Ares IV Revelation

William Elliot wrote:
On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, kT wrote:
RMOLLISE wrote:

You want to go to Mars?
It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Geesh, months in a sardine can doing nothing.
Better bring some real good ****ing friends.

A babe and a telescope and a bunch of growing plants, who could ask for
more. You must be awfully bored with life.

But you look at the samples Apollo brought back as "little rocks," with
no more significance than that?
They're rocks. All rocks are the same. George told us that.

Riddle of the day. What are small rocks called?

Rocks.

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

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Totorkon wrote:
Jonathan wrote:
"Starlord" wrote in message
. ..

N.A.S.A. is all about going into space, for doing things about the earth
there are other groups. NASA has always been about going into space.

Just for the sake of it?

What if Nasa, instead of spending the next forty years building
a shelter on the moon and mars, built dozens of space solar
power stations? Beaming electricity down to earth like cable tv


It isn't an "instead of". Building a shelter on the moon and learning
how to live and work there, is a necessary second step toward building
the mass driver infrastructure to deliver the materials to build SPSs.
The first step is to build an inexpensive, inefficient, reliable
reusable launch system. Back in '70, the big aerospace companies
pegged the price of LEO at $25/lb. The mass of an aircraft carrier
could be put in space for under seven billion at that rate.
That cost over run of 40000% is what keeps the potential of space at
the bottom of the gravity well.

I don't think the ARES IV/V is going to bring launch costs down when we
are throwing that big ten meter tank and five RS-68s away every launch.

However, the five segment SRBs and the big ten meter tank do provide the
necessary Frankenstein components, for someone who may wish to bring
launch costs down at some future date, with new reusable engines. The
SRBs provide the development leverage for space rating the tankage, and
the tankage itself provides the framework for any large city in space
one may wish to construct. The key is the reusable propulsion, and right
now the SSME is the only game in town. It only makes sense to develop a
channel wall nozzle for the beast, and continue producing and flying
them, until we've developed a suitable second generation replacement.

As such, I'm all for the Ares IV as a replacement for the Stick.

We can fly the EELVs to the ISS in the meantime.

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

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

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In article ,
"Starlord" wrote:

First of all there is no super watt mricowave transmitter that can do that
as of yet, so far the tests that have been down on earth have barly gotten a
few watts just over a mile.

Wrong. I don't have figures handy either, but I recall the demo where
beamed power lit up a whole bank of light bulbs -- and they didn't have
these new-fangled spiral fluorescent bulbs then. It was hundreds of
watts at least.

Plus thing about this, the station would have to be in geosynce orbit and
that's an awefull longs ways and the reciver station on the ground would
have to cover miles of land and what if by chance an plane flys into the
power beam?

Quite a run-on sentence there. Yes, the powersats would probably be in
GEO (some people propose other locations but they seem less practical to
me). Yes, that's a long way which is why the transmitters to be large,
but so what? Yes, the receiver stations would be large (e.g. 10 km by
13 km for a 5 GW station), but again, so what? And finally, if by
chance a plane flies into the power beam, nothing much happens except
that perhaps communications will be disrupted until it flies out again.
The power density of the beam is about half the power density of
sunlight at noon.

Please quit spreading your ignorance around and do a little research
before posting your nonsense.

The last drawing of such an station
it would have to cover at lest 10qubic miles of land to power an area as big
as rosamond and it's 25,000 people.

10 qubic (cubic?) miles of land? There's no such thing.

Plus with not only living places on the moon and some day the space city
sats in orbit and then even mars, mankind will have a much better chance of
making it to the stars.

Well, yes, that is a nice side-benefit of space solar power. But even
ignoring that, it still seems like one of the best options for providing
the power humanity needs -- see "Advanced Technology Paths to Global
Climate Stability: Energy for a Greenhouse Planet" by Hoffert et al.,
Science 298:981-987.

There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the
universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the
Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they[*] may yet
be brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the
heavens.

If you're going to quote Battlestar Galactica, please at least have the
decency to get it right. "They" above (by the asterisk) should be
"there."

