We have significant space launch assets and capabilities available
now. Here is how I plan to use them to transform life on Earth;

1) terrestrial solar power - Sunlight is an off-world resource that
steams abundantly to Earth today. Developing a means to capture
sunlight cheaply and make it useful to today's energy market is the
challenge. This is the first step. The reward? Dominance in a $4
trillion per year energy market that is growing in real terms 10% and
more per year and is capable of 100 fold increase as costs moderate
and then decline.

http://www.usoal.com
http://www.mokindustries.com

2) reusable space launch - taking existing chemical rocket engines
and today's electronics and materials - fabricate a multi-stage fully
reusable launch system around a common airframe and a common engine
set. This is most easily done by buying the space launch assets of
major aerospace companies that are seeking to improve high margin
businesses. I have detailed designs for a flyback article built
around a modified ET airframe with an aerospike engine powered by 5
RS68 pumpsets - and a TPS on the nose. Fold away wings (think
Tomahawk cruise missile) deploy subsonically. GPS systems help
loitering tow aircraft recover re-entering boosters. A single ET with
an inline upper stage (used later as a deep space kick stage) place 75
tons into LEO. Three ETs put 225 tons into LEO. Seven ETs - put 550
tons into LEO. To justify this investment there are two markets that
will be served;

a) communications satellite constellation - 660 satellites each
massing 10 tons in 30 orbital planes maintain polar orbit around the
Earth. Each satellite acts as a communications router with 6 open
optical 50 THz data links to nearest neighbors. Each satellite has an
uplink/downlink phase array microwave antenna that uses GPS signals to
paint stationary doppler corrected virtual cells across the face of
the Earth. Simple low cost chipsets maintain communication through a
wide range of digital devices including low cost handsets and
broadband computer links. $100 billion per year is earned by the
network that costs less than $60 billion to install. Additional
services include;

i) basic internet - $100 billion
ii) banking and financial services - microbanking - $1,000
billion
iii) international shipping and trading and tracking services -
$1,000 billion
iv) telepresence/telerobotics - $3,000 billiion - service side
+ hardware sales

b) 2.2 GW solar power satellite - a 225 ton power satellite
consisting of thin film concentrator high intensity PV cells, and free
electron lasers - tuned to the bandgap energy of silicon - power large
terrestrial arrays at high efficiency, increasing their output 16x
from pure sunlight alone - permiting each satellite to earn over $10
million per week in energy sales.

c) 4.0 GW solar power satellite - a 500 ton power satellite
consisting of thin film concentrator as above - earns $1 billion per
year in revenue for 30 years while costing less than $700 million to
build and deploy.

3) Modify upper stage (from inline booster) to operate as reusable
injection stage and lander.

a) Lunar operations - a kick stage puts a direct ascent lander on
course to the moon while returning to Earth for vertical descent and
landing near the launch point. The reusable lander places 25 tons on
the moon and returns it to Earth - an 8 to 10 day cycle time - flown
twice per month. The vehicle may also deposit 40 tons one way. It
carries up to 40 people on board. Two flights can place 40 people on
the moon for a year. A small fleet opens the age of interplanetary
tourism and settlement.

b) Mars operations - modifying the kick stage to execute a 2 year
orbit out and back is a simple way to return kick stages to Earth -
and send payloads to Mars quickly. The lander and kick stage tether
together and spin up -as in the Gemini tests with the Agena target
vehicle - to produce artificial gravity. The kick stage has a habitat
built into it - launched 'wet' - to allow living quarters in
transit. Upon approach to mars the crew enters the lander - climbing
the tether from one ship to the other - disconnects the kick stage,
and aerobrakes to a landing on the Mars surface. The 2 year orbit is
such that 6 months after landing, the kick stage passes Mars on its
way back to Earth. The lander then uses its propellant to take off,
and meet the returning kick stage, and spend 6 months returning to
Earth. Upon approach to Earth the lander and kick stage separate,
both aerobrake to a soft landing near the launch center - both are
reusable - cycle time 2 years -

c) Asteroidal operations - using the lander propulsion system to
circularize the orbit in the asteroid belt allows exploration of
several asteroids before returning to Earth by firing the lander
propulsion system again.

