(Note: this is an example of my Science Fiction adventure writings involving peoples' struggles to cope with various energy crisis. The novel from which it is extracted, "Building Up" by J E D Cline, includes many energy coping references, as do my other Science Fiction writings which are available in my various blogs.)
Day 29 of 30 (November, 2006)
The construction and use of the space access structure was energy starved. As there were no electric power lines existing servicing Cayanbe, the Ecuadoreans pitched in and got a powdered-coal fueled electric power plant brought in to the construction site, and while that fuel supply lasted, they could speed up the scaling up construction of the structure. At some point they would need to shift to using energy resources for lifting materials up to GEO to build a Satellite Solar electric Power plant, with which to power the transportation structure thereafter.
The supplies available to fuel the coal-powered electric power plant were rationed and getting less each week. So when the diameter of the KESTS structure to GEO reached 36 cm, they called a temporary halt to the scaling up process. At this point the mass of the structure was 4E10kg, and the structure was capable of receiving 600 megawatts per hour while lifting 20 million kg of mass to GEO each hour, so it was extremely underused, being only powered by the small powerplant on site. And that powerplant was running out of allowed fuel ration, too. They had to get to building the solar electric powerplant built in GEO as soon as possible.
They had instructed the old dual wheel space station to be towed to where it could continually beam microwave energy to rectennas to either the White Sands location, or to the Cayanbe location. They arranged to time share the energy beamed down from its solar power source, a kind of SSPS, but welcome addition to the petrochemical powerplant. They used the energy primarily to lift the construction materials for a SSPS capable of delivering 600 MW of solar-sourced energy continuously to the earth surface, If they could achieve that before their earth sourced energy supplies ran out, they could at least run this KESTS at full capacity, building more solar electric powerplants, and start negotiating with countries for delivered electric power, and start having an income. From then on, things would be easier.
As it was, the combined energy input from the coal-fired electric power and their average share of the space station's beamed energy was only half a megawatt, with which they could only deliver 15,000 kg to GEO each hour. They chose to build the main structure of the powerplant out of glass cast in a hard vacuum, which had enormous strength to mass ratio, far greater than the finest steel or aluminum, so long as it could be kept free of the atmosphere's molecules wiggling into glass surface microcracks, wedging into the glass until it was as fragile as it is normally on the earth's surface. They chose to melt the glass down at the KESTS ground terminal, and haul it up to the GEO construction site while still in the melted state, for feeding the extrusion facilities making the SSPS.
The structure had severe limits to the amount of concentrated load it could carry, however. It was very efficient at lifting a fairly continuous series of payloads of about equal mass, but the limits to concentrated mass load meant that they could not just haul up a solar powerplant ready-made. So Improy and Catalie went up in their little two-person spacecraft again, this time being lifted up by the KESTS, about its limit of a concentrated mass load. They only had a brief time they could work in GEO, being without passive radiation protection, and the injected DNA repair substance formula had long since been lost. So they used their space worksuits to assemble the solar-electric power panels into the glass main structure, and connected it to the microwave beam generator.
Looking down from the construction site, in GEO above the opposite side of the planet from the Ecuadorean mountain tunnel site, the world looked mostly watery. They were out of touch with ground facilities, and they dare not try to link into any internet signals that might reach up here. They then set up the silicon solar cell automated fabrication plant, which liked to be in zero g and hard vacuum, solar powered. Then they hurried back down the KESTS back to Cayambe peak tunnel, for a well earned vacation.
Copyright © 2006 James E D Cline as per Blogger.com rules
(Note: this energy related post was copied over from one of my other blogs, and can be found at
http://jedc2006nanowrimo.blogspot.com/2006/11/day-29-of-30.html
JEDCline.)
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Magnetic Footprints
(Note: this post is an example of how energy flow in a machine can be described using the evocative communication possible in poetry. Although it was originally written for appreciation by fellow disk drive engineers in the field of rotating disk magnetic memory systems, other people have found it interesting, too, so is included in this blog.)
20040715 the poem, Magnetic Footprints
JEDC's Technological Poetry
MAGNETIC FOOTPRINTS
by James Edward David Cline
Here is a poem written about the inner workings of a disk drive, written using the INSCRIBE cognitive engine.
by J E D CLINE 6/13/84
Shining like a mechanical jewel
The tortured metal and plastic shapes
Were bound unwillingly together
By man and machine. And now, the
Conscripted shapes silently await,
Like a statue frozen, the
Awakening pulse of electric life
To throb in it's copper veins,
Energizing mechanical muscles....
Then, TURN-ON!
A twirling whirl goes to a filmy disk
Of micromagnets, sending them hurtling
Past a special place: a read/write head
With magnetic maw that sometimes
Shouts and sometimes listens
To the concensus of the
Scurrying horde of magnetic domains.
The gaping maw jumps back and forth,
Then lies in wait for the call of
The one it seeks.
Here they come! The earthquake rattle
Of ten thousand dancing domains in a
Chorus line, all spread their energy
To the hungry ferrite eye, then take it
Back again, escaping.
Their rock-and-roll dance is
Patiently watched over,
Then finally the familiar notes
Of the sought sector comes on scene.
The throbbing beat is announced,
And its repeating rhythm forms a
Trellis of time supporting the
Melodious string of data notes.
Stronger now and square, the
Marching line of ones and zeros
Triumphantly emerge as information,
Reborn to live in the halls of
Mankind's busyness.
But there comes a time in the life of bits,
When the world tires of them, and
Prepares to send their progenitive essence
To ferrite crypts. The chosen ones, the
Lucky bits, herd into groups, then file
Courageously singley into the iron maiden.
The ferrite's searching eye,
Having found the assigned shelf
In the filmy store, grabs each
Brave bit in turn, transforming
It in an instant into a torrent
Of current, rushing first one way
Then the other. This river of
Excitement pours through copper swirls,
And their waves of motion stir concerted
Flux in flying ferrite glider.
The flux strikes a barrier!
A gap to be crossed in an
Exhuberant flurry and shout,
And leaves magnetic footprints by
Overturnings in the domains below,
In the filmy land of time's sleep.
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
(Note: this post was copied over from one of my other blogs. J E D Cline.)
20040715 the poem, Magnetic Footprints
JEDC's Technological Poetry
MAGNETIC FOOTPRINTS
by James Edward David Cline
Here is a poem written about the inner workings of a disk drive, written using the INSCRIBE cognitive engine.
by J E D CLINE 6/13/84
Shining like a mechanical jewel
The tortured metal and plastic shapes
Were bound unwillingly together
By man and machine. And now, the
Conscripted shapes silently await,
Like a statue frozen, the
Awakening pulse of electric life
To throb in it's copper veins,
Energizing mechanical muscles....
Then, TURN-ON!
A twirling whirl goes to a filmy disk
Of micromagnets, sending them hurtling
Past a special place: a read/write head
With magnetic maw that sometimes
Shouts and sometimes listens
To the concensus of the
Scurrying horde of magnetic domains.
The gaping maw jumps back and forth,
Then lies in wait for the call of
The one it seeks.
Here they come! The earthquake rattle
Of ten thousand dancing domains in a
Chorus line, all spread their energy
To the hungry ferrite eye, then take it
Back again, escaping.
Their rock-and-roll dance is
Patiently watched over,
Then finally the familiar notes
Of the sought sector comes on scene.
The throbbing beat is announced,
And its repeating rhythm forms a
Trellis of time supporting the
Melodious string of data notes.
Stronger now and square, the
Marching line of ones and zeros
Triumphantly emerge as information,
Reborn to live in the halls of
Mankind's busyness.
But there comes a time in the life of bits,
When the world tires of them, and
Prepares to send their progenitive essence
To ferrite crypts. The chosen ones, the
Lucky bits, herd into groups, then file
Courageously singley into the iron maiden.
The ferrite's searching eye,
Having found the assigned shelf
In the filmy store, grabs each
Brave bit in turn, transforming
It in an instant into a torrent
Of current, rushing first one way
Then the other. This river of
Excitement pours through copper swirls,
And their waves of motion stir concerted
Flux in flying ferrite glider.
The flux strikes a barrier!
A gap to be crossed in an
Exhuberant flurry and shout,
And leaves magnetic footprints by
Overturnings in the domains below,
In the filmy land of time's sleep.
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
(Note: this post was copied over from one of my other blogs. J E D Cline.)
Incoming Idea, watch out!
(Although this is not especially related to energy ideas, it intensely relates to ideas in general.)
Incoming Idea, watch out!
In this quatrillion-piece machine we call "Civilization", the click and buzz and slosh back and forth of rhythms play out, business as usual. It was not always this way; the pieces of civilization started from zero; more and more added piece by piece, until it is huge and complex as now.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Each incoming idea fell upon the ongoing waves and ripples in existing civilization as it found, each fell sometimes like a cool raindrop onto a thirsty leaf, others fell like a fiery meteor from outer space. Whatever, the impact of the new idea made new waves, new ripples, at first upsetting, then settling in to the new norm of everyday slosh.
The process of adding to civilization continues, building it up more as before. But each new idea that plops into the slurry of busy civilization is not often welcome, disruptive to the routine that was before. Some people decide to defend against new ideas that might be headed their way, instead of needing to cope with the disruption and new norm that might have resulted. Depending on just where the incoming new idea plunks into, here are some of the observed forms of blocking waves spreading from the plopped idea, cutting the idea off at the source (sorry, if any of this steps on some toes a little):
1) Ideas make new things possible, resulting in change, and thus they must be suppressed/controlled to keep all things fine just like they are right now. If I own a corporation, I can specify what ideas can be worked on, none else permitted on the job. If I additionally require each employee to sign an "employment agreement" handing over all ideas the employee ever has (on or off the job and on any subject) to me, and yet requiring me to do nothing with them, I can deep-six all those other ideas all those employees might have. Since nearly everyone must work for some corporation to pay bills, and if all corporations do this same idea suppression thing, there will be no new ideas created except which those we owners choose, and all will be in our plushly rewarded fuedal domain control forever.
2) Only very highly educated people are capable of creating useable wide-implication new conceptual designs, and are well rewarded for that capability. Therefore, someone not highly degreed but still claiming to create such concepts, must be lying, or else the idea is defective and won't work. In either case, ignore the person that is out of line, he/she will starve eventually and vanish as if never existed if unrewarded thoroughly enough; the idea will then freely be for all of us to use as we see fit, part of the knowledge base of our education, our right to high position, and thus all will remain well.
3) An idea for a radically new kind of space access transportation and application conceivably could have military uses, therefore the idea surely is classified and the guy telling of it must be a spy. Therefore correct response would be to stifle the guy's efforts to communicate the idea (since it obviously must have been classified), constantly block the guy's efforts at everything and particularly don't let people intimately talk with him such as a girlfriend might do; and conduct a widely advertised search to locate the security leak source where that spy stole the idea, shake things up and let them know who is boss.
4) My business's income is my source of survival and high living. The conduct of business generally is as clean and merciless as the rules of football game playing; and so my survival requires I too be equally and cooly merciless toward anything which might compete with my business. Therefore, someone coming in with a better idea than that idea upon which my business is founded, must be mercilessly and coldly treated, quietly grabbing or destroying that other idea and its originator, so my business and life will remain fine.
5) In school I did not care who originally came up with each of the bits of knowledge which I learned there; I got the knowledge and it all is mine to use to get what I need. Therefore, equally I don't care who comes up with a "new" idea, a bit of knowledge, it is mine to use freely to do what I want, nothing whatever owed to the "originator" of that so-called new item. Anyway, ideas just come out of thin air, thus they are of no value.
6) If someone below my hierarchical status does something "better than" me even once, my boss may fire me and give the job to that wiseguy underling. Therefore, if an underling proclaims a clearly better idea than I do, the purpose is to humiliate me; response therefore is to fight back at the underling, keep my position by destroying the idea or insinuating it was mine all along. Everyone knows the hierarchical system must be honored totally, one break in the structure and all will be at risk.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Yet it is said that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Given knowledge of how to most voraciously devour the resources of our home planet, excreting the materials as unusable entropied wastes, are there none to be found responsible enough? While we yet have the energy to create the radical electrically powered space access systems to enable us to reach for vast solar power far above the atmosphere and above earth's shadow, up where the entropied wastes of civilization can be totally recycled back to newness using solar power, hard vacuum, and zero-g up there in GEO orbit, instead we persist in smug power games to show who is better than who. Is the hand of man on the stone now chiseling the epitaph on mankind's tombstone, the human experiment gone run amuck; and the mad race to "win" be run in the tracks of the Lemmings? Ah, I trust in the hand of the Creator on the hand of Man.
(Note: this post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Incoming Idea, watch out!
In this quatrillion-piece machine we call "Civilization", the click and buzz and slosh back and forth of rhythms play out, business as usual. It was not always this way; the pieces of civilization started from zero; more and more added piece by piece, until it is huge and complex as now.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Each incoming idea fell upon the ongoing waves and ripples in existing civilization as it found, each fell sometimes like a cool raindrop onto a thirsty leaf, others fell like a fiery meteor from outer space. Whatever, the impact of the new idea made new waves, new ripples, at first upsetting, then settling in to the new norm of everyday slosh.
The process of adding to civilization continues, building it up more as before. But each new idea that plops into the slurry of busy civilization is not often welcome, disruptive to the routine that was before. Some people decide to defend against new ideas that might be headed their way, instead of needing to cope with the disruption and new norm that might have resulted. Depending on just where the incoming new idea plunks into, here are some of the observed forms of blocking waves spreading from the plopped idea, cutting the idea off at the source (sorry, if any of this steps on some toes a little):
1) Ideas make new things possible, resulting in change, and thus they must be suppressed/controlled to keep all things fine just like they are right now. If I own a corporation, I can specify what ideas can be worked on, none else permitted on the job. If I additionally require each employee to sign an "employment agreement" handing over all ideas the employee ever has (on or off the job and on any subject) to me, and yet requiring me to do nothing with them, I can deep-six all those other ideas all those employees might have. Since nearly everyone must work for some corporation to pay bills, and if all corporations do this same idea suppression thing, there will be no new ideas created except which those we owners choose, and all will be in our plushly rewarded fuedal domain control forever.
2) Only very highly educated people are capable of creating useable wide-implication new conceptual designs, and are well rewarded for that capability. Therefore, someone not highly degreed but still claiming to create such concepts, must be lying, or else the idea is defective and won't work. In either case, ignore the person that is out of line, he/she will starve eventually and vanish as if never existed if unrewarded thoroughly enough; the idea will then freely be for all of us to use as we see fit, part of the knowledge base of our education, our right to high position, and thus all will remain well.
3) An idea for a radically new kind of space access transportation and application conceivably could have military uses, therefore the idea surely is classified and the guy telling of it must be a spy. Therefore correct response would be to stifle the guy's efforts to communicate the idea (since it obviously must have been classified), constantly block the guy's efforts at everything and particularly don't let people intimately talk with him such as a girlfriend might do; and conduct a widely advertised search to locate the security leak source where that spy stole the idea, shake things up and let them know who is boss.
4) My business's income is my source of survival and high living. The conduct of business generally is as clean and merciless as the rules of football game playing; and so my survival requires I too be equally and cooly merciless toward anything which might compete with my business. Therefore, someone coming in with a better idea than that idea upon which my business is founded, must be mercilessly and coldly treated, quietly grabbing or destroying that other idea and its originator, so my business and life will remain fine.
