A pro-business way to spend $U$356.5 billion to $2 trillion the only hope for SPS

Maglev launch, Peak Oil, Iwreck & mo' revisited



TIRED ARGUEMENTS

I keep hearing the same themes over and over such as "we can't launch from
sea level because of Earth's dense atmosphere" (or "lower taxes brings
greater economic growth and prosperity so government revenues should be
infinite at a tax rate of zero for that matter") .

As of this posting "we"'ve already sank $U$356.5 billion into a failed
Mideast experiment that should be written off as a lost. The anti-business,
pro-speculation class, pro-monopoly Bureaupublican Reich wingers (at least
they know what they're for) obviously don't understand economics.

http://nationalpriorities.org/index....per&Itemid=182


Or maybe Lawrence Kudlow wants America's supply of snow white to be cut off
before Three-Piece Suit Larry falls off the wagon again?



WHAT WE CAN DO - ALTERNATIVES TO LEO -- SYSTEMS

Enough of the "bad attitudes" (what we can't do); How about what we can do?

A search for "evacuated tube" returned no results. How about a system such
as the following:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...cuated+tube%22


or even Josh Storrs Hall's Space Pier:

http://discuss.foresight.org/~josh/t...struction.html



WHAT WE CAN DO - ALTERNATIVES TO LEO - SYSTEMS - MOST PRACTICAL OPTIONS

I think that using an evacuated tube and placing as much of the tube at or
near sea level as possible would be cheaper than the pier.

I like JP Aerospace's idea too -- if they can make it work. Unfortunately,
they aren't even telling us what their propulsion system is.

http://www.jpaerospace.com/


Another idea, make use of helium to support a portion of the pier or
evacuated tube system.

Where towers are needed, perhaps they can be used for other purposes
(telescopes, communications, solar chimneys, replace weather balloons, etc.)

http://www.enviromission.com.au/
http://vortexengine.ca/


If we are going to start on the ground and eject at 70,000 ft. to 100 km
(approx. 328,000 ft), why stop at orbital speeds? When the payloads reach
the climb phase should it already be at orbital speed? This may be hazardous
if power goes out or other failures occur.

There seems to be a problem with the StarTram analysis (although the problem
may be I skimmed instead of reading which would require engineering
expertise a BBA isn't likely to have). If an object comes out of the tube
merely at orbital velocity, wouldn't it be necessary to use fuel to get to a
decent altitude. Then there is the drag along the way. Perhaps the air in
front can be ionized into a plasma (an idea proposed by NASA as part of its
own blimp-to-orbit idea) to reduce drag. If anyone can find a link to an
online resource on this, it would be appreciated.


WHAT WE CAN DO - ALTERNATIVES TO LEO - SYSTEMS -- MATERIALS

Josh Hall mentioned diamond, why not more practical materials such as carbon
fiber/epoxy or a pressurized shell of PBO fiber?

http://www.google.com/search?num=100...rized+shell%22



WHAT WE CAN DO - ALTERNATIVES TO LEO - SYSTEMS - COST ESTIMATES

I find the cost estimates a bit difficult to believe. I would think that
even the StarTram would end up costing $600 billion. If done by such
state-chartered bureaucracies as Helliburton they will probably overcharge
us by $6 trillion and waltz off with $5.4 trillion plus the reasonable
profit already included in the $600 billion.



WHAT WE CAN DO - ALTERNATIVES TO LEO - SYSTEMS - NECESSITY OF CONSTRUCTION

With cheap access to space it would be easy to launch the infrastructure to
mine NEAs (Near Earth Asteroids), the Moon, other moons (Deimos and Phobos)
and crank out solar furnaces which could be attached to space stations with
elevators or rotating tethers (to provide an additional boost to objects
launched into orbit from the tube/pier).