4) ICF experimentation - hydrogen flouride laser initiated
deuterium-tritium primaries set off boron-protium secondaries of
arbitrary size.

a) This is first used to create 50 GW space power systems that
use Free Electron Lasers to power terrestrial solar installations
without large power satellite. A 75 ton satellite carrying 150 tons
of pulse units is capable of operating 30 years without resupply.

b) This is next used as a propulsive unit testing a wide range
of capabilities

5) ICF high thrust high performance drive

a) conversion of chemical booster fleet of 5 HLRLVs into 35
interplanetary cruisers capable of sending 500 tons to the moon in a
matter of hours, and 500 tons to Mars in a matter of days, and 500
tons to the Asteroid belt in a matter of days.

i) Lunar Republic
*) First bank of luna
ii) Mars Republic
iii) Asteroidal development
*) asteroid survey
**) asteroid return

b) build custom fleet of 'handy-size' interplanetary shipping
- 35 ships each carrying 20,000 tons of payload operate throughout the
inner solar system to support a variety of interplanetary objectives

i) Lunar dvelopment
ii) Mars development
ii) Earth development - build industrial ring to support Earth

6) Factory satellites - bring tens of billions of tons of raw
material from the asteroid belt safely to Earth orbit each year and
lift teleoperate factory elements to them Each year., Powered by
laser energy beamed to them from GEO, operated telerobotically by
people on Earth, and making things more cheaply than they can be made
on Earth, and in unlimited quantities without harming the environment
- products rain down precisely to where they're needed. Anyone may
work from anywhere and receive pay and buy any product. While Earth
is a primary consumer, the Moon and Mars are large secondary conumers
of space made products at low cost.

a) mining
b) smelting
c) industrial goods
d) consumer durable goods
e) consumer non-durable goods
i) food
ii) paper and wood
f) space homes

7) Laser powered VTOL MEMs based propulsive skin aircraft widely
available - promotes dispersion from major cities and provides
personal ballistic transport anywhere within 42 minutes or less.

8) Fuiller style 'Cloud Nine' floating cities - made on orbit and
deorbited to float. Each 1 km diameter sphere is guided heated and
powered by lasers from space - and carries 50,000 people on board.
66,000 cities eventually provide quality food, clothing, homes, jobs
and lifestyle for the 3.3 billion of the world's poorest people -
allowing them to accumulate rather quickly an asset base for their
future. These people will be among the firstr waves of emmigrants
off-world, joining the wealthy early-adopters among the stars.

9) Space homes - as the cost of space homes decline to less than the
cost of terrestrial homes, more and more people emmigrate from Earth.
Financial planning software along with appropriate payscales and
banking services worldwide, allow most of the 3.3 billion to retire
after 15 years of labor - as fully autonomous industrial robots
displace telerobotic labor over the same period. Many elect to buy
homes for the first time, and most, having become used to life aboard
'cloud nine' residences, elect to own their own space colony. VTOL
ballistic transports gain orbital capabilites in this time period.

10) Improved propulsion - propulsion and power systems for space
colonies drop in price to make a mobile interplanetary colony a
reality. This combined with autonomous robots and stable financial
growth - make this the golden age of interplanetary development. Mars
and the Moon gain their own industrial ring - and massive space colony
'parks' are developed throughout the Asteroid belt and beyond.

11) sun orbiting power satellites - long distance beaming of terawatt
and more laser energy throughout interplanetary space - along with
compact powersats operating within 3 million km of Sol, give fusion
generators a run for their money. And provide the basis for first
generation laser light sail spacecraft for interstellar voyages.
Smaller space colonies are highly automated, and reduced in weight -
with improved life support - to carry families across interstellar
distances - this includes stasis and longevity research success -
along with improved virtual reality and social contextual software.