5) In school I did not care who originally came up with each of the bits of knowledge which I learned there; I got the knowledge and it all is mine to use to get what I need. Therefore, equally I don't care who comes up with a "new" idea, a bit of knowledge, it is mine to use freely to do what I want, nothing whatever owed to the "originator" of that so-called new item. Anyway, ideas just come out of thin air, thus they are of no value.
6) If someone below my hierarchical status does something "better than" me even once, my boss may fire me and give the job to that wiseguy underling. Therefore, if an underling proclaims a clearly better idea than I do, the purpose is to humiliate me; response therefore is to fight back at the underling, keep my position by destroying the idea or insinuating it was mine all along. Everyone knows the hierarchical system must be honored totally, one break in the structure and all will be at risk.
Civilization grew, idea by idea, and the ideas worked the hand of mankind upon stone and wood and water and on living things, ever growing, idea by idea. Yet it is said that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Given knowledge of how to most voraciously devour the resources of our home planet, excreting the materials as unusable entropied wastes, are there none to be found responsible enough? While we yet have the energy to create the radical electrically powered space access systems to enable us to reach for vast solar power far above the atmosphere and above earth's shadow, up where the entropied wastes of civilization can be totally recycled back to newness using solar power, hard vacuum, and zero-g up there in GEO orbit, instead we persist in smug power games to show who is better than who. Is the hand of man on the stone now chiseling the epitaph on mankind's tombstone, the human experiment gone run amuck; and the mad race to "win" be run in the tracks of the Lemmings? Ah, I trust in the hand of the Creator on the hand of Man.
(Note: this post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Including energy management in an overview
Overview
20050724 J E D Cline
As the less noble of humanity’s ways continue to smokescreen my most cherished project, the exploration and utilization of the KESTS to GEO potentials, examination of the relevant trends is prudent now. The near and more distant future quality of life seems to hinge on energy resources and re-use of materials resources, although sociopolitical power plays are likely to continue to disrupt it heavily, as usual.
Applying some wisdom to it all, it seems to me that humanity still has choices regarding their energy future potentials. Fossil fuels plentifulness is on the way out, clearly, and to what level its “greenhouse warming effect" will have on Earth’s ecosystem before it starts receding, is unclear to me. Alternatives can go the “high road or the low road”, some in-between paths more likely too. Hydroelectric sources and some wind sources can provide a baseline energy supply until their machinery made using cheap fossil fuel energy and materials, starts wearing out. Growing sugarcane and corn for making ethanol for liquid storeable fuel, and conversion of cars to run on it, can provide some baseline for truck and automobile use to some extent. Nuclear electric power is likely to be expanded again, the desperation from depletion of conventional power sources outweighing worries regarding the extremely long term toxic effects of radioactive wastes thereby produced, and how to cope with those materials. Tree material can be grown to provide both storable combustible fuel as well as construction lumber.
Recycling seems next on the list critical field, and needs to go far beyond the saving of aluminum cans, bottles and newspapers for collection. Recycling takes energy, which also is getting scarce. So, wise and responsible means need to be applied on a wide scale.
Land and Real Estate usage no doubt will continue to be the arena of those who play territorial monopoly-type games of many kinds, easy money, sweet racket: price rises rapidly with no equivalent improvement in the item.
Continuing to fail to utilize the nation’s human resources to the fullest, is likely to result in declaring “overpopulation”, thus excuse for widespread loss of life, from the birth control (including abstention techniques), illness and warfare.
The reality-testing of economical products of small and large business' narrow interests needs to be balanced with some kind of overall perspective humanity- responsible functions. The lofty principle that "if there is a real need, someone will start a business to provide it" has not been working in the real world of business, mostly corporate-interest-controlled. The overall map needs to be available to all who contribute to the business picture, to have a chance of assuring there are not big gaps in the map.
Increasing communication potentials of the Internet and computers may make a voting process that provides much of the decision making function instead of entirely government responsibility, for the overall vision’s creation and filling in of that which makes it all work together.
Insofar as we continue to not use the total human capacity, and focus on strife internal and external, distraction from the responsibility to provide the above-mentioned life needs, may become so serious that major collapse and loss of life will occur, as so cycles of the past history teaches. The KESTS to GEO conceptual design offered the alternatives of a “high road” to follow, which I’d like to think we can still attain, despite the choice so far by the powers-that-be taken choices of strife and maintain status quo of recent years that has cost the nation the finances needed to built KESTS to GEO at its finest. Bewailing the what-could-have-been may be cathartic, but otherwise ia a waste of time beyond teaching lessons about humanity’s reality at the present time. The classical cravings to maintain power-as-is will no doubt continue to dominate what opportunities actually get to happen; those who suggest other possible ways deemed irresponsible or crazy, by those of temperaments more physically oriented, bolstered by those of temperaments which focus on proven or traditional ways so as to lower some risks and maintain the comfort of familiarity.
Yet as always it is the responsibility of those of idealist temperaments to look at the big picture with its small components so as to offer wisdom for guiding toward the better of possible futures; and those of rational intellectual temperaments to sort out among those ideal versions as to how to implement those which accumulated knowledge suggests as sufficiently feasible. Those of guardian temperaments then can work to check for harmony between these possible changes with the proven and safe traditional comfortable ways, then offer the result to those artisan temperaments to “make it so.”
All nice and orderly flow, yet the endless problem is the tendency for those high achiever artisan temperament doers taking charge of the ideals, thus forcing the running of the whole show with the limited resulting functionality’s weaknesses until the surplus of the nation has been consumed, and the borrowing beyond tolerability. Then collapse, grab what can be gotten, regroup, and go from there.
Can we do better than that, this time around? I’d like to think so, despite the sociopolitical realities’ devastation ongoing. At least in theory, KESTS to GEO appears to have the potential to totally change civilization's connectivity with the vast resources of nearby space, providing the highly efficient and continuous transportation to enable the construction of all the solar electric clean powerplants for the whole world; to provide total recycling solar powered too; provide spaceports in GEO, high efficiency location for conventional and nuclear powered spacecraft to operate from; and even vast room to build high quality livingspace for huge expansions of civilization, right on our planet's doorstep. So ... for details, see www.kestsgeo.com ... I continue to offer KESTS to GEO’s technological integration pattern for your examination, wishing us all the best possible future. Although I do my best, I cannot do it all alone. Do you wait for the big players, like those who built the railroad system so powerfully, to take over and make it happen, but only to increase their power and wealth while limited to tunnel vision? I would like to have a better future than that for my loved ones.
(Note: this energy-related post was copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
20050724 J E D Cline
As the less noble of humanity’s ways continue to smokescreen my most cherished project, the exploration and utilization of the KESTS to GEO potentials, examination of the relevant trends is prudent now. The near and more distant future quality of life seems to hinge on energy resources and re-use of materials resources, although sociopolitical power plays are likely to continue to disrupt it heavily, as usual.
Applying some wisdom to it all, it seems to me that humanity still has choices regarding their energy future potentials. Fossil fuels plentifulness is on the way out, clearly, and to what level its “greenhouse warming effect" will have on Earth’s ecosystem before it starts receding, is unclear to me. Alternatives can go the “high road or the low road”, some in-between paths more likely too. Hydroelectric sources and some wind sources can provide a baseline energy supply until their machinery made using cheap fossil fuel energy and materials, starts wearing out. Growing sugarcane and corn for making ethanol for liquid storeable fuel, and conversion of cars to run on it, can provide some baseline for truck and automobile use to some extent. Nuclear electric power is likely to be expanded again, the desperation from depletion of conventional power sources outweighing worries regarding the extremely long term toxic effects of radioactive wastes thereby produced, and how to cope with those materials. Tree material can be grown to provide both storable combustible fuel as well as construction lumber.
Recycling seems next on the list critical field, and needs to go far beyond the saving of aluminum cans, bottles and newspapers for collection. Recycling takes energy, which also is getting scarce. So, wise and responsible means need to be applied on a wide scale.
Land and Real Estate usage no doubt will continue to be the arena of those who play territorial monopoly-type games of many kinds, easy money, sweet racket: price rises rapidly with no equivalent improvement in the item.
Continuing to fail to utilize the nation’s human resources to the fullest, is likely to result in declaring “overpopulation”, thus excuse for widespread loss of life, from the birth control (including abstention techniques), illness and warfare.
The reality-testing of economical products of small and large business' narrow interests needs to be balanced with some kind of overall perspective humanity- responsible functions. The lofty principle that "if there is a real need, someone will start a business to provide it" has not been working in the real world of business, mostly corporate-interest-controlled. The overall map needs to be available to all who contribute to the business picture, to have a chance of assuring there are not big gaps in the map.
Increasing communication potentials of the Internet and computers may make a voting process that provides much of the decision making function instead of entirely government responsibility, for the overall vision’s creation and filling in of that which makes it all work together.
Insofar as we continue to not use the total human capacity, and focus on strife internal and external, distraction from the responsibility to provide the above-mentioned life needs, may become so serious that major collapse and loss of life will occur, as so cycles of the past history teaches. The KESTS to GEO conceptual design offered the alternatives of a “high road” to follow, which I’d like to think we can still attain, despite the choice so far by the powers-that-be taken choices of strife and maintain status quo of recent years that has cost the nation the finances needed to built KESTS to GEO at its finest. Bewailing the what-could-have-been may be cathartic, but otherwise ia a waste of time beyond teaching lessons about humanity’s reality at the present time. The classical cravings to maintain power-as-is will no doubt continue to dominate what opportunities actually get to happen; those who suggest other possible ways deemed irresponsible or crazy, by those of temperaments more physically oriented, bolstered by those of temperaments which focus on proven or traditional ways so as to lower some risks and maintain the comfort of familiarity.
Yet as always it is the responsibility of those of idealist temperaments to look at the big picture with its small components so as to offer wisdom for guiding toward the better of possible futures; and those of rational intellectual temperaments to sort out among those ideal versions as to how to implement those which accumulated knowledge suggests as sufficiently feasible. Those of guardian temperaments then can work to check for harmony between these possible changes with the proven and safe traditional comfortable ways, then offer the result to those artisan temperaments to “make it so.”
All nice and orderly flow, yet the endless problem is the tendency for those high achiever artisan temperament doers taking charge of the ideals, thus forcing the running of the whole show with the limited resulting functionality’s weaknesses until the surplus of the nation has been consumed, and the borrowing beyond tolerability. Then collapse, grab what can be gotten, regroup, and go from there.
Can we do better than that, this time around? I’d like to think so, despite the sociopolitical realities’ devastation ongoing. At least in theory, KESTS to GEO appears to have the potential to totally change civilization's connectivity with the vast resources of nearby space, providing the highly efficient and continuous transportation to enable the construction of all the solar electric clean powerplants for the whole world; to provide total recycling solar powered too; provide spaceports in GEO, high efficiency location for conventional and nuclear powered spacecraft to operate from; and even vast room to build high quality livingspace for huge expansions of civilization, right on our planet's doorstep. So ... for details, see www.kestsgeo.com ... I continue to offer KESTS to GEO’s technological integration pattern for your examination, wishing us all the best possible future. Although I do my best, I cannot do it all alone. Do you wait for the big players, like those who built the railroad system so powerfully, to take over and make it happen, but only to increase their power and wealth while limited to tunnel vision? I would like to have a better future than that for my loved ones.
(Note: this energy-related post was copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Offering a way out of the mess
(Note: This post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline. It includes focus on saving transportation energy by expanded forms of telecommuting.)
Offering a way out of the mess:
1. Manufacturing machines operable remotely via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet.
5. Everybody works.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go.
Expanding to some extent on these items:
1. Machines operable via internet. For example, a drill press that is operable from a home workstation, as if on the actual work site doing its use. Not a robot standing there using a conventional drill press, no; a drillpress designed and built to be operated via instructions on the internet while sending signals describing what it is doing, to the operator via internet connection. And yes, once a particular use of the drill press to make a hole in a part, that is to be done repeatedly, can copy down the sequence made by the human operator, then repeat them thereafter for however many parts are needed. Meanwhile, the distant human operator is doing new uses to make new kinds of parts, best use of machine and of people. One such category of this would be in the making of the machines that are operable via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency. This enables the whole system to perform ever better. This means everybody, including the CEO, the PhD, the sales clerk, the machine operator, the single mom at home, the homeless man on the street, too. Everybody, no one gets left out.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees so as to be ever better at utilizing the alternate setups for their workstation. This was shown decades ago, as part of the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet and package shipment services where necessary. This, like the OJT, is part of the “raise everybody’s competency” function.
5. Everybody works. Even if only minutes per day, or “digging holes and filling them up again” type exercise. This builds mental and physical muscles in familiarity with the world’s resources, thus available in time of need for real projects to fulfill needs.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely, more than just “telecommuting” once a week to save gas. This not only cuts transportation commute energy, but enables interruptions, spurts of progress, and location of personnel very flexibly, for human efficiency.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go. Although I have only vague ideas as to how to generate and communicate the over model of the “big picture” at present, that it can be done, seems probably, given purpose.
J E D Cline 20050828
Offering a way out of the mess:
1. Manufacturing machines operable remotely via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet.
5. Everybody works.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go.
Expanding to some extent on these items:
1. Machines operable via internet. For example, a drill press that is operable from a home workstation, as if on the actual work site doing its use. Not a robot standing there using a conventional drill press, no; a drillpress designed and built to be operated via instructions on the internet while sending signals describing what it is doing, to the operator via internet connection. And yes, once a particular use of the drill press to make a hole in a part, that is to be done repeatedly, can copy down the sequence made by the human operator, then repeat them thereafter for however many parts are needed. Meanwhile, the distant human operator is doing new uses to make new kinds of parts, best use of machine and of people. One such category of this would be in the making of the machines that are operable via the internet.
2. Raise everybody’s competency. This enables the whole system to perform ever better. This means everybody, including the CEO, the PhD, the sales clerk, the machine operator, the single mom at home, the homeless man on the street, too. Everybody, no one gets left out.
3. Workstations made so that their function can be quickly changed, and daily on-the-job training for all employees so as to be ever better at utilizing the alternate setups for their workstation. This was shown decades ago, as part of the “just-in-time” method of manufacturing.
4. Complete home education for everybody, primarily via internet and package shipment services where necessary. This, like the OJT, is part of the “raise everybody’s competency” function.
5. Everybody works. Even if only minutes per day, or “digging holes and filling them up again” type exercise. This builds mental and physical muscles in familiarity with the world’s resources, thus available in time of need for real projects to fulfill needs.
6. “Work from home” expanded hugely, more than just “telecommuting” once a week to save gas. This not only cuts transportation commute energy, but enables interruptions, spurts of progress, and location of personnel very flexibly, for human efficiency.
7. Every person to have access to their position in the “Big Picture”, and to have a vote in the way things go. Although I have only vague ideas as to how to generate and communicate the over model of the “big picture” at present, that it can be done, seems probably, given purpose.
J E D Cline 20050828
We don't really have to be chained to Earth by rocket technology limitations
(Note: this energy-related post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Written by James E. D. Cline, online 2006/01/12:
We don't really have to be chained to Earth by rocket technology limitations. I'm composing a new intro to my kestsgeo.com website here.