Best,
- Joe

Instead of massive amounts of land being covered by recivers, and what
happens to all those miles of stats when a good solar flare blasts outward
and they are in it's path? I'd rather see a good theromnuke power station
opeating on earth, one such could power at lest the 5 main easten seaboard
states. Instead of cutting their funds, they should be pumping a lot more
into the one that's used as the research reactor.


--
There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the
universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the
Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they may yet be
brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the
heavens.


The Lone Sidewalk Astronomer of Rosamond
Telescope Buyers FAQ
http://home.inreach.com/starlord
Sidewalk Astronomy
www.sidewalkastronomy.info
The Church of Eternity
http://home.inreach.com/starlord/church/Eternity.html


"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...

On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 08:58:08 -0800, in a place far, far away,
"Starlord" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Instead of massive amounts of land being covered by recivers, and what
happens to all those miles of stats when a good solar flare blasts outward
and they are in it's path?

Very little, if they're properly designed. Do you think that
aerospace engineers are stupid?

"SkySea" wrote in message
...
Anyway... between the transmitter and receiver flows an enormous
amount of power. The amount which can bake turkeys in flight, roast
pigs on the ground, and do all sorts of damage to airplanes and
passengers) that stry into the no-fly columns.

Please tell us your source for that.


I don't know the exact numbers and figures, but intuition tells me
you'd need a LOT of solar arrays to generate any significant
contribution to the power grid.

Why depend on intuition, when a little research can get you some real
numbers?

There's no need to guess, just do some homework.

Scott Hedrick wrote:
"SkySea" wrote in message
...
Anyway... between the transmitter and receiver flows an enormous
amount of power. The amount which can bake turkeys in flight, roast
pigs on the ground, and do all sorts of damage to airplanes and
passengers) that stry into the no-fly columns.

Please tell us your source for that.

I'm guessing "William Mook." Remember his goofy notions for laser-sats
which would send hundred-kilowatt-class optical frequency lasers down
through the clouds to individual motorcycles? That's a sufficiently
flawed and bad idea that it's no wonder that some people who don't
understand the actual work that's been done on microwave transmission
systems might think that powersats would fry birds.

wrote:

I'm guessing "William Mook." Remember his goofy notions for laser-sats
which would send hundred-kilowatt-class optical frequency lasers down
through the clouds to individual motorcycles?


Oh yeah... Laserville would have been a fascinating place to live until
something went even slightly wrong one day.
like say a thick cloud passing over it. :-)

That's a sufficiently
flawed and bad idea that it's no wonder that some people who don't
understand the actual work that's been done on microwave transmission
systems might think that powersats would fry birds.



I think the original idea was that birds would tend to gather by the
antennae due the warming affect on them by the microwaves, which they
would find pleasant in cold weather.

Pat

It's very simple, the last one that came our way caused some of the stats to
do a shut down and reboot and closer to earth one weather stat was lost. If
you don't belive things like that can happen, then I've got an oil well in
Hawaii I'll be glad to sell to you.


--
There are those who believe that life here, began out there, far across the
universe, with tribes of humans, who may have been the forefathers of the
Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. Some believe that they may yet be
brothers of man, who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the
heavens.


The Lone Sidewalk Astronomer of Rosamond
Telescope Buyers FAQ
http://home.inreach.com/starlord
Sidewalk Astronomy
www.sidewalkastronomy.info
The Church of Eternity
http://home.inreach.com/starlord/church/Eternity.html


"Rand Simberg"

Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:

I'm guessing "William Mook." Remember his goofy notions for laser-sats
which would send hundred-kilowatt-class optical frequency lasers down
through the clouds to individual motorcycles?


Oh yeah... Laserville would have been a fascinating place to live until
something went even slightly wrong one day.
like say a thick cloud passing over it. :-)

That's a sufficiently
flawed and bad idea that it's no wonder that some people who don't
understand the actual work that's been done on microwave transmission
systems might think that powersats would fry birds.



I think the original idea was that birds would tend to gather by the
antennae due the warming affect on them by the microwaves, which they
would find pleasant in cold weather.

Pat

You guys misunderstand my concept as badly as you say people
misunderstand microwaves. lol. You are clueless.