12) high mass high energy atom smashers - black holes smaler than
atoms but massing more than a mountain range are assmpled by colliding
shaped pieces of iron-56 at 1/3 light speed or more. Slight variation
in collision conditions charge and spin the black holes precisely -
precisely engineering their event horizons. A decade of research has
the potential to create a new class of engineered product - one
capable of warping space and time - and building such things as time
telephones (instantaneous communicatoins) - time machines (faster than
light travel) - gravity drives (high gee acceleration) - zero point
energy taps (unlimited energy) - combined with detailed understanding
and mapping of the supermassive black holes at the center of each
galaxy, people can travel anywhere anywhen along any timeline in the
history of the universe - all in a subjective time - measured in
minutes.

With successes in longevity research, many of the people reading this
in 2008 will still be alive when this all comes to pass in 2108.

Human numbers by that time will still be under 10 billion - but the
vast majority of humans will be in stasis heading toward any of 20,000
stars within 60 light years of Earth in their own space colony laser
light sail starships - and awaken to a transformed world in 2228 -
Each star system will have fewer than 500,000 persons in them - and
when greeted by the automated spacetime portals at each destination -
densities will fall even faster as they spread among 10 trillion stars
in 10 trillion alternate universes (assuming zero point energy and a
host of other highly speculative things)

.

We have significant space launch assets and capabilities available
now.  Here is how I plan to use them to transform life on Earth;

 1) terrestrial solar power - Sunlight is an off-world resource that
steams abundantly to Earth today.  Developing a means to capture
sunlight cheaply and make it useful to today's energy market is the
challenge.   This is the first step.  The reward?   Dominance in a $4
trillion per year energy market that is growing in real terms 10% and
more per year and is capable of 100 fold increase as costs moderate
and then decline.

   http://www.usoal.com
   http://www.mokindustries.com

 2) reusable space launch - taking existing chemical rocket engines
and today's electronics and materials - fabricate a multi-stage fully
reusable launch system around a common airframe and a common engine
set.  This is most easily done by buying the space launch assets of
major aerospace companies that are seeking to improve high margin
businesses.  I have detailed designs for a flyback article built
around a modified ET airframe with an aerospike engine powered by 5
RS68 pumpsets - and a TPS on the nose.  Fold away wings (think
Tomahawk cruise missile) deploy subsonically.  GPS systems help
loitering tow aircraft recover re-entering boosters.  A single ET with
an inline upper stage (used later as a deep space kick stage) place 75
tons into LEO.  Three ETs put 225 tons into LEO.   Seven ETs - put 550
tons into LEO.  To justify this investment there are two markets that
will be served;

How international will your program be. A credible program as far as I

    a) communications satellite constellation - 660 satellites each
massing 10 tons in 30 orbital planes maintain polar orbit around the
Earth.  Each satellite acts as a communications router with 6 open
optical 50 THz data links to nearest neighbors.  Each satellite has an
uplink/downlink phase array microwave antenna that uses GPS signals to
paint stationary doppler corrected virtual cells across the face of
the Earth.  Simple low cost chipsets maintain communication through a
wide range of digital devices including low cost handsets and
broadband computer links.  $100 billion per year is earned by the
network that costs less than $60 billion to install.  Additional
services include;

         i) basic internet - $100 billion
        ii) banking and financial services - microbanking - $1,000
billion
       iii) international shipping and trading and tracking services -
$1,000 billion
       iv) telepresence/telerobotics - $3,000 billiion - service side
+ hardware sales

I think you will have a job doing this from space. Fiber optics is the

     b) 2.2 GW solar power satellite - a 225 ton power satellite
consisting of thin film concentrator high intensity PV cells, and free
electron lasers - tuned to the bandgap energy of silicon - power large
terrestrial arrays at high efficiency, increasing their output 16x
from pure sunlight alone - permiting each satellite to earn over $10
million per week in energy sales.

     c) 4.0 GW solar power satellite - a 500 ton power satellite
consisting of thin film concentrator as above - earns $1 billion per
year in revenue for 30 years while costing less than $700 million to
build and deploy.