We all know that the only way possible for us to get high enough into space so that we don’t come right back down, is on a rocket all the way up to orbit, right? By the fiery thunderous push of big reaction engines thrusting all the way to earth orbital trajectory, the only possible real way? Actually, there are a couple of other ways possible, and far more efficient orbital access too. But why be concerned with such things?
Speaking perhaps a bit too generally in this paragraph: options need to be known so as to make intelligent decisions to guide the direction our future goes. Resources availability and utilization potentials are key items for making these decisions. Access to potential great new resources is explored here, focusing on the basic scientific principles that would be utilized along with the technologies applying them for this purpose. Then the exploration of the resource mechanisms made feasible by this type of access is done, to help decide the value of the potential resource access system, and the potential changes to civilization in general, and individual lives in particular, are projected. Attention also is given to other significant factors governing the actualization of something new, including rival technologies, corporate financial prior commitments, potential relationship to the political aspirations to power of some people.
Starting with things that are already known and easily comprehensible, we next combine them to create something not currently available for use. Then explore what could be done with it, that can’t be done otherwise.
What we are hopefully looking for, is plentiful clean energy to power civilization, ways to fully recycle all that we have finished with, create plentiful new space to comfortable live in, with comparable nutritional sources, and provide great economy for further large scale continuing resource outreach.
So lets first look at some simple mechanisms that have potential to reach beyond the conventional rocket or even tether elevator space access limitations.
An object that has been put in orbit around the planet, stays up there a long time, with no further energy addition to it. Consider a circular orbit, and instead of a single satellite in the orbit, lets have a rope that is so long as to entirely encircle the planet in that orbit. The rope does not have to be strong, or even continuous, to maintain that circular structure, at least short term.
But orbits rarely are circular, instead usually are elliptical, the orbiting object rising and falling as it rotates around the planet. Its velocity varies as it rises and falls along the ellipse, and thus our rope would stretch when it goes faster near the bottom of ellipse, and crinkle up when it goes slow up at the top of its climb. But that is only if it is a continuous rope loop.
Going beyond this form of analogy of a rope all around the Earth going at orbital velocity so as to stay there in place, we have to make it elliptical going between low and high, to be potentially useful as a lifting structure for space access. If we set the ellipse to have its high point at GEO (GeoStationary Earth Orbit), and its low point at the Earth’s equatorial surface, it is in a nice place for the desired transportation between ground and high earth orbit. This is a very primitive form, of course.
Lots of structural design details to be provided from there; but the point here is that this kind of structure could extend from the ground up to GEO, and be supported by its kinetic energy centrifugal force in itself, instead of its strength of component materials.
This is a key point needing comprehension. Again: it utilizes a kind of structure that is supported by its dynamics instead of by its strength of materials.
From there we can mechanize it, making that primitive “rope” into an armature of an electric motor. The “rope”, now an “electric motor armature”, can be made of many segments so as to cope with the varying velocity they take on as they rise and fall. And these armature segments need to go sufficiently faster than orbital velocity that they produce excess outward centrifugal force to press upward to balance the weight of the stationary stator part of the electric motor.
A very low frictional loss surface needs to be between those armatures and the stator, so it needs to be a form of magnetic levitation track surface, operating at extremely high relative velocities such as 30 kmps or more in places. That also means the stator has to enclose a hard vacuum in which those armature segments slide, protecting them, especially where it is in the atmosphere.
Other objects along the stator structure could selectively electrodynamically drag against the upward-moving armature segments, thus exerting an upward force on those objects, lifting them up from the ground. Those “objects” could be spacecraft carrying people and construction materials up from ground to GEO.
And thus this concept has reached the fulfillment of a way for an efficient and continuously operating way to access space from the ground, electrically powered, and not limited by strength of materials like an anchored tether elevator would be limited. A concept that frees us from the constraints of rocket launch technology, at least up to high earth orbit, from where it is much easier for rockets to travel far away and back. And civilization could expand greatly just mostly staying in GEO.
And thus it has potential to totally change civilization’s usage of space resources. From here we need to go both directions: deeper into the transportation structure’s electromagnetic mechanism details; and outward toward the applications the transportation could make finally possible, and then potential affects on civilization.
Sure, at this point, we need to observe it would be a huge perimeter structure, but also that it does not need to be made of unusually strong materials, since it would be supported by its dynamics, not by its strength of materials, nor limited by the rocket propulsion constraints that at the present time blocks our progress toward a civilization that has huge options for near-space resource access success in the relatively near future.
If this description has enabled you to start to "get it", and would like to explore it further with me, its further development is shown on www.kestsgeo.com.
This option provides a new kind of way for reaching toward a great future for civilization in a near time frame. But what people do with this option, is quite a different story. Perhaps it is because that, after all, we are only human.
Written by James E. D. Cline, online 2006/01/12:
We don't really have to be chained to Earth by rocket technology limitations. I'm composing a new intro to my kestsgeo.com website here.
We all know that the only way possible for us to get high enough into space so that we don’t come right back down, is on a rocket all the way up to orbit, right? By the fiery thunderous push of big reaction engines thrusting all the way to earth orbital trajectory, the only possible real way? Actually, there are a couple of other ways possible, and far more efficient orbital access too. But why be concerned with such things?
Speaking perhaps a bit too generally in this paragraph: options need to be known so as to make intelligent decisions to guide the direction our future goes. Resources availability and utilization potentials are key items for making these decisions. Access to potential great new resources is explored here, focusing on the basic scientific principles that would be utilized along with the technologies applying them for this purpose. Then the exploration of the resource mechanisms made feasible by this type of access is done, to help decide the value of the potential resource access system, and the potential changes to civilization in general, and individual lives in particular, are projected. Attention also is given to other significant factors governing the actualization of something new, including rival technologies, corporate financial prior commitments, potential relationship to the political aspirations to power of some people.
Starting with things that are already known and easily comprehensible, we next combine them to create something not currently available for use. Then explore what could be done with it, that can’t be done otherwise.
What we are hopefully looking for, is plentiful clean energy to power civilization, ways to fully recycle all that we have finished with, create plentiful new space to comfortable live in, with comparable nutritional sources, and provide great economy for further large scale continuing resource outreach.
So lets first look at some simple mechanisms that have potential to reach beyond the conventional rocket or even tether elevator space access limitations.
An object that has been put in orbit around the planet, stays up there a long time, with no further energy addition to it. Consider a circular orbit, and instead of a single satellite in the orbit, lets have a rope that is so long as to entirely encircle the planet in that orbit. The rope does not have to be strong, or even continuous, to maintain that circular structure, at least short term.
But orbits rarely are circular, instead usually are elliptical, the orbiting object rising and falling as it rotates around the planet. Its velocity varies as it rises and falls along the ellipse, and thus our rope would stretch when it goes faster near the bottom of ellipse, and crinkle up when it goes slow up at the top of its climb. But that is only if it is a continuous rope loop.
Going beyond this form of analogy of a rope all around the Earth going at orbital velocity so as to stay there in place, we have to make it elliptical going between low and high, to be potentially useful as a lifting structure for space access. If we set the ellipse to have its high point at GEO (GeoStationary Earth Orbit), and its low point at the Earth’s equatorial surface, it is in a nice place for the desired transportation between ground and high earth orbit. This is a very primitive form, of course.
Lots of structural design details to be provided from there; but the point here is that this kind of structure could extend from the ground up to GEO, and be supported by its kinetic energy centrifugal force in itself, instead of its strength of component materials.
This is a key point needing comprehension. Again: it utilizes a kind of structure that is supported by its dynamics instead of by its strength of materials.
From there we can mechanize it, making that primitive “rope” into an armature of an electric motor. The “rope”, now an “electric motor armature”, can be made of many segments so as to cope with the varying velocity they take on as they rise and fall. And these armature segments need to go sufficiently faster than orbital velocity that they produce excess outward centrifugal force to press upward to balance the weight of the stationary stator part of the electric motor.
A very low frictional loss surface needs to be between those armatures and the stator, so it needs to be a form of magnetic levitation track surface, operating at extremely high relative velocities such as 30 kmps or more in places. That also means the stator has to enclose a hard vacuum in which those armature segments slide, protecting them, especially where it is in the atmosphere.
Other objects along the stator structure could selectively electrodynamically drag against the upward-moving armature segments, thus exerting an upward force on those objects, lifting them up from the ground. Those “objects” could be spacecraft carrying people and construction materials up from ground to GEO.
And thus this concept has reached the fulfillment of a way for an efficient and continuously operating way to access space from the ground, electrically powered, and not limited by strength of materials like an anchored tether elevator would be limited. A concept that frees us from the constraints of rocket launch technology, at least up to high earth orbit, from where it is much easier for rockets to travel far away and back. And civilization could expand greatly just mostly staying in GEO.
And thus it has potential to totally change civilization’s usage of space resources. From here we need to go both directions: deeper into the transportation structure’s electromagnetic mechanism details; and outward toward the applications the transportation could make finally possible, and then potential affects on civilization.
Sure, at this point, we need to observe it would be a huge perimeter structure, but also that it does not need to be made of unusually strong materials, since it would be supported by its dynamics, not by its strength of materials, nor limited by the rocket propulsion constraints that at the present time blocks our progress toward a civilization that has huge options for near-space resource access success in the relatively near future.
If this description has enabled you to start to "get it", and would like to explore it further with me, its further development is shown on www.kestsgeo.com.
This option provides a new kind of way for reaching toward a great future for civilization in a near time frame. But what people do with this option, is quite a different story. Perhaps it is because that, after all, we are only human.
Energy realated ideas subminted to the "SinceSlicedBread" project
(Note: this is copied over from anothe of my blogs, and includes some of my more energy-related idea submissions to the "SinceSlicedBread" project.
Review transportation abilities jedc 20051202 1650hrs
The issue of transportation increases rapidly with decreasing availability of low cost energy particularly gasoline.
To fix this problem, explore the transportation efficiency of all modes of movement of people and goods, from the skateboard to the rickshaw to the cable car. Part of efficiency is the convenience of movement from actual point to point, e.g., home to work site and back. One such mode to explore would be the use of pullbands circulating around residential blocks for lightweight engineless vehicles grab so as to move from one’s home garage, along ever faster pullbands circulating down long street and freeway areas, automatically routed per selected destination; the small vehicles would occupy much less parking space and structure strength.
By not leaving the task of transportation solely up to established corporation’s profit-controlled choices, a wider range of possibilities becomes possible. Later it would be possible to have business participation in providing products for the more transportation-efficient activities.
----------------------------------------------------
Enable fine future for all 20051203 jedc 0711hrs
This issue is that a basic plan for overall future needs to be in place for humanity to have optimism and usefulness.
This idea seems “not common sense” but it is made up of many commonsense ideas. Solar Power Satellites could stop the greenhouse effect accumulation, if there were a way to get them into Geostationary Earth Orbit economically. A way to lift their components and for total recycling plants there etc. would be to create a transportation structure that encircles the earth in the shape of an orbital transfer trajectory from equator to GEO, which has its weight supported by circulating mass inside it moving far above orbital velocity thus outward centrifugal force matches gravitational force; this large 131,000 km perimeter electric motor also uses the upward-direction moving circulating mass to drag spaceships between ground and GEO thus they lift no fuel. Very efficient high capacity lift, and electrically powered, eventually powered by satellites it enables into GEO.
Working families helped by providing huge new jobs and real hope for future of their children.
------------------------------------------------------
Mental-physical exercise, energy 20051203jedc 1856
The issues are a combination of need for better use of one’s brain, more interesting physical exercise, and alternative energy sourcing availability.
Design, build, and make economically available to all working families, a form of exercise machine for home use that requires the movement of arms and legs to be contra lateral alternately (which helps build connections between the two sides of the brain), and stores the produced output energy such that it can be released in the form of electrical power for small appliances such as cell phone and laptop computers.
Benefits to working families would be that it would open up a key mental resource in people (integration between the two sides of the brain), provide a more interesting form of home exercise to reduce the obesity problem, and provide a small backup supply of electrical energy when power fails or just to see how much energy one can provide oneself, as a reality test.
Review transportation abilities jedc 20051202 1650hrs
The issue of transportation increases rapidly with decreasing availability of low cost energy particularly gasoline.
To fix this problem, explore the transportation efficiency of all modes of movement of people and goods, from the skateboard to the rickshaw to the cable car. Part of efficiency is the convenience of movement from actual point to point, e.g., home to work site and back. One such mode to explore would be the use of pullbands circulating around residential blocks for lightweight engineless vehicles grab so as to move from one’s home garage, along ever faster pullbands circulating down long street and freeway areas, automatically routed per selected destination; the small vehicles would occupy much less parking space and structure strength.
By not leaving the task of transportation solely up to established corporation’s profit-controlled choices, a wider range of possibilities becomes possible. Later it would be possible to have business participation in providing products for the more transportation-efficient activities.
----------------------------------------------------
Enable fine future for all 20051203 jedc 0711hrs
This issue is that a basic plan for overall future needs to be in place for humanity to have optimism and usefulness.
This idea seems “not common sense” but it is made up of many commonsense ideas. Solar Power Satellites could stop the greenhouse effect accumulation, if there were a way to get them into Geostationary Earth Orbit economically. A way to lift their components and for total recycling plants there etc. would be to create a transportation structure that encircles the earth in the shape of an orbital transfer trajectory from equator to GEO, which has its weight supported by circulating mass inside it moving far above orbital velocity thus outward centrifugal force matches gravitational force; this large 131,000 km perimeter electric motor also uses the upward-direction moving circulating mass to drag spaceships between ground and GEO thus they lift no fuel. Very efficient high capacity lift, and electrically powered, eventually powered by satellites it enables into GEO.
Working families helped by providing huge new jobs and real hope for future of their children.
------------------------------------------------------
Mental-physical exercise, energy 20051203jedc 1856
The issues are a combination of need for better use of one’s brain, more interesting physical exercise, and alternative energy sourcing availability.
Design, build, and make economically available to all working families, a form of exercise machine for home use that requires the movement of arms and legs to be contra lateral alternately (which helps build connections between the two sides of the brain), and stores the produced output energy such that it can be released in the form of electrical power for small appliances such as cell phone and laptop computers.
Benefits to working families would be that it would open up a key mental resource in people (integration between the two sides of the brain), provide a more interesting form of home exercise to reduce the obesity problem, and provide a small backup supply of electrical energy when power fails or just to see how much energy one can provide oneself, as a reality test.
Energy sources: energy in vs energy out
(Note:" this energy-related post is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Thinking about energy sources, and the sum of all the specific energies that it takes to provide them in an ongoing way, appears to me to be one of the more important endeavors needed in the present day time frame. Yet, there does not seem to usually be an accurate evaluation of all the energy that goes into the devices that produce the energy we use. It is not just the dollar cost of fuel as it goes into the powerplant; this might not be obvious yet.
Abundant economical ever available energy is one of the key ingredients for our level of civilization. Fossil fuels has been the resource that has enabled the building of industrialized civilization. And it is necessary to keep energy available to keep civilization going at our level or better. It is an important issue, yet as the difficulty of providing energy increases rapidly, evaluation of all the factors need re-examination.
