Re: We can meet all our needs through space development

On Jan 28, 6:42 pm, Willie.Moo...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Jan 28, 4:12 pm, Einar <eina...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


That's why I went with an open loop system. That system must be fed -
which needed 21,000 metric tons per day running through it to keep it
going. Triple that amount to replace parts and account for processing
losses.

The initial 1,000 moonlets provide 134 years of support. Of course in
that time everything will have been replaced and upgraded.
It takes a delta vee of about 8 km/sec to bring stuff from the
asteroid belt.


Hmm, I wonder if you are going from the assumption that most of the
asteroyds are solid rock through. You see, according to what I have
heard most of them are actually looselly bound by theyr own gravity
piles of rubble. This apparently came from the realization that most
of the asteroyds appear to have got to litle density in light of theyr
apparent composition. The solution to that conundrum appears to be
that there are empty spaces within as they are only weakly held
together rubble most of 'em.

I suspect that most of them would come apart if anyone would attempt
to shift them. This means that first we would have to do a very
thorough surwey of the asteroyd belt, and only attempt to move the
minority which appear not to in theyr past to have been shatterd by a
collision. Such a surwey can naturally be done, but it will take some
time as the asteroyd belt is pretty voluminous.


Miminum energy rockets have delta vee equal exhaust velocity. So,
propellant fraction of 63.21% - so to recieve 21,000 metric tons per
day from the asteroid belt 57,000 metric tons per day must start out
from the ateroid belt - flowing from the asteroid belt 36,000 metric
tons a day is ejected at 8 km/sec.to provide propulsive force.

Ah, I was wondering what you were thinking of as the fuel. Lineral
accelerators I presume. But first we have to find which are solid rock
and which are rubble.

That's 417 kg per second - Each kg/sec projected at 8,000 m/sec
requires 32 MJ/sec - so 417 kg per second needs 13.3 GW. So a single
20 GW power satellite with appropriate optics can feed this ring of
satellites.

Here is an Article you may like:

A Solar Grand Plan
By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash
greenhouse gas emissions
By Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

This is just one fault-point of many I could mentione with your
vision.

Not really, I said explicitly that 21,000 tons per day would be needed
by the ring to keep feeding earth indefinitely. Failing that, I said
the system would run out of resources in 134 years from the initial
1,000 moonlets.

This all then depends on that the asteroyd can actually be used in
that fashion, doesn´t it?

This sounds more like one would hope that the world at 2099
might be like.

I think its possible to achieve this. When you actually carry out the
engineering calculations you find that the needs are surprisingly
modest, given the return.

Well, remember it´s the things we didn´t reckon with that cath us.

Write a schy fy book on this, a suggestion.

I'd prefer it not to be sci-fi - but that's just me.

Einar

thanks for your comments. If you have any other fault points to
discuss I'd like to hear them.

Sure, se abow.

Einar
.