2.2 and 4GW seem very small. Feasibility studies. I would be looking

 3) Modify upper stage (from inline booster) to operate as reusable
injection stage and lander.

     a) Lunar operations - a kick stage puts a direct ascent lander on
course to the moon while returning to Earth for vertical descent and
landing near the launch point.  The  reusable lander places 25 tons on
the moon and returns it to Earth - an 8 to 10 day cycle  time - flown
twice per month.   The vehicle may also deposit 40 tons one way.   It
carries up to 40 people on board.  Two flights can place 40 people on
the moon for a year.  A small fleet opens the age of interplanetary
tourism and settlement.

     b) Mars operations - modifying the kick stage to execute a 2 year
orbit out and back is a simple way to return kick stages to Earth -
and send payloads to Mars quickly.  The lander and kick stage tether
together and spin up -as in the Gemini tests with the Agena target
vehicle - to produce artificial gravity.  The kick stage has a habitat
built into it - launched 'wet' - to allow living quarters in
transit.   Upon approach to mars the crew enters the lander - climbing
the tether from one ship to the other - disconnects the kick stage,
and aerobrakes to a landing on the Mars surface.  The 2 year orbit is
such that 6 months after landing, the kick stage passes Mars on its
way back to Earth.  The lander then uses its propellant to take off,
and meet the returning kick stage, and spend 6 months returning to
Earth.  Upon approach to Earth the lander and kick stage separate,
both aerobrake to a soft landing near the launch center - both are
reusable - cycle time 2 years -

    c) Asteroidal operations - using the  lander propulsion system to
circularize the orbit in the asteroid belt allows exploration of
several asteroids before returning to Earth by firing the lander
propulsion system again.

   4) ICF experimentation - hydrogen flouride laser initiated
deuterium-tritium primaries set off boron-protium secondaries of
arbitrary size.

       a) This is first used to create 50 GW space power systems that
use Free Electron Lasers to power terrestrial solar installations
without large power satellite.   A 75 ton satellite carrying 150 tons
of pulse units is capable of operating 30 years without resupply.

       b) This is next used as a propulsive unit testing a wide range
of capabilities

   5) ICF high thrust high performance drive

       a) conversion of chemical booster fleet of 5 HLRLVs into 35
interplanetary cruisers capable of sending 500 tons to the moon in a
matter of hours, and 500 tons to Mars in a matter of days, and 500
tons to the Asteroid belt in a matter of days.

          i) Lunar Republic
               *) First bank of luna
         ii) Mars Republic
        iii) Asteroidal development
              *) asteroid survey
             **) asteroid return

        b) build custom fleet of 'handy-size' interplanetary shipping
- 35 ships each carrying 20,000 tons of payload operate throughout the
inner solar system to support a variety of interplanetary objectives

         i) Lunar dvelopment
        ii) Mars development
       ii)  Earth development - build industrial ring to support Earth

    6) Factory satellites - bring tens of billions of tons of raw
material from the asteroid belt safely to Earth orbit each year and
lift teleoperate factory elements to them Each year.,  Powered by
laser energy beamed to them from GEO, operated telerobotically by
people on Earth, and making things more cheaply than they can be made
on Earth, and in unlimited quantities without harming the environment
- products rain down precisely to where they're needed.  Anyone may
work from anywhere and receive pay and buy any product.   While Earth
is a primary consumer, the Moon and Mars are large secondary conumers
of space made products at low cost.

      a) mining
      b) smelting
      c) industrial goods
      d) consumer durable goods
      e) consumer non-durable goods
           i) food
          ii) paper and wood
      f) space homes

   7) Laser powered VTOL MEMs based propulsive skin aircraft widely
available - promotes dispersion from major cities and provides
personal ballistic transport anywhere within 42 minutes or less.

Propulsive skin is an interesting concept. There is research I know on

  Fuiller style 'Cloud Nine' floating cities - made on orbit and
deorbited to float.  Each 1 km diameter sphere is guided heated and
powered by lasers from space - and carries 50,000 people on board.
66,000 cities eventually provide quality food, clothing, homes, jobs
and lifestyle for the 3.3 billion of the world's poorest people -
allowing them to accumulate rather quickly an asset base for their
future.   These people will be among the firstr waves of emmigrants
off-world, joining the wealthy early-adopters among the stars.