For example, a decade or so ago someone made an evaluation of solar cells energy deliverance ability, vs cost of manufacture ... the energy cost of manufacture, that is. This way of thinking seems essential for effective thinking about ways to provide the energy needed now and in future. That report found that it took more energy overall to manufacture the solar cells, than the solar cells would be able to supply in their useful lifetime. The report went on to point out that the places using the solar cells was what made them valuable, since they could be used to power remote devices and facilities by sun power, without having to run powerlines to the distant site, nor endure the cost of transportation and maintenance recharging of batteries to power the remote instruments. Many of the safety telephones along freeways economically use solar cells for this reason, that they do not need power lines run to power the phones.
For the major amount of electrical power used by our country, however, power will go around on existing power lines.
The question becomes how much energy does it cost to conceptualize, design, build, deliver, install, maintain and ensure continual energy input to the energy supplier.
Wind power requires the wind turbines creation, and rent to pay landowner where the windpower generator is located, maintenance of the windmill, and eventual energy cost of recycling or disposal of the worn out machine downstream.
What is the total energy cost that goes into the machine, such as the cost of commute of the employees that build and assemble all the parts, and the energy required to smelt, cast, machine and process its component materials? In this case, it is not likely there will be a cost of ensuring availability of wind to actually input energy to the windmill, but some other kinds of energy sources do have, such as the cost of fossil fuel (including coal) powered generators, and fuel for nuclear reactor powerplants, is a very significant factor, as well as cost of subduing the toxic byproducts produced during such energy provision.
The potentials of Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO or the Moon, without significantly contributing to greenhouse effect global warming, are not presently economical enough to build despite their attractiveness for abundant electric power delivered worldwide, because of the immense cost (especially including energy costs) of using rocket propulsion to deliver the construction materials up there, along with all it takes to build and maintain that huge equipment up there. If transportation techniques are created that enable them to be delivered up into high earth orbit economicaly, however, creation of those solar electric power stations in space, where there is abundant sun power available 24 hours a day, rain or shine below, could make them highly attractive as power sources. A big "if", however; they have to be made physical reality, to be there to be used in time of need. Meantime, we need to optimally deal with what we have already got.
It is the overall energy it takes to provide an energy source, as compared to the overall energy the energy source delivers to the user, that is the key parameter. Now, how do we implement means for determining the total sum of all the specific energies it takes to ongoingly provide a particular energy source to the user?
Jim Cline 20060320
Thinking about energy sources, and the sum of all the specific energies that it takes to provide them in an ongoing way, appears to me to be one of the more important endeavors needed in the present day time frame. Yet, there does not seem to usually be an accurate evaluation of all the energy that goes into the devices that produce the energy we use. It is not just the dollar cost of fuel as it goes into the powerplant; this might not be obvious yet.
Abundant economical ever available energy is one of the key ingredients for our level of civilization. Fossil fuels has been the resource that has enabled the building of industrialized civilization. And it is necessary to keep energy available to keep civilization going at our level or better. It is an important issue, yet as the difficulty of providing energy increases rapidly, evaluation of all the factors need re-examination.
For example, a decade or so ago someone made an evaluation of solar cells energy deliverance ability, vs cost of manufacture ... the energy cost of manufacture, that is. This way of thinking seems essential for effective thinking about ways to provide the energy needed now and in future. That report found that it took more energy overall to manufacture the solar cells, than the solar cells would be able to supply in their useful lifetime. The report went on to point out that the places using the solar cells was what made them valuable, since they could be used to power remote devices and facilities by sun power, without having to run powerlines to the distant site, nor endure the cost of transportation and maintenance recharging of batteries to power the remote instruments. Many of the safety telephones along freeways economically use solar cells for this reason, that they do not need power lines run to power the phones.
For the major amount of electrical power used by our country, however, power will go around on existing power lines.
The question becomes how much energy does it cost to conceptualize, design, build, deliver, install, maintain and ensure continual energy input to the energy supplier.
Wind power requires the wind turbines creation, and rent to pay landowner where the windpower generator is located, maintenance of the windmill, and eventual energy cost of recycling or disposal of the worn out machine downstream.
What is the total energy cost that goes into the machine, such as the cost of commute of the employees that build and assemble all the parts, and the energy required to smelt, cast, machine and process its component materials? In this case, it is not likely there will be a cost of ensuring availability of wind to actually input energy to the windmill, but some other kinds of energy sources do have, such as the cost of fossil fuel (including coal) powered generators, and fuel for nuclear reactor powerplants, is a very significant factor, as well as cost of subduing the toxic byproducts produced during such energy provision.
The potentials of Satellite Solar Power Stations in GEO or the Moon, without significantly contributing to greenhouse effect global warming, are not presently economical enough to build despite their attractiveness for abundant electric power delivered worldwide, because of the immense cost (especially including energy costs) of using rocket propulsion to deliver the construction materials up there, along with all it takes to build and maintain that huge equipment up there. If transportation techniques are created that enable them to be delivered up into high earth orbit economicaly, however, creation of those solar electric power stations in space, where there is abundant sun power available 24 hours a day, rain or shine below, could make them highly attractive as power sources. A big "if", however; they have to be made physical reality, to be there to be used in time of need. Meantime, we need to optimally deal with what we have already got.
It is the overall energy it takes to provide an energy source, as compared to the overall energy the energy source delivers to the user, that is the key parameter. Now, how do we implement means for determining the total sum of all the specific energies it takes to ongoingly provide a particular energy source to the user?
Jim Cline 20060320
The amount of work that can be done
The amount of work that can be done (Note: tis is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
In Physics, the quantity of "energy" is defined as the amount of work that can be done in the physical world. In the world of people's affairs, the quantity of "money" is much the same, definable as the amount of work that can be done in the world of people.
And, in the world of people, just as in the world of physics, that amount of work can be used up in wastefulness, or used to create something fine and grand. That is, the amount of potential work only regulates the maximum amount of what could be done, not the existence and quality of what is done.
In Physics, the quantity of "energy" is defined as the amount of work that can be done in the physical world. In the world of people's affairs, the quantity of "money" is much the same, definable as the amount of work that can be done in the world of people.
And, in the world of people, just as in the world of physics, that amount of work can be used up in wastefulness, or used to create something fine and grand. That is, the amount of potential work only regulates the maximum amount of what could be done, not the existence and quality of what is done.
Global symbiosis
(Note: this is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
.
Life is a flowing process, of inputs, processing, and outputs. What goes in, must go out too. Living beings not only have to find food nutrition, consume and utilize its material and energy, it must also release the parts that no longer are useful. And it is the Sun's energy that powers the churning of the process.
Much as cities do with their garbage, a cat digs a hole and buries its waste product. Widening the viewpoint, it can be seen that the cat's fecal matter becomes nutrition for the plants which also receive solar-cycle purified rainwater, and powered by the solar energy from the Sun, use the combination to produce re-structured materials, vegetation that animals eat; and eventually the cat again gets fed, completing the loop. But most of the garbage buried by the cities is not in the loop, be aware. Remember what eventually happens when a process loop is broken?
Although, sometimes a broken process loop is helpful. Fossil fuels are the decayed remains of once-living beings' stuff of eons ago, too, still containing some of the potential energy input by the sun's energy to re-structure materials in ancient times; it also thereby locked in the carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. For now, we have plenty of good oxygen to breathe, and perhaps still little enough greenhouse gas carbon in the atmosphere so as to still have a nice invigorating balance of winter and summer to keep nature's processes cycling well. Those living creatures of long ago that locked the carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it as coal, oil, and methane hydrates, did their job well, such that it created the air we now live and breathe in.
The release of some of that energy (and unfortunately their carbon back into the air in the form of carbon dioxide and methane) has also enabled the huge jump of civilization over the latest century; if we make that jump significantly further to enable life's expansion beyond the fossil fuel basis, perhaps it all will be worth it to the world.
There is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on this planet, all powered by the sun. The global viewpoint shows that there is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on the planet, and that the Sun's energy input powers the life system of living beings on the planet, the plants and animals sharing the energy in the form of re-structured materials.
Coral in the ocean forms a tight symbiosis, the animal part provides structure and nutrients, while the plant part utilizes the sun's energy to recycle the nutrients. This provides a morphological model for a possible way for civilization to continue to greatly grow without ruining the rest of the world around it.
As mankind's civilization expands to require an ever bigger slice of the pie, the sheer mega quantity of solar energy endlessly available in space above the earth looks increasingly inviting, to maintain the growth robustly and even enable a purer existence, by directly intercepting the solar energy, such as stationary above the rotating Earth in GEO, both to convert the energy into re-structured materials while up there, as well as later to completely recycle the component materials back to pure materials once the products are discarded. Raw solar energy received at GEO could power large mass spectrometer type machines in that zero-gee hard vacuum environment that would vaporize the otherwise unusable toxic garbage industrial trash materials and distribute their pure elements into buckets, for uses as if brand new stuff; thus the sun's energy would be used to reverse the entropy brought on by civilizations' processes, readying the materials for re-structuring anew, restoring the overall process loop for the cities and industry in general.
Of course, it is easier to do things as we have always done; in fact, can we really do anything we have not already done before? There are lots of ways we can squeeze more energy out of the existing ground system, by alternative energy processes. But like squeezing a grapefruit for juices, more squeezing eventually does not produce more juice. Same for natural energy sources. Even nuclear fission electric powerplants use energy stored inside suns of long ago, re-structured material on the nuclear size level, and is limited in quantity. These are the familiar paths, with less risky unknowns for the currently powerful to fear during the term of their shift; unfortunately for civilization's world, those on the next shift are likely to make the same decision, on and on. The only bravado visible here is that of men gloriously bashing into other men on gaming fields of vast variety, to see who is the winner of the pot, and trample on the vanquished, showing who is boss. In that arena, life is in the trenches even for the winners; it is just different in quality. Man is capable of much better than that.
It is likely that mankind's technological prowess is up to the task of building space access electrically powered transportation structures, such as of the anchored tether space elevator type, and of the earth-encircling dynamically centrifugally supported space carousel escalator form. and thus is surely up to the task of enabling adequate connection between ground materials and the solar powered environment in Geostationary Earth Orbit, where much can be built and utilized for civilization's vast expansion without munching the rest of the ground ecosystem's pie to destruction. Sure, it is very tempting to stick with the well practiced industrial techniques, the schoolbook-taught well known justifiable same old same old, thus not risking loss of job and stature if things go bust a bit along the march of progress. But rocketry's space access is extremely energy inefficient due to the need to lift all the fuel's mass needed for the trip to orbit; we know that, and it severely limits our ability to utilize the energy and processing environment in high earth orbit. But the within-reach potential of space access large transportation structures can change the whole nature of the opportunities possible to mankind.
So the will of man is not up to the task; business-as-usual has been living much more hand-to-mouth than what is needed to have business as usual where business has a detailed whole world view and the interests of civilization into decades from now, so as to provide the products that will be really needed by people in the world environment not just today but likely more distant tomorrows too, in case we are there. The products that were not created by the corporations are not there to provide the business, nor there to meet the needs of the consumer of tomorrow. And the corporations dare take only the tiniest of risks; the stockholders tend to care not what the products are, they just want that money to keep coming in, to fuel their living style. And the elite that guide it all dare not take risks that might dump them, nor even acknowledge they missed something important to us all, lest they lose their elite public image that feeds them so well. The will of aggressive action-doing man is just not up to the task, as it is too risky and does not pay off in their kind of coin.
Life is a flowing process, however, and inputs and outputs will go on, so long as life lasts. Plants have long had the wisdom to build as far upward as they have strength to build, and up there to spread wide to bask in the solar energy reception; will we? How far upward, far enough to not shade our roots from the rain?
.
Life is a flowing process, of inputs, processing, and outputs. What goes in, must go out too. Living beings not only have to find food nutrition, consume and utilize its material and energy, it must also release the parts that no longer are useful. And it is the Sun's energy that powers the churning of the process.
Much as cities do with their garbage, a cat digs a hole and buries its waste product. Widening the viewpoint, it can be seen that the cat's fecal matter becomes nutrition for the plants which also receive solar-cycle purified rainwater, and powered by the solar energy from the Sun, use the combination to produce re-structured materials, vegetation that animals eat; and eventually the cat again gets fed, completing the loop. But most of the garbage buried by the cities is not in the loop, be aware. Remember what eventually happens when a process loop is broken?
Although, sometimes a broken process loop is helpful. Fossil fuels are the decayed remains of once-living beings' stuff of eons ago, too, still containing some of the potential energy input by the sun's energy to re-structure materials in ancient times; it also thereby locked in the carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. For now, we have plenty of good oxygen to breathe, and perhaps still little enough greenhouse gas carbon in the atmosphere so as to still have a nice invigorating balance of winter and summer to keep nature's processes cycling well. Those living creatures of long ago that locked the carbon out of the atmosphere by storing it as coal, oil, and methane hydrates, did their job well, such that it created the air we now live and breathe in.
The release of some of that energy (and unfortunately their carbon back into the air in the form of carbon dioxide and methane) has also enabled the huge jump of civilization over the latest century; if we make that jump significantly further to enable life's expansion beyond the fossil fuel basis, perhaps it all will be worth it to the world.
There is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on this planet, all powered by the sun. The global viewpoint shows that there is an overall symbiosis between plants and animals on the planet, and that the Sun's energy input powers the life system of living beings on the planet, the plants and animals sharing the energy in the form of re-structured materials.
Coral in the ocean forms a tight symbiosis, the animal part provides structure and nutrients, while the plant part utilizes the sun's energy to recycle the nutrients. This provides a morphological model for a possible way for civilization to continue to greatly grow without ruining the rest of the world around it.
As mankind's civilization expands to require an ever bigger slice of the pie, the sheer mega quantity of solar energy endlessly available in space above the earth looks increasingly inviting, to maintain the growth robustly and even enable a purer existence, by directly intercepting the solar energy, such as stationary above the rotating Earth in GEO, both to convert the energy into re-structured materials while up there, as well as later to completely recycle the component materials back to pure materials once the products are discarded. Raw solar energy received at GEO could power large mass spectrometer type machines in that zero-gee hard vacuum environment that would vaporize the otherwise unusable toxic garbage industrial trash materials and distribute their pure elements into buckets, for uses as if brand new stuff; thus the sun's energy would be used to reverse the entropy brought on by civilizations' processes, readying the materials for re-structuring anew, restoring the overall process loop for the cities and industry in general.
Of course, it is easier to do things as we have always done; in fact, can we really do anything we have not already done before? There are lots of ways we can squeeze more energy out of the existing ground system, by alternative energy processes. But like squeezing a grapefruit for juices, more squeezing eventually does not produce more juice. Same for natural energy sources. Even nuclear fission electric powerplants use energy stored inside suns of long ago, re-structured material on the nuclear size level, and is limited in quantity. These are the familiar paths, with less risky unknowns for the currently powerful to fear during the term of their shift; unfortunately for civilization's world, those on the next shift are likely to make the same decision, on and on. The only bravado visible here is that of men gloriously bashing into other men on gaming fields of vast variety, to see who is the winner of the pot, and trample on the vanquished, showing who is boss. In that arena, life is in the trenches even for the winners; it is just different in quality. Man is capable of much better than that.