WHAT WE CAN DO - NECESSARY CONPLIMENTARY CHANGES ON EARTH

It should be possible to convert to an electric economy. Heat homes with
"geothermal" electric and buildings with solar. Perhaps we can put magnetic
induction systems in the most heavily traveled sections of roadways,
electrify rail lines, and build grade-separated (elevated) PRT (personal
rapid transit) systems to dramatically reduce the need for hydrocarbon
fuels. As for fuel cells, we'd probably need to go into space anyway to get
the platinum needed to build them (not to mention that to get hydrogen from
water one must put energy into the water).



WHAT WE CAN DO - CONPLIMENTARY LEO TO PLANETS PROPULSION SYSTEMS - USE M2P2
AND GO FOR SPEED WITH HUMAN CARGO

Perhaps various ideas can be combined such as using M2P2
(Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion) after a tether boost from LEO. The
tricky part is slowing quickly upon approach of Deimos or Phobos. It has
been suggested that the same tricks ships with sails use to fight the wind
can be used. Perhaps in time maglev systems (or tethers) in space can be
used to slow approaching vessels.

When it comes to human cargo, I think that with these technologies the light
and fast approach (a few weeks max) may be best once there are doctors on at
least one of Mar's moons -- just put someone in a suit or canister under
sedation and send him/her on the journey.



WHAT WE CAN DO - CONPLIMENTARY LEO TO PLANETS PROPULSION SYSTEMS - OTHER
USES FOR M2P2

Other possible uses for M2P2 I can think of would be to power cyclers and
move asteroids (which according to astrophysicist Fred Adams of the
University of Michigan and NASA's Gregory Laughlin (and Dr. Benny J.
Peiser's who spends most of his time trying to find ways to keep asteroids
from Earth and also reviewed their work) in turn could be used to move the
Earth). If it can be used to power tethers (would take ingenuity at the very
least I suppose) that would be great too.

http://www.ess.washington.edu/Space/M2P2/
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ve_010207.html



THE FOURTH PANET SHOULD NOT BE THE FOCUS

I have my "biases". I am inclined to think that the fastest and cheapest way
to get to the fourth planet (whose name I dare not speak or write) (and the
Moon as well) is by its moons and NEAs, unless perhaps you want another
junket that gets little of lasting value accomplished. The fourth planet
should not be the focus, except when it comes to marketing.

Bill Haught wrote:

[snip[

I feel your pain.

Why not just put a capsule on a Delta IV Medium?

http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/Defa...=posts&t=12177

THE FOURTH PANET SHOULD NOT BE THE FOCUS

I have my "biases". I am inclined to think that the fastest and cheapest way
to get to the fourth planet (whose name I dare not speak or write) (and the
Moon as well) is by its moons and NEAs, unless perhaps you want another
junket that gets little of lasting value accomplished. The fourth planet
should not be the focus, except when it comes to marketing.

The problem with the fourth planet is its sheer size.

The fifth planet is much smaller, and it's pretty much the same in terms
of composition, water ice covered by a thin layer of dessicated crust.

http://cosmic.lifeform.org/?p=166

--
The Tsiolkovsky Group : http://www.lifeform.org

My Planetary BLOB : http://cosmic.lifeform.org

Get A Free Orbiter Space Flight Simulator :

http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/orbit.html

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007, Bill Haught wrote:

I keep hearing the same themes over and over such as "we can't launch from
sea level because of Earth's dense atmosphere" (or "lower taxes brings
greater economic growth and prosperity so government revenues should be
infinite at a tax rate of zero for that matter") .

As of this posting "we"'ve already sank $U$356.5 billion into a failed
Mideast experiment that should be written off as a lost. The anti-business,
pro-speculation class, pro-monopoly Bureaupublican Reich wingers (at least
they know what they're for) obviously don't understand economics.

They don't need to. They understand greed, gimme and forkover.

It's better the world be destroyed than to allow unrealized profits.

The US government needs to change the role of NASA from a projects
oriented agency to a mission oriented agency dedicated to reducing the
momentum costs and establishing the technical conditions for commercial
space launch using assets currently owned by the government. This
would put NASA in the same role in the space age, as NACA had in the
early days of the air age. The aerospace community should focus its
attention on reduction of momentum costs, just as electronics
engineering community has focused its attention on the reduction of
feature costs.