Check this out. Its a reference on four wave mixing and conjugate
optics.

http://www.physics.montana.edu/stude...s/FWMixing.pdf

I'm not proposing shooting the lasers one way at a target. I've said
this time and again, yet you insist on mistating it time and again. I
am proposing shooting a diverging solar pumped laser beam through a
phase conjugate lens on orbit. This arrangement results in a solar
powersat. The solar powersat with no probe beams arriving from
receivers far away has the powersat's light energy disappating
producing no effect far from the powersat. Things only get interesting
when a probe beam arrives at the phase conjugate lens from far away.
Here, the probe beam interacts with the phase conjugate material which
causes a power beam to be formed that is aimed precisely at the source
of the probe beam pre-distorted to arrive in perfect shape. Any
distortions in (Fig 13 on pg 15 of the document above) existing in the
air, are accounted for in the return beam and removed by the very
medium the probe beam passes through, so the power beamarrives at the
target perfectly collimated.

Clearly, anything that intercepts the power beam, also intercepts the
probe beam - and shuts the power beam off. Think of how a fuse works.
A bird or aircraft flying through a highly concentrated laser beam
would first cut off the probe beam, and that would cause the power beam
to shut off as well. The bird or aircraft or might cause the beam to
be cut off briefly, but no one would be hurt by the experience. In
fact, since the probe beam itself diverges, so you don't need to track
the satellite to have some light hit it, the probe beam and power beam
far from the power reciever, would encompass most aircraft and birds,
and so, while the shadow of a bird or plane might reduce power output,
it wouldn't eliminate it. The same with LIGHT clouds! Dispersion can
to some extent be reversed with conjugate optics - so, LIGHT clouds can
be dealt with as well.

Aerostats floating above a city, attached to aerial cables made of
optical fiber, have the potential to gather significant energy very
efficiently among dense populations in cloudy climates. Another
possibility is to have floating platforms at sunny regions throughout
the world's oceans to create hydrogen and hydrocarbons from seawater
and air, to be delivered to the world's energy users. In this way,
very small collector areas on Earth can take advantage of very large
collector areas off-world - minimizing cost and environmental impact of
large collector areas.

More advanced systems would deliver power to laser propulsion systems,
which would operate well above the troposphere. Stored power would
lift vehicles off, and when they gained sufficient altitude to be above
most weather, they would signal space based systems for main propulsive
energy.

Microwave systems can also benefit from this sort of conjugate optics
as well. Phased array systems can implement four wave mixing sorts of
paradigms, and control systems can examine opacity. Just as we have 3
phase power today, one can imagine a 3 frequency system, u-wave, IR,
and vis, wavelengths, in a common emitter, and which change in response
to the 3-frequency probe beam - dynamically as Earth conditions change.


A world with 300,000 sq km of solar powersats on orbit could beam
energy wherever its needed whenever its needed anywhere in cislunar
space, supporting a dispersed population of solar powered homes,and
solar powered industry, and solar powered vehicles. Vehicles operate
totally automatically, and range in size from a 10 kilo package
delivery system to a 100,000 kilo cargo system - operating
ballistically - delivering anything anywhere on Earth in minutes.

A total of 3,820 mirrors each 10 km in diameter will orbit the Earth at
36,700 km up. Each are 60 km apart on orbit - and each beams 42 GW of
laser/maser power throughout cislunar space to billions of recivers
signalling the satellite for energy.

Power levels are controlled by a pulsed method of signalling that takes
advantage of time delays in the system. Power recievers that originate
the probe beams generally intercept a half dozen powersats with their
probe beam energy. So, a half a dozen laser/maser beams arrive from a
half dozen different directions. So, if any one beam is blocked, and
cut off, others will take up the slack.

Beams can be reformed with additional conjugate optical material. For
example, power recievers can signal conjugate lenses located in an
aerostat, which is observed and sent onward to a low earth orbiting
reformer, which signals the geosynch source. Such linkages can
continue down to the level of individual appliances. An aerostate can
send light energy to a house, which distributes it through optical
fibers to ceiling fixtures in a home, which delivers a portion of the
energy to a flat screen display, heater and a lamp sitting on a desk.
The display would generate electricity with bandgap matched PV, the
heater would take the laser energy it recieves and let it fall on a
black body, creating heat, the lamp would generate visible white light
with a mixture of dyes pumped by the laser light.