It is likely that mankind's technological prowess is up to the task of building space access electrically powered transportation structures, such as of the anchored tether space elevator type, and of the earth-encircling dynamically centrifugally supported space carousel escalator form. and thus is surely up to the task of enabling adequate connection between ground materials and the solar powered environment in Geostationary Earth Orbit, where much can be built and utilized for civilization's vast expansion without munching the rest of the ground ecosystem's pie to destruction. Sure, it is very tempting to stick with the well practiced industrial techniques, the schoolbook-taught well known justifiable same old same old, thus not risking loss of job and stature if things go bust a bit along the march of progress. But rocketry's space access is extremely energy inefficient due to the need to lift all the fuel's mass needed for the trip to orbit; we know that, and it severely limits our ability to utilize the energy and processing environment in high earth orbit. But the within-reach potential of space access large transportation structures can change the whole nature of the opportunities possible to mankind.
So the will of man is not up to the task; business-as-usual has been living much more hand-to-mouth than what is needed to have business as usual where business has a detailed whole world view and the interests of civilization into decades from now, so as to provide the products that will be really needed by people in the world environment not just today but likely more distant tomorrows too, in case we are there. The products that were not created by the corporations are not there to provide the business, nor there to meet the needs of the consumer of tomorrow. And the corporations dare take only the tiniest of risks; the stockholders tend to care not what the products are, they just want that money to keep coming in, to fuel their living style. And the elite that guide it all dare not take risks that might dump them, nor even acknowledge they missed something important to us all, lest they lose their elite public image that feeds them so well. The will of aggressive action-doing man is just not up to the task, as it is too risky and does not pay off in their kind of coin.
Life is a flowing process, however, and inputs and outputs will go on, so long as life lasts. Plants have long had the wisdom to build as far upward as they have strength to build, and up there to spread wide to bask in the solar energy reception; will we? How far upward, far enough to not shade our roots from the rain?
Civilization can go up, or likely will go down
(Note: this is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Sustainable living systems, including renewable energy sources and sustainable agricultural practices, are of high importance for R&D now. Yet for the long run, going up for vaster resources is likely the key for really long term sustainability of industrial civilization.
Reaction engine transportation needs to start and end its kind of journeys up high, such as in Geostationary Earth Orbit, instead of from the ground. The concepts and technological principles already exist for efficient ground to GEO electrically powered transportation, but the will of the corporations who could physically make it happen, have not the will to do it, instead being committed to stockholder quick profit while caring not if their actions do not make a place for the stockholder's children to live well... that is not on their shift, not their problem, they think.
The tendency of so many people to focus on strife to grab as much as possible, in aggregate has rapidly bent civilization into a downward curve, although headed upward until about half a decade ago.
My efforts to reverse this increasingly massive downturn continues, but the effort is about as likely as trying to stop the Lemming's excited race to the lethal cliffs over the seaside, to relieve the population to the small few sustainable by the as-found ecosystem. In fact, right now it seems as impossible for me to stop and get the herd to turn around to constructive usefulness, as much as if I were trying to stop a stampeding herd of wild elephants in the jungle. Yet the saying goes, "you gotta have a dream, for if you don't have a dream,, how ya gonna have a dream come true?.
So here in my Space Day 2006 blog entry, i intend to both explore the disruptive factors, as well as the positive potential technologies involved in the raising of civilization up, as an overall view in context with the circumstances found currently and in the past.
As for the disruptive factors, their descriptions fit better into analogs of the animal world, than of the rational intelligent loving beings that human beings are supposed to be, getting things done harmoniously together. The phenomenon of "crab potting" is one such descriptive analog. Crab potting is that if one is gathering crabs along the seashore for dinner, if you dig a hole in the sand and put one crab in the hole, the crab will quickly get out and escape. But if you put two crabs in that hole in the sand, they will prevent each other from escaping, and they will remain available for your dinner. There seems to be a lot of "crab potting" type thing going on which has been preventing us from quickly and efficiently getting civilization up. The details of how it expressed in hampering my efforts, and probably efforts of a few others too, involve egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of line and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut.
As for the technological principles that can get civilization to really expand up in an adequately large scale way, it starts with the wonderful rockets, so exciting and spectacular, with which we are familiar, like in Apollo and the Space Shuttle. They have enabled us to prove we can reach space and live there awhile, and do constructive work and research up there. Reaction engined launch vehicles, or rockets, also show us severe limits of their potential usage.
The use of reaction engine technology transportation ground to orbit has been long perfected, with multi-stage, strap-on boosters too, have shown the range of payloads manageable at a profit, and projects which orbit go beyond this limit won't get done.
Significant progress in reducing cost of launch, such as use of unmanned "big dumb boosters" is worthy of effort. Yet the basic problem of lifting the fuel for the trip, is a basic limiting factor for this kind of space access, and sets severe limits for the projects create-able up there to advance civilization, mere outposts at best.
The Solar Power Satellite is one such example, which was proposed in 1960's, and still not feasible to be put up using reaction engined launch technology. There has been some renewed thinking re gossamer-thin SPS, however.
Many other projects only possible in GEO are not amenable to the "gossamer-thin" technology construction, such as the passively shielded 10,000-person each Stanford Torus type self-sustaining cities in space, originally designed for construction at L5 out of Lunar materials, homes for those people building SPS; but also constructable in GEO if using passive shielding that is environmentally friendly such as wood fiber reinforced ice. They require truly large scale economical lift of materials ground to GEO; so, "thinking our of the box" (the "box" being reaction engined space access, in this case) the context is atmospheric resistive winds and weather, the energy and materials expended during the lift to 22,300 miles above the equator and give orbital velocity horizontal push there, for materials to stay put up there. The good news is that the actual energy given to mass lifted from ground to GEO is small, less than $1 of electrical energy per pound mass payload lifted into GEO. Lots of things can be done at anywhere near that figure, including SPS.
Although trips from ground to space up until now have been done using action-reaction engine propelled spacecraft's detailed intricacies, there are a couple of potential very different ways to get from ground to high earth orbit. It would be wise to evaluate and R&D them to the max at the present time, while also pursuing the other paths for mankind, especially the more environmentally friendly technologies as our basis if we remain chained to the ground on into the far future, as we are headed now, unfortunately.
Although I continue to dabble in the anchored tether space elevator conceptual design aspects which began (as so many others did too back then all independently) starting circa 1969 in my case, not quite the first. Lots of potential there, and widely different configurations highly dependent on the actual obtainable strength to mass ratio of the tether material.
However, in more recent years (1988 - on) I've focused on a technique that would avoid the need for superstrength tether materials and beamed or lifted energy sources for moving elevator cars up and down the tether.
Yet, to my amazement, intelligent people don't seem to grasp the "KESTS to GEO", or "Carousel Space Escalator to GEO" conceptual basics; they are fairly simple yet very un-ordinary. And that is the problem in communication of the concept, I think: it is un-ordinary.
Although I don't have nearly the mental abilities of people like O'Neill and Clarke, I do have much the same general overall visions; and I have persistence and integration skills, and much practical experience in making electronic gadget designs into reality that work on the physical level, into manufacturable products, while employed as an electronics engineering technician for decades in complex fields: a high competence in taking a design vision and making it work for real.
So let me again explain something that is un-ordinary, yet each part is simple. Let's start with the thought of a "hoop", the round thing that is the outer part of a wheel.
Actually several concentric hoops, sliding around the circumference of the overall hoop. And we will eventually make the hoop as an electric motor shaped as a hoop, with motionless stator and rotating armatures; but for now lets look at the dynamics of a hoop that is spinning, That spinning causes centrifugal force on the hoop, pressing its parts outward away from its center of rotation. We are going to use this principle of outward centrifugal force to balance an externally imposed inward force. Let's make that hoop be huge, say a hoop that fills an entire low earth orbital circumference above the earth's equator.
Sure, it's big; but not nearly so big as the length of all the beverage cans we make and use each year, which if put end to end would reach back and forth from ground to the moon and back several times, a far greater size.
Nonetheless, it is an un-ordinary visualization, a hoop that is so big it is larger than the planet's circumference of 24,000 miles. If the hoop is spinning at the orbital velocity at that altitude, all parts of it are "in orbit", staying there for now. Its outward centrifugal force just exactly balances the inward force of the earth's gravitational field on the mass of the hoop's parts. This is plain old normal orbital mechanics, except really a lot of orbiting objects all in the same path. it could have an enormous mass, yet would stay high above the earth, supported by its outward centrifugal force created by its rotation; and it rotates around the Earth. Is this agreeable to you, so far?
We next need to manipulate this concept for supporting mass above the earth, to ultimately become a transportation structure between ground and orbital altitude, preferably as high as Geostationary Earth orbit, stationary relative to the earth's surface in its 24 day's rotation. To make it a ground to GEO shape, change it for now from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit which has its low point in contact with the earth's surface at the equator, and elliptically encircling the planet to reach to GEO above the far side of the earth.
The hoop is actually three hoop types sliding around closely together, remember. One hoop section is not rotating relative to the earth, and is solidly anchored into the earth somewhere along the equator, such as in a tunnel in the Ecuadorean Andes mountain range.
The second hoop is rotating far faster than orbital velocity, so the surplus outward centrifugal force balances the weight of the aforementioned stationary hoop with its loads; this speedy hoop needs be made of discontinuous parts as they exchange kinetic and potential energy as they rise and fall relative to the earth. And those discontinuous masses are in the form of armature segments with permanent magnets embedded, thus the armature of our hoop-shaped electric motor.
At the earth surface ground connection site (eg, that tunnel in Andes mountains) electrical energy from outward sources (for now) is used to accelerate the armature segments as they whizz past, restoring the kinetic energy that was used up in their trip around the planet-encircling hoop structure.
And the third "hoop" is also generally discontinuous, being the aggregate of the captive spacecraft being lifted by inductive drag against the high velocity upward bound armature segments, lifting the spacecraft up from the ground to GEO, where they discharge their payload, and take on new space-resource cargo for the gentle efficient return to the ground along the structure.
The stationary part of the hoop also provides a hard vacuum environment for the high velocity armature segments where the structure is within the atmosphere.
And the armature segments are in counter-rotating paired mass streams, laterally coupled through the stationary part of the structure, to balance some gyroscopic precession forces, and to provide upward bound armature mass streams everywhere along the structure.
The sliding hoops need to have a very slippery, low-loss sliding surface nature, thus a special variety of magnetic levitation track technology needs to be developed, one that works in a hard vacuum at tens of kilometers per second relative velocities; lots of potential for electromagnetic induction there going up as the cube of the velocity, usable for induced magnetic levitation principles.
The armature mass streams can be arranged around inside the stationary part of the hoop, and differential electrodynamic drag between the sides of the armature mass streams would provide a small bending force, usable for servopositioning in response to varying lateral loads including from atmospheric wind forces.
Hopefully this description gets the reader past the problem of the "un-ordinary" and give a glimpse of how such a transportation structure can extend between ground and GEO, supported by the kinetic energy stored within itself. If you are interested, many details have already been worked out and most are on my websites and in my papers published as part of ASCE space conference proceedings in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
And the things such a transportation structure can enable built in GEO are incredible, expanding civilization up there, and making efficient reaching out from GEO instead of the ground, to the materials resources of the solar system from there via reaction engined powered spacecraft, bringing back construction materials from the Moon and asteroids, for starters. Building Mars colonies would be a quite different adventure, and far more likely to succeed, with such a background, is another example.
Building many huge SPS in GEO could provide the environmentally friendly electric power delivered to nations around the world, beginning the reduction of CO2 greenhouse effect problems; giant solar powered mass-spectrometer type element separators in GEO could be total recycling for toxic idustrial waste products; Stanford Torus design inspired cities in GEO could be built and occupied by vast numbers of people in artificial gravity comfort.
Isn't this a better goal for humanity, instead of continuing the warring at each other for rights to dwindling resources of a world we have been surely killing? Sure, we know how to make war far better than know how to make these space structures; and making war is so exciting! That is, unless oneself is among the bystanders that get mangled while the behemoths are grappling.
Can we set aside the egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of place, and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut?
Actually, the creation and use of the Carousel Space Escalator and its enabled applications in GEO, is likely to provide excitement and adventure galore, if we give it a solid chance. And thus provide a much healthier world and civilization to pass on to our progeny.
And the upcoming problem of having enough assignable energy for huge manned spacecraft launches in a world starving for energy, gets avoided when SPS built in GEO beam down solar-derived electric power to the structure's ground accelerator site, thus ensuring continued access to space, regardless of the availability of conventional energy resources thereafter.
And, this is happening on our shift. Can we turn our vision away from the addiction to strife's glories of upsmanship, and instead settle down to responsible and equally exciting but far more comfortable life works, such as the vision described here? Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Jim Cline
www.kestsgeo.com
jedcline1@kestsgeo.com
Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Sustainable living systems, including renewable energy sources and sustainable agricultural practices, are of high importance for R&D now. Yet for the long run, going up for vaster resources is likely the key for really long term sustainability of industrial civilization.
Reaction engine transportation needs to start and end its kind of journeys up high, such as in Geostationary Earth Orbit, instead of from the ground. The concepts and technological principles already exist for efficient ground to GEO electrically powered transportation, but the will of the corporations who could physically make it happen, have not the will to do it, instead being committed to stockholder quick profit while caring not if their actions do not make a place for the stockholder's children to live well... that is not on their shift, not their problem, they think.
The tendency of so many people to focus on strife to grab as much as possible, in aggregate has rapidly bent civilization into a downward curve, although headed upward until about half a decade ago.
My efforts to reverse this increasingly massive downturn continues, but the effort is about as likely as trying to stop the Lemming's excited race to the lethal cliffs over the seaside, to relieve the population to the small few sustainable by the as-found ecosystem. In fact, right now it seems as impossible for me to stop and get the herd to turn around to constructive usefulness, as much as if I were trying to stop a stampeding herd of wild elephants in the jungle. Yet the saying goes, "you gotta have a dream, for if you don't have a dream,, how ya gonna have a dream come true?.
So here in my Space Day 2006 blog entry, i intend to both explore the disruptive factors, as well as the positive potential technologies involved in the raising of civilization up, as an overall view in context with the circumstances found currently and in the past.
As for the disruptive factors, their descriptions fit better into analogs of the animal world, than of the rational intelligent loving beings that human beings are supposed to be, getting things done harmoniously together. The phenomenon of "crab potting" is one such descriptive analog. Crab potting is that if one is gathering crabs along the seashore for dinner, if you dig a hole in the sand and put one crab in the hole, the crab will quickly get out and escape. But if you put two crabs in that hole in the sand, they will prevent each other from escaping, and they will remain available for your dinner. There seems to be a lot of "crab potting" type thing going on which has been preventing us from quickly and efficiently getting civilization up. The details of how it expressed in hampering my efforts, and probably efforts of a few others too, involve egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of line and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut.
As for the technological principles that can get civilization to really expand up in an adequately large scale way, it starts with the wonderful rockets, so exciting and spectacular, with which we are familiar, like in Apollo and the Space Shuttle. They have enabled us to prove we can reach space and live there awhile, and do constructive work and research up there. Reaction engined launch vehicles, or rockets, also show us severe limits of their potential usage.
The use of reaction engine technology transportation ground to orbit has been long perfected, with multi-stage, strap-on boosters too, have shown the range of payloads manageable at a profit, and projects which orbit go beyond this limit won't get done.
Significant progress in reducing cost of launch, such as use of unmanned "big dumb boosters" is worthy of effort. Yet the basic problem of lifting the fuel for the trip, is a basic limiting factor for this kind of space access, and sets severe limits for the projects create-able up there to advance civilization, mere outposts at best.