The US government also needs to establish property rights on celestial
bodies and regions of the solar system and give the ability to private
individuals and companies to develop resources across the solar system
and bring them to market.

The US government also needs to give tax credits and preferred tax
treatment to aerospace investments.

Once these conditions are met, the private sector will respond to these
opportunities by creating the necessary technical infrastructure to
cash in on the opportunities created there.

As momentum costs drop the nature of profitable aerospace activities
will change, just as falling costs for computing equipment caused a
change in computing activities. As these activities become feasible,
the services provides are global in nature - creating a global
paradigm.

Here is the sequence of events that we have gone through and will go
through;

1) High cost small sub-orbital transport resulting in ICBMs. The
presence of nuclear tipped ICBMs has changed the nature of warfare and
created a global incentive, a global paradigm, that seeks to avoid
global thermonuclear war.

2) High cost small orbiting payloads - resulting in automated
information-satellites, navigation, sensing, communication - these
provide global services, GPS, global communications (TV, telephone,
radio) and global sensing (weather, intelligence, environment) -
changed the nature of information networks and rise of international
business.

3) High cost large cislunar payloads - manned space travel through
cislunar space. High quality images of Earth from space gave rise to
the concept of the entire Earth as a single place. This gave rise to
the environmental movement and the demise of rabid nationalism. Terror
wars and similar movements are very much a REACTION to the rising
global culture.

Immediate opportunities exist in enhancing the capacities of infosats.
Improved GPS and improved communications as well as improved sensing
provide immediate commercial opportunities. Comsats for example, like
Telstar - were point-to-point - later satellites like, Sirius and XM -
were one-to-many. Future satellites, will have many-to-many
capabilities - like the Iridium system. Ultimately, there will be a
wireless broadband capacity using space assets that will generate tens
of billions of dollars each year in profit. This communications
capacity will be used for a variety of purposes, most importantly going
forward, will be tele-robotics. People will be able to work anywhere
and live anywhere else - and report to work via broadband wireless
activation of humaniform tele-robotic systems.

Terrestrial solar power systems are the first way we will tap into
off-world resources. Sunlight arrives from deep space onto the surface
of Earth.

Future opportunities exist in expanding launch infrastructure to
support large satellite launches to support solar powersats.
Lightweight, low cost, solar panel elements combined with low cost
phased array microwave - provide a first generation solar powersat. An
unmanned fully reusable multi-staged launcher built around existing
engine sets and technology, launched from adequate facilities at
sufficiently high launch rates - have the potential to reduce costs to
1% that of the space shuttle.

Other types of power transfer involving solar pumped lasers also appear
feasible using conjugate optics.

Here's how conjugate optics works to transfer power - at all
wavelengths, microwave to UV.

1) A weak probe beam is generated at the receiver.
2) This beam traverses the distance between the receiver and power
transmitter
3) The probe beam interacts in a nonlinear medium with the power beam
to produce a dynamic hologram
4) the hologram causes a portion of the power beam to form a phase
conjugated beam to the probe beam
5) The power beam travels back precisely along the same track as the
probe beam that illuminates the conjugate optical lens.
6) The power beam arrives precisely at the receiver powering it.

Now, if there is an intervening distortion or scattering in this setup
- phase changes are produced in the probe beam that are communicated to
the optics which cause a change in the conjugate beam so that the
returning power beam STILL arrives at the receiver unchanged.well
formed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonline...se_conjugation

As I mentioned, this system works with any wavelength of 'light' -
including microwaves.

In the end, a space based powernet will emerge, and provide clean
energy worldwide.on demand.

Beyond that, this powernet will be expanded beyond Earth to support
industrial activities in space.

