STREAMING ION BEAMS
| VOLUME 0: ELEVATIONAL |
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| VOLUME I: ASTEROIDAL |
| VOLUME II: INTERPLANETARY |
| VOLUME III: INTERSTELLAR |
| PREVIEW | |
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BACKGROUND | Replace physical cable with much more viable stream of ions to propel Beam Riders to orbit. |
GRAVITY | Overcome tremendous force of gravity which will strongest at surface; then, it decreases inversely with distance from Earth's center. |
GEO | Reach platform stations at Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO). Rotating in perfect synchrony with Terra, GEO platform continuously hovers above same Equatorial location. |
BRAINSTORMS | Thot Experiment discusses several "brainstorms": ideas for leaving surface, climbing higher, and safely doing a rendezvous with GEO platform. |
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Use "streaming beam" of ions to replace extremely long, very vulnerable physical cable of Space Elevator (SE). Replace SE's climber with a "beam rider" vehicle to use a high speed, particle beam to go from Earth's surface to the GEO platform. TE assumes collective particle momentum accelerates vehicle at 10% g-force. By midway to GEO node (about 17,900 km), g-force elevator gains velocity of about 6 km/sec (=13,422 mph, an enormous speed!!!); thus, elevator must decelerate back to 0 km/sec before it reaches GEO Node. Beam rider can more frequently carry pax/cargo from base station at Earth's Equator to Node at GEO. At 10%G (0.1 G acceleration) to midway (17,900 km and 0.1 G deceleration from midway (17,900 km), climber takes about 200 min to travel the 35,800 km between Earth surface and GEO. NOTE: TE assumes above acceleration and deceleration are due to "net resultant forces" which overcome other relevant forces such as Earth gravity, orbital forces, and perhaps even centrifugal |
| TRADITIONAL GRAVITY CONCEPT | |
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Traditionally, one considers gravity as the force which pulls objects from a height to the ground. Galileo did some measurements back in the 1600s which confirm that gravity pulls all objects at an equal acceleration regardless of their masses. For example, if he did his famous dropped object experiment from the Empire State Building instead of the eaning Tower of Pisa, he likely would obtain results as shown in the table. After 9 seconds, both dropped objects (steel ball of 0.1 kilograms and bowling ball of 7.3 kgs) would land on the ground at exact same instant. Subsequent material will consider a notional force that counteracts traditional gravity to send objects upward. Eventually, we’ll assume ion beams will do this via exchanging particle momentum with a “beam rider”. Since this would be a new technology, assume initial ion beams will only accelerate beam riders much less than 1 g; then, performance will incrementally improve. Let's assume the first step will be to send a beam writer upward at one tenth gravity. Ion beam must completely counteract gravity’s attraction toward Earth’s center and add additional force tor a net result of 0.1 g upward. |
| CHANGING GRAVITY | |
| Gravity’s attraction (perceived as “downward” force) decreases as distance from Earth’s center increases. On surface, we can represent relevant distance as R⨁. FOR CONVENIENCE, TE ASSUMES 1. Instead of measuring acceleration and velocity with traditional meters and seconds, we will use kilometers (km) and minutes (min). Conversion is straight forward.   |
PHYSICS TEXTBOOKS CAN GIVE US FOLLOWING INFO:  |
| GEOSYNCHRONOUS EQUATORIAL ORBIT (GEO) | |
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| THOUGHT EXPERIMENT'S BRAINSTORM-1: ADDED LIFT TE's first brainstorm presents some ideas on how to lift beam rider off of surface before it joins particle beam. | |
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| JP ATO's Ascender (See page 2.) |
| Wikipedia: Rail Gun |
| THOUGHT EXPERIMENT'S BRAINSTORM-2: BEAM PROVIDERS TE's second brainstorm presents some ideas on how to insert numerous particles into beam. |
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| JP ATO's Dark Sky Station (DSS) (See page 37.) |
| Wikipedia: Beam Propulsion System |
| Wikipedia: Laser Propulsion System (LPS) |
| THOUGHT EXPERIMENT'S BRAINSTORM-3: SLOWDOWN TE's third brainstorm presents some ideas on how to slowdown Beam Rider to safely rendezvous with GEO Platform. | |
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| Space Elevator GEO Platform |
| Wikipedia: Ion Propulsion System |
| SUMMARY | |
| TO IMPLEMENT THE VIRTUAL TETHER OF STREAMING PARTICLES TE uses three brilliant brainstorms 1) Get the payloads off the ground!!!!! (Maybe rail gun, maybe airship, maybe something else). 2) Pump up the energetic ions (or maybe phantastic photons) to accelerate to enormous speed by midway. 3) SLOWDOWN from midway to safely rendezvous with GEO Platform. | |
posted by JimODell at 2:14 AM
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