The Solar Power Satellite is one such example, which was proposed in 1960's, and still not feasible to be put up using reaction engined launch technology. There has been some renewed thinking re gossamer-thin SPS, however.
Many other projects only possible in GEO are not amenable to the "gossamer-thin" technology construction, such as the passively shielded 10,000-person each Stanford Torus type self-sustaining cities in space, originally designed for construction at L5 out of Lunar materials, homes for those people building SPS; but also constructable in GEO if using passive shielding that is environmentally friendly such as wood fiber reinforced ice. They require truly large scale economical lift of materials ground to GEO; so, "thinking our of the box" (the "box" being reaction engined space access, in this case) the context is atmospheric resistive winds and weather, the energy and materials expended during the lift to 22,300 miles above the equator and give orbital velocity horizontal push there, for materials to stay put up there. The good news is that the actual energy given to mass lifted from ground to GEO is small, less than $1 of electrical energy per pound mass payload lifted into GEO. Lots of things can be done at anywhere near that figure, including SPS.
Although trips from ground to space up until now have been done using action-reaction engine propelled spacecraft's detailed intricacies, there are a couple of potential very different ways to get from ground to high earth orbit. It would be wise to evaluate and R&D them to the max at the present time, while also pursuing the other paths for mankind, especially the more environmentally friendly technologies as our basis if we remain chained to the ground on into the far future, as we are headed now, unfortunately.
Although I continue to dabble in the anchored tether space elevator conceptual design aspects which began (as so many others did too back then all independently) starting circa 1969 in my case, not quite the first. Lots of potential there, and widely different configurations highly dependent on the actual obtainable strength to mass ratio of the tether material.
However, in more recent years (1988 - on) I've focused on a technique that would avoid the need for superstrength tether materials and beamed or lifted energy sources for moving elevator cars up and down the tether.
Yet, to my amazement, intelligent people don't seem to grasp the "KESTS to GEO", or "Carousel Space Escalator to GEO" conceptual basics; they are fairly simple yet very un-ordinary. And that is the problem in communication of the concept, I think: it is un-ordinary.
Although I don't have nearly the mental abilities of people like O'Neill and Clarke, I do have much the same general overall visions; and I have persistence and integration skills, and much practical experience in making electronic gadget designs into reality that work on the physical level, into manufacturable products, while employed as an electronics engineering technician for decades in complex fields: a high competence in taking a design vision and making it work for real.
So let me again explain something that is un-ordinary, yet each part is simple. Let's start with the thought of a "hoop", the round thing that is the outer part of a wheel.
Actually several concentric hoops, sliding around the circumference of the overall hoop. And we will eventually make the hoop as an electric motor shaped as a hoop, with motionless stator and rotating armatures; but for now lets look at the dynamics of a hoop that is spinning, That spinning causes centrifugal force on the hoop, pressing its parts outward away from its center of rotation. We are going to use this principle of outward centrifugal force to balance an externally imposed inward force. Let's make that hoop be huge, say a hoop that fills an entire low earth orbital circumference above the earth's equator.
Sure, it's big; but not nearly so big as the length of all the beverage cans we make and use each year, which if put end to end would reach back and forth from ground to the moon and back several times, a far greater size.
Nonetheless, it is an un-ordinary visualization, a hoop that is so big it is larger than the planet's circumference of 24,000 miles. If the hoop is spinning at the orbital velocity at that altitude, all parts of it are "in orbit", staying there for now. Its outward centrifugal force just exactly balances the inward force of the earth's gravitational field on the mass of the hoop's parts. This is plain old normal orbital mechanics, except really a lot of orbiting objects all in the same path. it could have an enormous mass, yet would stay high above the earth, supported by its outward centrifugal force created by its rotation; and it rotates around the Earth. Is this agreeable to you, so far?
We next need to manipulate this concept for supporting mass above the earth, to ultimately become a transportation structure between ground and orbital altitude, preferably as high as Geostationary Earth orbit, stationary relative to the earth's surface in its 24 day's rotation. To make it a ground to GEO shape, change it for now from a circular orbit to an elliptical orbit which has its low point in contact with the earth's surface at the equator, and elliptically encircling the planet to reach to GEO above the far side of the earth.
The hoop is actually three hoop types sliding around closely together, remember. One hoop section is not rotating relative to the earth, and is solidly anchored into the earth somewhere along the equator, such as in a tunnel in the Ecuadorean Andes mountain range.
The second hoop is rotating far faster than orbital velocity, so the surplus outward centrifugal force balances the weight of the aforementioned stationary hoop with its loads; this speedy hoop needs be made of discontinuous parts as they exchange kinetic and potential energy as they rise and fall relative to the earth. And those discontinuous masses are in the form of armature segments with permanent magnets embedded, thus the armature of our hoop-shaped electric motor.
At the earth surface ground connection site (eg, that tunnel in Andes mountains) electrical energy from outward sources (for now) is used to accelerate the armature segments as they whizz past, restoring the kinetic energy that was used up in their trip around the planet-encircling hoop structure.
And the third "hoop" is also generally discontinuous, being the aggregate of the captive spacecraft being lifted by inductive drag against the high velocity upward bound armature segments, lifting the spacecraft up from the ground to GEO, where they discharge their payload, and take on new space-resource cargo for the gentle efficient return to the ground along the structure.
The stationary part of the hoop also provides a hard vacuum environment for the high velocity armature segments where the structure is within the atmosphere.
And the armature segments are in counter-rotating paired mass streams, laterally coupled through the stationary part of the structure, to balance some gyroscopic precession forces, and to provide upward bound armature mass streams everywhere along the structure.
The sliding hoops need to have a very slippery, low-loss sliding surface nature, thus a special variety of magnetic levitation track technology needs to be developed, one that works in a hard vacuum at tens of kilometers per second relative velocities; lots of potential for electromagnetic induction there going up as the cube of the velocity, usable for induced magnetic levitation principles.
The armature mass streams can be arranged around inside the stationary part of the hoop, and differential electrodynamic drag between the sides of the armature mass streams would provide a small bending force, usable for servopositioning in response to varying lateral loads including from atmospheric wind forces.
Hopefully this description gets the reader past the problem of the "un-ordinary" and give a glimpse of how such a transportation structure can extend between ground and GEO, supported by the kinetic energy stored within itself. If you are interested, many details have already been worked out and most are on my websites and in my papers published as part of ASCE space conference proceedings in 2000, 2002 and 2004.
And the things such a transportation structure can enable built in GEO are incredible, expanding civilization up there, and making efficient reaching out from GEO instead of the ground, to the materials resources of the solar system from there via reaction engined powered spacecraft, bringing back construction materials from the Moon and asteroids, for starters. Building Mars colonies would be a quite different adventure, and far more likely to succeed, with such a background, is another example.
Building many huge SPS in GEO could provide the environmentally friendly electric power delivered to nations around the world, beginning the reduction of CO2 greenhouse effect problems; giant solar powered mass-spectrometer type element separators in GEO could be total recycling for toxic idustrial waste products; Stanford Torus design inspired cities in GEO could be built and occupied by vast numbers of people in artificial gravity comfort.
Isn't this a better goal for humanity, instead of continuing the warring at each other for rights to dwindling resources of a world we have been surely killing? Sure, we know how to make war far better than know how to make these space structures; and making war is so exciting! That is, unless oneself is among the bystanders that get mangled while the behemoths are grappling.
Can we set aside the egos of academic and industrial pomp protecting their turf, and use of setups and frameups for character assassination of someone they see as out of place, and has seen too much and can't keep his mouth shut?
Actually, the creation and use of the Carousel Space Escalator and its enabled applications in GEO, is likely to provide excitement and adventure galore, if we give it a solid chance. And thus provide a much healthier world and civilization to pass on to our progeny.
And the upcoming problem of having enough assignable energy for huge manned spacecraft launches in a world starving for energy, gets avoided when SPS built in GEO beam down solar-derived electric power to the structure's ground accelerator site, thus ensuring continued access to space, regardless of the availability of conventional energy resources thereafter.
And, this is happening on our shift. Can we turn our vision away from the addiction to strife's glories of upsmanship, and instead settle down to responsible and equally exciting but far more comfortable life works, such as the vision described here? Civilization must go up, or most likely it will go down. Are you in on this?
Jim Cline
www.kestsgeo.com
jedcline1@kestsgeo.com
More on energy and getting SPS into GEO
(Note: this is copied over from one of my other blogs. JEDCline)
.
Energy is a relative thing, the difference between high pressure and lower pressure, the difference between hot and colder, between fast and slower. Energy is the ability to do work. Forces of the natural world that we harvest, harness to do our work for us; as we direct its changes from a higher form to a lower form, getting our task done along the way.
The creation of a windmill has much in common with creating Solar Power Satellites in GEO.
So for an analogous example, to convert wind energy we need to do all necessary to create a windmill at an appropriate location, and connect it to the electric power grid; anchored to the mass of the the earth, the windmill's blades drag against the fast moving air pathway, slowing the air a bit while converting that wind movement redirected to electrical energy increase.
It takes thought and energy and materials (and human physical activity) to create the windmill, and generally the amount of energy extracted and input to the power grid needs to be far more than the sum energy used to create the windmill there. To some extent this energy can be equated to monetary terms, but the complications of human involvements in the processes of creating the on-site windmill weigh heavily on those monetary descriptions.
The vast collections of ideas humanity has compiled thru history (each idea hard-won originally) is the instrument of thought that provides the patterns for human activity in the creation of the windmill or whatever the device contrived to get out work done by the forces of nature. Given somehow the unified activity of people sufficient to get the project going and done, more energy (and perhaps other involvement usefulness) needs be gotten out of the result, than is put into its original creation.
Thus the chemical fueled reaction engine propulsion for ground to space access technique we have used exclusively so far for space activity, the energy of fuel to lift from ground to GEO far exceeds the energy expectable from SPS in GEO, especially considering energy used to build the launch vehicle and infrastructure, as well as in the building of the parts for the SPS. This is why the mid-1970's approach of building SSPS at L5 (equidistant from the Moon and the Earth) out of lunar materials by people living in Stanford Torus type cities in L5, was conceived.
We were on a roll then, routinely landing Apollos on the lunar surface; those who foresaw our need for clean electrical abundant energy delivered worldwide by SPS built there, forgot that the reason we were landing on the Moon was not to prepare the way for civilization's future success through space resources, but instead to block a rival nation from building missile launch stations on the Moon, rivals who had attempted to do that in Cuba recently at the time, and next were aimed at getting to the Moon. When war threats were sufficiently prevented by our Apollo project, having won the "space race", Apollo dried up and so went the dreams of SPS built in L5 out of Lunar materials.
Three decades later, the energy crisis has overtaken us now, and we still struggle to find ways for chemical propelled rockets to be used (since that is a technology we know how to use well, and businesses are set up to do that abundantly) to put SPS into GEO, maybe gossamer-thin SPS lifted on big dumb rockets; or even build them on the Moon mostly out of Lunar materials, and beam energy at the Earth's rectenna power receivers from there: still trying to do it the old way, or so it seems.
Thoughts of other means for lifting up there have sloshed around in mankind's thinking mill, now more driven by the hungers of stomach and egos in the raised awareness we need clean energy more, and maybe it is getting serious?
Jeers at ideas of Earth-rotatated counterweight supported anchored tether space elevators made of "Unobtanium," have given way to consideration of carbon fiber derived tethers of constant stress cross-section, something to climb up and down upon; and if a high enough strength to mass ratio tether material is created, then true counterbalanced elevator car lift is conceivable, the tether ribbons slung between pulleys located at ground and above GEO.
Another kind of ground to GEO access structure is also conceivable, a structure that fully encircles the Earth and is whirling around the planet so fast that its outward centrifugal force counterbalances the weight of the parts of the structure that are not whirling. Its path would resemble an orbital transfer trajectory ellipse between earth surface on the equator, up around to a high point above the opposite side of the planet at GEO altitude. Some of the kinetic energy of that circulating high velocity mass stream that is moving upward, could be used via electrodynamic braking upward to lift the vehicles up the structure to GEO. All electric, this transportation technique could eventually be sustained by some of the SPS electrical power it enables built in GEO.
So, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO exist in the thought base of civilization.
As to whether or not SPS get built there, depends on the comprehension that survival of America depends not on just keeping the rival's rocket nukes off the moon, but instead in the providing of environmentally clean adequate power to America and indeed the whole world, to throttle down the greenhouse gas bringing on cascade failure of the world environment. Will this comprehension exceed the inertia of industry and business? No sign of it happening so far. Even the potentials of the anchored tether space elevator and/or that of the carousel space escalator concepts represent aerospace corporations being aced out by the elevator/escalator concept becoming "the only game in town" thus is an unacceptable thing in the eyes of those who are rich and powerful enough to make these things happen: a "catch 22" kind of thing that probably is already too late to save the world ecosystem if the recent analysis by the scientist James Lovelock, originator of the term "Gaia", the world's unified living entity, is correct "(Lovelock: The Point of No Return is Behind Us.")
The shakers & movers of this nation did not take on the Apollo project to save civilization's future, they did it for self preservation from a human threat; and they still cannot conceive of threat to their supportive system as being of nature's needs for survival along with their own, thus nothing gets done to preserve civilization this way. We need to have multi-focused paths for survival, certainly, including the creation of ways to harness land-accessible forms of extracting solar-originated energy of wind and water and direct sunlight; and carefully of nuclear energy. The well being of general mankind may well be dependent on them getting those who have focused on personal power to find ways to make the fastest megabuck while lolling around in luxury unimaginable by most of us. Can we get their attention enough to be responsible to civilization, a somewhat different focus than making money and playing the ego power games?
Even the corporate kind of "entity" has the form of snobbery called the "NIH" (the "Not Invented Here" syndrome), that interferes with the wisest selection of ideas which pattern possibilities. Much of the managerial leadership is driven by climbing around in the org chart, the hierarchy of people, instead of technological arenas of energy and resources and human consumption, other than considering them as forces of motivation sources of their income and social delights.
It may come down to the old problem of how the people can get the bully mentalities which cleverly grabbed leadership over them, to pause enough from battle's excitements of board room and elsewhere, to much more responsibly lead them all into better survival and even plentifulness? It is likely that such people don't actually "see" the environment they crush, seeing only people as significant items in the world. Felling the opponent, rewarding the ally, and the goodies all default into the winner's hands. To get their assistance in saving the world, somehow the task needs be put into terms of which they can be aware. Put the task into terms of people, not in terms of the vaster natural world of which people are only parts, yet which make in aggregate such major impact.
Again, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO already do exist in the thought base of civilization, and are ready for serious R&D. That is not the major problem.
by Jim Cline on 20060725
.
Energy is a relative thing, the difference between high pressure and lower pressure, the difference between hot and colder, between fast and slower. Energy is the ability to do work. Forces of the natural world that we harvest, harness to do our work for us; as we direct its changes from a higher form to a lower form, getting our task done along the way.
The creation of a windmill has much in common with creating Solar Power Satellites in GEO.
So for an analogous example, to convert wind energy we need to do all necessary to create a windmill at an appropriate location, and connect it to the electric power grid; anchored to the mass of the the earth, the windmill's blades drag against the fast moving air pathway, slowing the air a bit while converting that wind movement redirected to electrical energy increase.