Laser based propulsion systems are being developed. A laser based
power delivery system on orbit will form a natural infrastructure
supporting global ballistic transport using laser based power delivery.
This will include the creation of vehicles sporting 'propulsive skins'
that consist of millions of pore sized rocket nozzles controlled by a
digital signal processor so as to create a wide range of propulsive
effects.

http://www.me.berkeley.edu/mrcl/rockets.html
http://www.eng.rpi.edu/mane/lightcra...t2fullsize.jpg

A laser propelled jet has already been flown farther than Robert
Goddard flew the first liquid propelled rocket.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...r_goddard.html

Once we have laser powersats - augmenting maser powersats - we will
have the capacity to bring about a fundamental shift in the way
transport takes place on our planet - and beyond. Ballistic transport
and orbital transport has the potential to be commonplace when a
network of solar pumped lasers combines with low-cost laser powered
propulsive skins.

Of course, the same technology that deliveres precisely controlled
amounts of colored inks in a color inkjet printer can be adapted to
provide controlled amounts of propellants in a propulsive skin rocket
array. Thus, laser energy can be augmented with conventional rocket
fuels to provide a very capable system. Specific impulses starting at
400 sec Isp, with fuel based systems can rise to as high as 2,500 sec
Isp with laser based systems, and even to infinity with jet based
systems and laser light sails.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2000/lasersail.html

Powersats operating close to the solar surface, and using large lasers
and optics to beam terawatts of laser energy across the solar system -
has the potential to develop celestial bodies throughout the solar
system industrially. Such systems also support low-cost solar system
wide transport. Large optics projecting terawatts or even quadrillions
of watts interplanetary distance will be adapted to support early
interstellar probes and missions using laser light sails.

One use of extreme propulsion using very large quantities of solar
pumped laser photons is the movement of asteroidal bodies throughout
the solar system. A natural consequence of this capacity it to bring
a small population of rich asteroids into orbit around Earth and then
populating those asteroids with remotely controlled factories driven by
populations of workers living on Earth - to produce large quantities of
goods that are then distributed by direct deorbiting to customers on
Earth and in cislunar space. As the industrial capacity grows ever
more sophisticated systems will grow to include space colony sized
pressure vessels which will support off-world production of food and
fiber which will be distributed throughout human space - including
Earth's surface. Ultimately, the Earth will become a residential park
supported by orbiting off-world industrial activity, fed by captive
asteroids. This same capability will also be used to protect Earth
from asteroidal impact, as well as be used to engineer changes in
Earth's orbit to protect the biosphere from changes in the sun's
activity.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science...2-15-orbit.htm

"William Mook" wrote in message
ups.com...
The US government needs to change the role of NASA from a projects
oriented agency to a mission oriented agency dedicated to reducing the
momentum costs and establishing the technical conditions for commercial
space launch using assets currently owned by the government. This
would put NASA in the same role in the space age, as NACA had in the
early days of the air age. The aerospace community should focus its
attention on reduction of momentum costs, just as electronics
engineering community has focused its attention on the reduction of
feature costs.

With real interest rates at practically zero and 1% of the population having
perhaps 50% or so of the nations wealth due to Reich wing tax cut and spend,
do we need NASA for this?

Then too, we don't really have free trade (which is part of the problem).



The US government also needs to establish property rights on celestial
bodies and regions of the solar system and give the ability to private
individuals and companies to develop resources across the solar system
and bring them to market.

Like they did with a swath of North America? How did the U.S. government
get all that land by divine right?

"Ask any child what he knows about Shays's rebellion, and he will answer,
"Oh, some of the farmers couldn't pay their taxes, and Shays led a rebellion
against the court-house at Worcester, so they could burn up the deeds; and
when Washington heard of it he sent over an army quick and taught them a
good lesson" -- "And what was the result of it?" "The result? Why -- why --
the result was -- Oh yes, I remember -- the result was they saw the need of
a strong federal government to collect the taxes and pay the debts." Ask if
he knows what was said on the other side of the story, ask if he knows that
the men who had given their goods and their health and their strength for
the freeing of the country now found themselves cast into prison for debt,
sick, disabled, and poor, facing a new tyranny for the old; that their
demand was that the land should become the free communal possession of those
who wished to work it, not subject to tribute, and the child will answer
"No."...."

http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/0...tim.html#links



The US government also needs to give tax credits and preferred tax
treatment to aerospace investments.

