stopping at benches to sketch out quick drawings or to write details of a more complex idea.

Paid projects had come to an end at NovelWay Prototypes, so to keep people busy for part time work there, he agreed to prepare a technology to get Greater Los Angeles back to work ASAP after total stoppage of use of gasoline in privately owned cars. He had three trucks which would still have some fuel alloted, being a business. One was converted for use as a bus for the employee's commute to work; one was converted to deliver food and essentials to homes nearby; and the third was for delivery and installation of a demonstration transportation system’s first phase of usable development. Marsha’s Dad, Gerardo, felt it was his duty to prepare.

Chapter 4: Gas Rationing

John and Marsha shared a few moments over coffee during breaktime at her Dad’s shop, NovelWay Prototypes, Inc; commenting that here it was 1974 and no indication of petroleum wells going dry yet, but they were already having to wait in long gas lines at the gas station, gas being rationed due to oil blockades overseas. Would it never end, already three months and the international conflicts were increasing.

People could do so much more if they would cooperate fully instead of wasting time and resources in conflict.

Already some of their coworkers could come in to work only a couple of days per week, ration of gas not enough for more commutes than that, and the busses were jammed, could not take more people. There was less work to do, too, the whole economy shutting down as increasing numbers of employees couldn’t get to work to do jobs, and electrical power being shut down to the city and homes 25% of each 24 hours, to conserve fuel energy. It wasn’t a time to start a family either, so they chose to delay their formal wedding.

Rumors were that if the trend continued, no gasoline would be available for use in one’s car, leaving only fuel for buses and delivery trucks.