It takes thought and energy and materials (and human physical activity) to create the windmill, and generally the amount of energy extracted and input to the power grid needs to be far more than the sum energy used to create the windmill there. To some extent this energy can be equated to monetary terms, but the complications of human involvements in the processes of creating the on-site windmill weigh heavily on those monetary descriptions.
The vast collections of ideas humanity has compiled thru history (each idea hard-won originally) is the instrument of thought that provides the patterns for human activity in the creation of the windmill or whatever the device contrived to get out work done by the forces of nature. Given somehow the unified activity of people sufficient to get the project going and done, more energy (and perhaps other involvement usefulness) needs be gotten out of the result, than is put into its original creation.
Thus the chemical fueled reaction engine propulsion for ground to space access technique we have used exclusively so far for space activity, the energy of fuel to lift from ground to GEO far exceeds the energy expectable from SPS in GEO, especially considering energy used to build the launch vehicle and infrastructure, as well as in the building of the parts for the SPS. This is why the mid-1970's approach of building SSPS at L5 (equidistant from the Moon and the Earth) out of lunar materials by people living in Stanford Torus type cities in L5, was conceived.
We were on a roll then, routinely landing Apollos on the lunar surface; those who foresaw our need for clean electrical abundant energy delivered worldwide by SPS built there, forgot that the reason we were landing on the Moon was not to prepare the way for civilization's future success through space resources, but instead to block a rival nation from building missile launch stations on the Moon, rivals who had attempted to do that in Cuba recently at the time, and next were aimed at getting to the Moon. When war threats were sufficiently prevented by our Apollo project, having won the "space race", Apollo dried up and so went the dreams of SPS built in L5 out of Lunar materials.
Three decades later, the energy crisis has overtaken us now, and we still struggle to find ways for chemical propelled rockets to be used (since that is a technology we know how to use well, and businesses are set up to do that abundantly) to put SPS into GEO, maybe gossamer-thin SPS lifted on big dumb rockets; or even build them on the Moon mostly out of Lunar materials, and beam energy at the Earth's rectenna power receivers from there: still trying to do it the old way, or so it seems.
Thoughts of other means for lifting up there have sloshed around in mankind's thinking mill, now more driven by the hungers of stomach and egos in the raised awareness we need clean energy more, and maybe it is getting serious?
Jeers at ideas of Earth-rotatated counterweight supported anchored tether space elevators made of "Unobtanium," have given way to consideration of carbon fiber derived tethers of constant stress cross-section, something to climb up and down upon; and if a high enough strength to mass ratio tether material is created, then true counterbalanced elevator car lift is conceivable, the tether ribbons slung between pulleys located at ground and above GEO.
Another kind of ground to GEO access structure is also conceivable, a structure that fully encircles the Earth and is whirling around the planet so fast that its outward centrifugal force counterbalances the weight of the parts of the structure that are not whirling. Its path would resemble an orbital transfer trajectory ellipse between earth surface on the equator, up around to a high point above the opposite side of the planet at GEO altitude. Some of the kinetic energy of that circulating high velocity mass stream that is moving upward, could be used via electrodynamic braking upward to lift the vehicles up the structure to GEO. All electric, this transportation technique could eventually be sustained by some of the SPS electrical power it enables built in GEO.
So, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO exist in the thought base of civilization.
As to whether or not SPS get built there, depends on the comprehension that survival of America depends not on just keeping the rival's rocket nukes off the moon, but instead in the providing of environmentally clean adequate power to America and indeed the whole world, to throttle down the greenhouse gas bringing on cascade failure of the world environment. Will this comprehension exceed the inertia of industry and business? No sign of it happening so far. Even the potentials of the anchored tether space elevator and/or that of the carousel space escalator concepts represent aerospace corporations being aced out by the elevator/escalator concept becoming "the only game in town" thus is an unacceptable thing in the eyes of those who are rich and powerful enough to make these things happen: a "catch 22" kind of thing that probably is already too late to save the world ecosystem if the recent analysis by the scientist James Lovelock, originator of the term "Gaia", the world's unified living entity, is correct "(Lovelock: The Point of No Return is Behind Us.")
The shakers & movers of this nation did not take on the Apollo project to save civilization's future, they did it for self preservation from a human threat; and they still cannot conceive of threat to their supportive system as being of nature's needs for survival along with their own, thus nothing gets done to preserve civilization this way. We need to have multi-focused paths for survival, certainly, including the creation of ways to harness land-accessible forms of extracting solar-originated energy of wind and water and direct sunlight; and carefully of nuclear energy. The well being of general mankind may well be dependent on them getting those who have focused on personal power to find ways to make the fastest megabuck while lolling around in luxury unimaginable by most of us. Can we get their attention enough to be responsible to civilization, a somewhat different focus than making money and playing the ego power games?
Even the corporate kind of "entity" has the form of snobbery called the "NIH" (the "Not Invented Here" syndrome), that interferes with the wisest selection of ideas which pattern possibilities. Much of the managerial leadership is driven by climbing around in the org chart, the hierarchy of people, instead of technological arenas of energy and resources and human consumption, other than considering them as forces of motivation sources of their income and social delights.
It may come down to the old problem of how the people can get the bully mentalities which cleverly grabbed leadership over them, to pause enough from battle's excitements of board room and elsewhere, to much more responsibly lead them all into better survival and even plentifulness? It is likely that such people don't actually "see" the environment they crush, seeing only people as significant items in the world. Felling the opponent, rewarding the ally, and the goodies all default into the winner's hands. To get their assistance in saving the world, somehow the task needs be put into terms of which they can be aware. Put the task into terms of people, not in terms of the vaster natural world of which people are only parts, yet which make in aggregate such major impact.
Again, some potentially adequate techniques for lifting SPS constructions materials from ground to GEO already do exist in the thought base of civilization, and are ready for serious R&D. That is not the major problem.
by Jim Cline on 20060725
Ideas for coping with the climate crisis
(Note: this is copied over from another of my blogs. JEDC)
Although the climate crisis is bigger than we are, we are a big enough part of the problem that if we instead become part of the solution, it will make a significant difference.
Although government does not now want to be funding large new projects, the government surely has the responsibility to maintain an overview of the relationship of the country to the world, and keep the citizens advised of what is happening and provide suggestions for what individuals and corporate businesses can do to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.
As you know, energy, and civilization's waste products toxic to nature, are major worldwide problems now. Industrial civilization depends on abundant cheap energy, and that has been coming primarily from fossil fuels. This has become increasingly damaging to the world environment such as by the hazards of drilling offshore and in wilderness preserve areas; and by the carbon dioxide, CO2, that is the major waste product from the combustion of petrochemical fuels with the oxygen in our air, and causing a climate crisis.
Investing in building the infrastructure for utilizing the energy derived from the Sun's radiant energy upon the Earth is an important way to lift the burden off the use of fossil fuel resources and the CO2 byproduct that is warming the planet too much. These include modalities now being used, such as hydroelectric powerplants, wind farms, photovoltaic cells, and solar ovens for cooking food.
However, there are ways to greatly reduce the wastage in use of fossil fuels, that can make a significant difference and pay for itself, but takes some very different ways of looking at things. Transportation is one area that looks quite promising for this approach. If we can look at a 10 year time frame for payback plus profit, some possibilities come to mind.
For example, let us imagine that "we" buy the design rights for the 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback from Honda, along with any tooling and assembly data they have remaining on that now obsolete vehicle, 16 years into history. So it ought to be a cheap design purchase; obtaining working ones around the country ought to still be possible for examples. I owned one of them and it got 42 mpg on the freeway commute in the Los Angeles area, and handled great on the road, had a/c cruise control and plenty of room inside; and engine still did not use oil up at 160,000 miles when it was squished in a multi-car wreck from which I walked away. It did have some design flaws in the positioning of the alternator and electrical relays too near the driver, which ought to take less than half a million dollars to modify. In this scenario the government (state or national) would provide loans and enough guidance for the project to re-create this proven vehicle in the context of the need. If they are produceable in multi-million quantities here in the US, cost probably would be maybe $10,000 each or significantly less, a lot less if all vehicles were identical except for paint color. These new vehicles would be offered in direct exchange for any vehicle which gets less than 18 mpg, regardless of age or condition of the gas hog. Thereafter, for each of these new vehicle's 10,000 miles of commute, at say average of 36 mpg, it has saved the consumption of 555 gallons of refined gasoline; at a cost of $2.50 per gallon, that is $1,380 per 10,000 miles driven. If the average vehicle is driven 100,000 miles, that is a savings of $13,800, so the vehicle has long since paid for its cost to the nation, and produced a substantial profit of over 30%. Each individual who did the vehicle exchange has a new vehicle free (or remaining payments to yet make on the former old gas hog vehicle) and is saving $2.50 in gas for every 18 miles driven. But more importantly to the world ecosystem's climate, it has saved the use of 5,500 gallons of fuel per vehicle. For each 1,000,000 vehicles thus replaced and utilized, this is a savings of 5,500,000,000 gallons of refined petrochemical fuel to remain in the world's reserves becoming more precious with time for non-fuel uses; along with preventing its enormous amount of CO2 from being dumped into the atmosphere to add to global weather disruption and resultant sea level rise.
Surely this is a lot wiser than drilling offshore for more of the petrochemical reserve's early extraction and use and CO2 production. Can such a concept be integrated into a free enterprise system? Since it is overall a profit-making activity, that seems reasonable. All it takes is the government's overseeing that the overall purpose is being fulfilled and to provide the financial buffering for the long term 10 year investment in the world's ecosystem future upon which life depends.
James E. D. Cline
jedcline@kestsgeo.com
Although the climate crisis is bigger than we are, we are a big enough part of the problem that if we instead become part of the solution, it will make a significant difference.
Although government does not now want to be funding large new projects, the government surely has the responsibility to maintain an overview of the relationship of the country to the world, and keep the citizens advised of what is happening and provide suggestions for what individuals and corporate businesses can do to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.
As you know, energy, and civilization's waste products toxic to nature, are major worldwide problems now. Industrial civilization depends on abundant cheap energy, and that has been coming primarily from fossil fuels. This has become increasingly damaging to the world environment such as by the hazards of drilling offshore and in wilderness preserve areas; and by the carbon dioxide, CO2, that is the major waste product from the combustion of petrochemical fuels with the oxygen in our air, and causing a climate crisis.
Investing in building the infrastructure for utilizing the energy derived from the Sun's radiant energy upon the Earth is an important way to lift the burden off the use of fossil fuel resources and the CO2 byproduct that is warming the planet too much. These include modalities now being used, such as hydroelectric powerplants, wind farms, photovoltaic cells, and solar ovens for cooking food.
However, there are ways to greatly reduce the wastage in use of fossil fuels, that can make a significant difference and pay for itself, but takes some very different ways of looking at things. Transportation is one area that looks quite promising for this approach. If we can look at a 10 year time frame for payback plus profit, some possibilities come to mind.
For example, let us imagine that "we" buy the design rights for the 1990 Honda Civic Hatchback from Honda, along with any tooling and assembly data they have remaining on that now obsolete vehicle, 16 years into history. So it ought to be a cheap design purchase; obtaining working ones around the country ought to still be possible for examples. I owned one of them and it got 42 mpg on the freeway commute in the Los Angeles area, and handled great on the road, had a/c cruise control and plenty of room inside; and engine still did not use oil up at 160,000 miles when it was squished in a multi-car wreck from which I walked away. It did have some design flaws in the positioning of the alternator and electrical relays too near the driver, which ought to take less than half a million dollars to modify. In this scenario the government (state or national) would provide loans and enough guidance for the project to re-create this proven vehicle in the context of the need. If they are produceable in multi-million quantities here in the US, cost probably would be maybe $10,000 each or significantly less, a lot less if all vehicles were identical except for paint color. These new vehicles would be offered in direct exchange for any vehicle which gets less than 18 mpg, regardless of age or condition of the gas hog. Thereafter, for each of these new vehicle's 10,000 miles of commute, at say average of 36 mpg, it has saved the consumption of 555 gallons of refined gasoline; at a cost of $2.50 per gallon, that is $1,380 per 10,000 miles driven. If the average vehicle is driven 100,000 miles, that is a savings of $13,800, so the vehicle has long since paid for its cost to the nation, and produced a substantial profit of over 30%. Each individual who did the vehicle exchange has a new vehicle free (or remaining payments to yet make on the former old gas hog vehicle) and is saving $2.50 in gas for every 18 miles driven. But more importantly to the world ecosystem's climate, it has saved the use of 5,500 gallons of fuel per vehicle. For each 1,000,000 vehicles thus replaced and utilized, this is a savings of 5,500,000,000 gallons of refined petrochemical fuel to remain in the world's reserves becoming more precious with time for non-fuel uses; along with preventing its enormous amount of CO2 from being dumped into the atmosphere to add to global weather disruption and resultant sea level rise.
Surely this is a lot wiser than drilling offshore for more of the petrochemical reserve's early extraction and use and CO2 production. Can such a concept be integrated into a free enterprise system? Since it is overall a profit-making activity, that seems reasonable. All it takes is the government's overseeing that the overall purpose is being fulfilled and to provide the financial buffering for the long term 10 year investment in the world's ecosystem future upon which life depends.
James E. D. Cline
jedcline@kestsgeo.com
A High Efficiency Ground Commute System Concept
A High Efficiency Ground Commute System Concept (1995 version)
by James Edward David Cline
ABSTRACT
This is to suggest utilizing some of the surplus aerospace capacity for creating a backup ground transportation system technology. The concept was an outgrowth of the gas station lines of the early-70's, with its spectre of losing all crude oil imports from other countries, and the transportation energy crisis resulting in our widespread form of living. The concept grew from speculation on what could be done with existing resources if cars could not generally be fueled anymore: how to get the commute function going again. From there the concept evolved into one in many ways superior to the existing commute system based on automobiles etc. It preserves the individual vehicle ownership and possession feature of our customary way, yet uses a distributed energy technology which greatly reduces the vehicular mass, and has inherent automatic guidance and routing functions.
It may be easier to convey the concept by describing its evolution from that hypothetical situation where all crude oil imports cease indefinitely.
The basic technology might be labeled "Pull Band" transportation, in that its most rudimentary forms consists of a person grabs onto a moving rope or moving metal band, and is pulled down the street by it, as the person rolls along on roller skates or other wheeled supprt. The ropes or steel bands would be in a continuous loop around each city block, and powered by the then surplus car engine scrap pile. From that humble, get-system-going-again start, the concept evolves into a Pull Band comute system where multiple pull bands of increasing speeds pull streamlined lightweight shells of wheeled vehicles containing the commuter(s), accellerating into interstate environmental tubes with moving air and air bearings supporting the shell vehicles at velocities in hundreds of miles per hour.
Creation of a High Efficiency Ground Commute System Concept:
Could we have a commute system that has the convenience time efficiency of personal automobiles while also having the energy efficiency of mass transit systems? How could it be done?
As I sat in the long gas lines circa 1974-75 in Northridge, waiting for my share of scarce gasoline to run my car, I pondered that question a lot. Other questions were centered around the wisdom of spending some 80 billion dollars a year for foreign oil, which we just burned up in cars and power stations, and then we had, as a nation, pay for it with our very real estate, the only thing they wanted in return. But real estate remained, while oil was burned and gone forever. Was this wise?