More sensible treatment regarding the third factor of production would be
better.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s... 62adc32d4e7a9



Here is the sequence of events that we have gone through and will go
through;

Future opportunities exist in expanding launch infrastructure to
support large satellite launches to support solar powersats.
Lightweight, low cost, solar panel elements combined with low cost
phased array microwave - provide a first generation solar powersat. An
unmanned fully reusable multi-staged launcher built around existing
engine sets and technology, launched from adequate facilities at
sufficiently high launch rates - have the potential to reduce costs to
1% that of the space shuttle.

I wonder about trying to produce the solar panels here on Earth -- toxic
materials and impending water shortage.



A laser propelled jet has already been flown farther than Robert
Goddard flew the first liquid propelled rocket.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...r_goddard.html

Another alternative. I think the more aggressive infrastructure project
I've suggested earlier in this thread is worth the cost. It would force the
issue. Variable launch costs would be so low it would be foolish not to go
all out.



Once we have laser powersats - augmenting maser powersats - we will
have the capacity to bring about a fundamental shift in the way
transport takes place on our planet - and beyond. Ballistic transport
and orbital transport has the potential to be commonplace when a
network of solar pumped lasers combines with low-cost laser powered
propulsive skins.

Still like solar chimneys if we need more electricity generating capacity
first. Or start by using lasers to power space planes during hours when
power demands aren't so high.


Powersats operating close to the solar surface, and using large lasers
and optics to beam terawatts of laser energy across the solar system -
has the potential to develop celestial bodies throughout the solar
system industrially. Such systems also support low-cost solar system
wide transport. Large optics projecting terawatts or even quadrillions
of watts interplanetary distance will be adapted to support early
interstellar probes and missions using laser light sails.

Does have a reliability advantage over M2P2. This may be necessary or more
practical when dealing with human cargo.


One use of extreme propulsion using very large quantities of solar
pumped laser photons is the movement of asteroidal bodies throughout
the solar system. A natural consequence of this capacity it to bring
a small population of rich asteroids into orbit around Earth and then
populating those asteroids with remotely controlled factories driven by
populations of workers living on Earth - to produce large quantities of
goods that are then distributed by direct deorbiting to customers on
Earth and in cislunar space.

I thin that for this purpose M2P2 is ideal, except for when the velocity
gets rather close to the point where they end up in Earth orbit, at which
time we may want to switch to a more controllable system.

"kT" wrote in message
...
Bill Haught wrote:


The fifth planet is much smaller, and it's pretty much the same in terms
of composition, water ice covered by a thin layer of dessicated crust.

For the clueless I think he means minor planets / planetoids between Mars
and Jupiter.

Why not Deimos and/or Phobos?

Since we can Move the Earth (
http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ve_010207.html ) how
about using a small asteroid to move a bigger one to a more desireable
location? The difficulty of course may be finding a combination of various
tricks involving orbital mechanics (I mean sling-shots and stuff) and bodies
in the right locations to use such schemes. Instead of looking for
asteroids in the right orbits perhaps such opportunities can be created?

First we should perhaps have missions to find asteroids and minor planets
closer to the Sun than Earth, unless suitable ones are known. Suitability
(different orbits required, likely water supply problem) to set up camp on
may be different from snagging asteroids into Earth or Moon orbits and their
Lagrange points. Perhaps we can crash an asteroid into a larger one or a
planetoid and quickly mop up the water and put it in a basin, then cover it.
Other ideas? If one is really lucky one might (I suppose be able to) put an
asteroid in orbit (probably not realistic). The advantage would be that it
could be coated to reflect radiation thereby preserving water.