So I began to create scenarios in my mind, there in the captivity of the gas lines, and later. What if all the oil were to be permanently shut off from foreign sources? How would we as a country cope? How would we get to work? With no gasoline for any personal cars, merely for trucks and pre-existing busses, how would the Los Angeles area get back functional again, with people again able to go to work and the grocery store?
There seemed to be a lot of possible ways to explore. I consider such problem by use of analogs. Qualities of ski lifts, cable cars ... a cable could move around each residential block, driven by stationary engines, and upon which people could grab onto and be pulled down the street wearing rollerskates or some other small wheeled gadgets, a skateboard maybe. Letting go to coast across each intersection, to grab onto the moving cable or belt there, continuing on down the street. And maybe a bit further into the street, a cable or belt could run at a higher speed go for many blocks before reversing direction in its own endless loop; a skated person could grab onto faster moving belts from a slower one. Then when approaching destination, reverse the process to ever slower cables or belts, finally to let go and be on the sidewalk next to one's home or one's workplace. Such an emergency starting place for a ground commute system might work, get the area up and running in mere weeks, perhaps. For intercity runs, trains, busses, ships and airliners would provide the long hauls at first, even of lightweight shell vehicles used instead of just skates.
Years went by, and occasionally an idea would occur to me as to improvements and expansions of that idea. Whenever I could get someone to listen, I would tell them of this concept: it seemed important that the country get freed from the burden of 80 billion dollars burned up each year as imported crude oil, unrecoverable, and often paid for by selling our real estate to non-Americans. But I could not figure out how to get others interested enough to build a prototype system, or how to even contact people who could do something about it. I even attempted to write a fiction story which involved the concept, in outline form, "Unfinished Transportation Story" .
I stumbled onto an employment ad from a major automobile research facility in the area, and so wrote my concept up and sent it to that personnel office asking it be forwarded to the appropriate R/D office. They never acknowledged my offering, however, although strangely several weeks later I discovered that my files had been pillaged, and my copy of that letter had been stolen as well as everything I had written on the concept prior to then, except that unfinished transportation story... even my computer, an obsolete Coleco Adam computer, had its transportation concept files all gone except for that attempt at a fiction story involving the pull cable commute system: appearantly somebody was interested in my concept, but not to my benefit. Life was tough for me already, and this was just one more problem; I stopped further conceptualization on it since that clearly would merely invite more expert burglaries of my files.
By then the concept had grown and improved to use thin stainless steel belts around each residential and business block, to provide the pull power to the individual vehicles, which would be lightweight wheeled streamlined shells normally garaged at one's home, just like cars are now. These shells would be pedaled from one's garage to the adjacent street, where it would clamp onto the first speed level pull cable or belt. The person now rode in this shell wheeled vehicle, not on skates as the original idea would have used at first. Thus it provided shelter from the environment during transit, and a secure place for belongings while out shopping later, just as a car does.
This vehicle would switch to a faster adjacent pull band/belt, to cross intersections and ease the commute; the clamp shift between pullbands would be mechanized and sock absorbed to minimize the abrupt changes in speed at each switch to a higher or lower speed pull band. If the vehicle had a very long way to go, it would switch out to further pull bands sast enough so that the vehicle could now airsled on the surface of an enclosed commute tube, with the air column going in the sme direction as the stream of pulled vehicles, very high velocities could be efficiently achieved, perhaps over a hundred miles per hour or more.
The sequence of clamp shiftings could be automated, entirely guiding the passage of the vehicle with a sleeping passenger to its destination, then awaken the passenger. Widh such lightweight shell vehicles, ramps could be built up sides of office buildings, enabling direct access to one's office from one's vehicle parked right outside the window... or door in newly designed office buildings. For families, a standard shell built for a maximum of two people would be connected to a second such vehicle for children or elderly family mambers to ride in, like a trailer vehicle.
The power to drive all these moving cables/belts/bands initially could come from anything that could do it, such as committed optimized engines removed from the obsoleted automobiles. Or steam engines, or electric motors, whatever could do the job.
Returning to the Los Angeles area from Northern California, I finally got a survival level job, in a car alarm manufacturing company. I toyed with the idea that the country ought to develop such an emergency backup transportation technology, and mothball the tooling for it as a backup in case of the feared total loss of foreign oil supplies; but who to write to about this? One person suggested getting a grant, somehow. And one day the newspapers had an article about some competition for technologies for a new commute system for Los Angeles, trains vs busses, conventional light rail systems. A councilman in a nearby area was quoted, which I interpreted as being someone who might be interested in my concept, which ought to be looked at, even though no hardware had been developed yet. My letter outlining my concept to him, address gotten from the phone book based on the newspaper article, was returned, with scribbled note on the opened envelope that the person (a lawyer in the phone book) was not really the person quoted in the article. Again, a shut door. Later a newspaper article quoting Mayor Riordan as desiring to choose to consider only well-proven technologies for a transportation system. Then an article saying a 6-billion dollar contract had been let for a light rail system... big money! No wonder the burglaries of my files, someone couldn't risk people knowing that there were possible alternatives to established expensive inefficient mass transit systems.
But still it seems wise that we, as a country, do design and build prototypes and tooling for such a high eficiency, fully useable in widespread cities like Los Angeles, and store the technology for a time of immediate need. This could be done even without disturbing the ongoing plans for mass transit systems now being built. And then perhaps the pull-band high efficiency comute system could be built into new retirement suburbs, where it could be proven out in real usage. Eventually somebody woud recall the 80 billion dollars in foreign oil we wasted each year, or maybe consider that oil reserves are better saved for future chemical feedstocks ... and install the pull-band commute system throughout the city, the country. Thus we would have the energy efficiency of mass transit systems, and also the door-to-door time efficience and convience of automobiles, finally.
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
by James Edward David Cline
ABSTRACT
This is to suggest utilizing some of the surplus aerospace capacity for creating a backup ground transportation system technology. The concept was an outgrowth of the gas station lines of the early-70's, with its spectre of losing all crude oil imports from other countries, and the transportation energy crisis resulting in our widespread form of living. The concept grew from speculation on what could be done with existing resources if cars could not generally be fueled anymore: how to get the commute function going again. From there the concept evolved into one in many ways superior to the existing commute system based on automobiles etc. It preserves the individual vehicle ownership and possession feature of our customary way, yet uses a distributed energy technology which greatly reduces the vehicular mass, and has inherent automatic guidance and routing functions.
It may be easier to convey the concept by describing its evolution from that hypothetical situation where all crude oil imports cease indefinitely.
The basic technology might be labeled "Pull Band" transportation, in that its most rudimentary forms consists of a person grabs onto a moving rope or moving metal band, and is pulled down the street by it, as the person rolls along on roller skates or other wheeled supprt. The ropes or steel bands would be in a continuous loop around each city block, and powered by the then surplus car engine scrap pile. From that humble, get-system-going-again start, the concept evolves into a Pull Band comute system where multiple pull bands of increasing speeds pull streamlined lightweight shells of wheeled vehicles containing the commuter(s), accellerating into interstate environmental tubes with moving air and air bearings supporting the shell vehicles at velocities in hundreds of miles per hour.
Creation of a High Efficiency Ground Commute System Concept:
Could we have a commute system that has the convenience time efficiency of personal automobiles while also having the energy efficiency of mass transit systems? How could it be done?
As I sat in the long gas lines circa 1974-75 in Northridge, waiting for my share of scarce gasoline to run my car, I pondered that question a lot. Other questions were centered around the wisdom of spending some 80 billion dollars a year for foreign oil, which we just burned up in cars and power stations, and then we had, as a nation, pay for it with our very real estate, the only thing they wanted in return. But real estate remained, while oil was burned and gone forever. Was this wise?
So I began to create scenarios in my mind, there in the captivity of the gas lines, and later. What if all the oil were to be permanently shut off from foreign sources? How would we as a country cope? How would we get to work? With no gasoline for any personal cars, merely for trucks and pre-existing busses, how would the Los Angeles area get back functional again, with people again able to go to work and the grocery store?
There seemed to be a lot of possible ways to explore. I consider such problem by use of analogs. Qualities of ski lifts, cable cars ... a cable could move around each residential block, driven by stationary engines, and upon which people could grab onto and be pulled down the street wearing rollerskates or some other small wheeled gadgets, a skateboard maybe. Letting go to coast across each intersection, to grab onto the moving cable or belt there, continuing on down the street. And maybe a bit further into the street, a cable or belt could run at a higher speed go for many blocks before reversing direction in its own endless loop; a skated person could grab onto faster moving belts from a slower one. Then when approaching destination, reverse the process to ever slower cables or belts, finally to let go and be on the sidewalk next to one's home or one's workplace. Such an emergency starting place for a ground commute system might work, get the area up and running in mere weeks, perhaps. For intercity runs, trains, busses, ships and airliners would provide the long hauls at first, even of lightweight shell vehicles used instead of just skates.
Years went by, and occasionally an idea would occur to me as to improvements and expansions of that idea. Whenever I could get someone to listen, I would tell them of this concept: it seemed important that the country get freed from the burden of 80 billion dollars burned up each year as imported crude oil, unrecoverable, and often paid for by selling our real estate to non-Americans. But I could not figure out how to get others interested enough to build a prototype system, or how to even contact people who could do something about it. I even attempted to write a fiction story which involved the concept, in outline form, "Unfinished Transportation Story" .
I stumbled onto an employment ad from a major automobile research facility in the area, and so wrote my concept up and sent it to that personnel office asking it be forwarded to the appropriate R/D office. They never acknowledged my offering, however, although strangely several weeks later I discovered that my files had been pillaged, and my copy of that letter had been stolen as well as everything I had written on the concept prior to then, except that unfinished transportation story... even my computer, an obsolete Coleco Adam computer, had its transportation concept files all gone except for that attempt at a fiction story involving the pull cable commute system: appearantly somebody was interested in my concept, but not to my benefit. Life was tough for me already, and this was just one more problem; I stopped further conceptualization on it since that clearly would merely invite more expert burglaries of my files.
By then the concept had grown and improved to use thin stainless steel belts around each residential and business block, to provide the pull power to the individual vehicles, which would be lightweight wheeled streamlined shells normally garaged at one's home, just like cars are now. These shells would be pedaled from one's garage to the adjacent street, where it would clamp onto the first speed level pull cable or belt. The person now rode in this shell wheeled vehicle, not on skates as the original idea would have used at first. Thus it provided shelter from the environment during transit, and a secure place for belongings while out shopping later, just as a car does.
This vehicle would switch to a faster adjacent pull band/belt, to cross intersections and ease the commute; the clamp shift between pullbands would be mechanized and sock absorbed to minimize the abrupt changes in speed at each switch to a higher or lower speed pull band. If the vehicle had a very long way to go, it would switch out to further pull bands sast enough so that the vehicle could now airsled on the surface of an enclosed commute tube, with the air column going in the sme direction as the stream of pulled vehicles, very high velocities could be efficiently achieved, perhaps over a hundred miles per hour or more.
The sequence of clamp shiftings could be automated, entirely guiding the passage of the vehicle with a sleeping passenger to its destination, then awaken the passenger. Widh such lightweight shell vehicles, ramps could be built up sides of office buildings, enabling direct access to one's office from one's vehicle parked right outside the window... or door in newly designed office buildings. For families, a standard shell built for a maximum of two people would be connected to a second such vehicle for children or elderly family mambers to ride in, like a trailer vehicle.
The power to drive all these moving cables/belts/bands initially could come from anything that could do it, such as committed optimized engines removed from the obsoleted automobiles. Or steam engines, or electric motors, whatever could do the job.
Returning to the Los Angeles area from Northern California, I finally got a survival level job, in a car alarm manufacturing company. I toyed with the idea that the country ought to develop such an emergency backup transportation technology, and mothball the tooling for it as a backup in case of the feared total loss of foreign oil supplies; but who to write to about this? One person suggested getting a grant, somehow. And one day the newspapers had an article about some competition for technologies for a new commute system for Los Angeles, trains vs busses, conventional light rail systems. A councilman in a nearby area was quoted, which I interpreted as being someone who might be interested in my concept, which ought to be looked at, even though no hardware had been developed yet. My letter outlining my concept to him, address gotten from the phone book based on the newspaper article, was returned, with scribbled note on the opened envelope that the person (a lawyer in the phone book) was not really the person quoted in the article. Again, a shut door. Later a newspaper article quoting Mayor Riordan as desiring to choose to consider only well-proven technologies for a transportation system. Then an article saying a 6-billion dollar contract had been let for a light rail system... big money! No wonder the burglaries of my files, someone couldn't risk people knowing that there were possible alternatives to established expensive inefficient mass transit systems.
But still it seems wise that we, as a country, do design and build prototypes and tooling for such a high eficiency, fully useable in widespread cities like Los Angeles, and store the technology for a time of immediate need. This could be done even without disturbing the ongoing plans for mass transit systems now being built. And then perhaps the pull-band high efficiency comute system could be built into new retirement suburbs, where it could be proven out in real usage. Eventually somebody woud recall the 80 billion dollars in foreign oil we wasted each year, or maybe consider that oil reserves are better saved for future chemical feedstocks ... and install the pull-band commute system throughout the city, the country. Thus we would have the energy efficiency of mass transit systems, and also the door-to-door time efficience and convience of automobiles, finally.
Copyright © 1995 James Edward David Cline
energy ideas and comments blog by JEDClinehttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
This starts a new blog by J E D (Jim) Cline, focused on energy in our civilization, and ideas for better management of energy in the near future.
First will be links to my other blogs which occasionally have had ideas or comments related to energy in our civilization. They have lots of side issues as well and non-energy-eirectly-related issues, too. I hope to copy over some of the more pertinent blog entries into this one, for easier quick scanning by others.
My blogs:
http://www.kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/ My general blog, which has many subects including energy issues and proposed solutions to them.
http://novelwayproto.blogspot.com/ A Science Fiction novel which includes several energy issues and adventures related to them, particularly transportation energy related issues.
http://jedc2006nanowrimo.blogspot.com/ A Science Fiction novel which includes several energy issues and adventures related to them.
My related websites:
http://www.kestsgeo.com/ Mostly space access technology and space energy accesses resource potentials using them.
http://www.escalatorhi.com/ Mostly space access technology and space energy accesses resource potentials using them.
http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/ Older versions of efficient ground commute system technology, and space access technology and space energy accesses resource potentials using them.
First will be links to my other blogs which occasionally have had ideas or comments related to energy in our civilization. They have lots of side issues as well and non-energy-eirectly-related issues, too. I hope to copy over some of the more pertinent blog entries into this one, for easier quick scanning by others.
My blogs:
http://www.kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/ My general blog, which has many subects including energy issues and proposed solutions to them.
http://novelwayproto.blogspot.com/ A Science Fiction novel which includes several energy issues and adventures related to them, particularly transportation energy related issues.
http://jedc2006nanowrimo.blogspot.com/ A Science Fiction novel which includes several energy issues and adventures related to them.
My related websites:
http://www.kestsgeo.com/ Mostly space access technology and space energy accesses resource potentials using them.
http://www.escalatorhi.com/ Mostly space access technology and space energy accesses resource potentials using them.
http://home.earthlink.net/~jedcline/ Older versions of efficient ground commute system technology, and space access technology and space energy accesses resource potentials using them.
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