  9) Space homes - as the cost of space homes decline to less than the
cost of terrestrial homes, more and more people emmigrate from Earth.
Financial planning software along with appropriate payscales and
banking services worldwide, allow most of the 3.3 billion to retire
after 15 years of labor - as fully autonomous industrial robots
displace telerobotic labor over the same period.  Many elect to buy
homes for the first time, and most, having become used to life aboard
'cloud nine' residences, elect to own their own space colony.  VTOL
ballistic transports gain orbital capabilites in this time period.

 10) Improved propulsion - propulsion and power systems for space
colonies drop in price to make a mobile interplanetary colony a
reality.  This combined with autonomous robots and stable financial
growth - make this the golden age of interplanetary development.  Mars
and the Moon gain their own industrial ring - and massive space colony
'parks' are developed throughout the Asteroid belt and beyond.

 11) sun orbiting power satellites - long distance beaming of terawatt
and more laser energy throughout interplanetary space - along with
compact powersats operating within 3 million km of Sol, give fusion
generators a run for their money.  And provide the basis for first
generation laser light sail spacecraft for interstellar voyages.
Smaller space colonies are highly automated, and reduced in weight -
with improved life support - to carry families across interstellar
distances - this includes stasis and longevity research success -
along with improved virtual reality and social contextual software.

 12)  high mass high energy atom smashers - black holes smaler than
atoms but massing more than a mountain range are assmpled by colliding
shaped pieces of iron-56 at 1/3 light speed or more.  Slight variation
in collision conditions charge and spin the black holes precisely -
precisely engineering their event horizons.  A decade of research has
the potential to create a new class of engineered product - one
capable of warping space and time - and building such things as time
telephones (instantaneous ...

I think you need to keep the far future vision in mind, yes. but tou

On 27 Apr, 19:29, Williamknowsbest <William.M...@gmail.com> wrote:

We have significant space launch assets and capabilities available
now. Here is how I plan to use them to transform life on Earth;

1) terrestrial solar power - Sunlight is an off-world resource that
steams abundantly to Earth today. Developing a means to capture
sunlight cheaply and make it useful to today's energy market is the
challenge. This is the first step. The reward? Dominance in a $4
trillion per year energy market that is growing in real terms 10% and
more per year and is capable of 100 fold increase as costs moderate
and then decline.

http://www.usoal.com
http://www.mokindustries.com

I have just one comment on the enginerring. I have looked at the
references. I would have preferred flat morrors on the ground
reflecting up to a tower raher than a parabolic assemblage on the
ground. A minor detail perhaps, but it is minor details that will
affect costings in a big way.

I have a comment on your first reference, and it is this. Hydrogen is
also required to convert heavy crudes into gasolene. The new refinary
near Homs in Syria will handle Venezuelan crude, this as all oilmen
know is a exceptionally heavy tarry crude.

We need to have a plan for the intoduction of the hydrogen economy. We
need a number of intermediate goals. Eventually all our energy will be
pure hydrogen derived from solar power. Hydrogen will exist alongside
oil for quite a period of time. We need to plan for this period, the
use of hydrogen in refining will come at an early point. We will need
oil for lubrication and petrochemicals for a long time.

2) reusable space launch - taking existing chemical rocket engines
and today's electronics and materials - fabricate a multi-stage fully
reusable launch system around a common airframe and a common engine
set. This is most easily done by buying the space launch assets of
major aerospace companies that are seeking to improve high margin
businesses. I have detailed designs for a flyback article built
around a modified ET airframe with an aerospike engine powered by 5
RS68 pumpsets - and a TPS on the nose. Fold away wings (think
Tomahawk cruise missile) deploy subsonically. GPS systems help
loitering tow aircraft recover re-entering boosters. A single ET with
an inline upper stage (used later as a deep space kick stage) place 75
tons into LEO. Three ETs put 225 tons into LEO. Seven ETs - put 550
tons into LEO. To justify this investment there are two markets that
will be served;

How international will your program be. A credible program as far as I
can see must be a blobal one.

a) communications satellite constellation - 660 satellites each
massing 10 tons in 30 orbital planes maintain polar orbit around the
Earth. Each satellite acts as a communications router with 6 open
optical 50 THz data links to nearest neighbors. Each satellite has an
uplink/downlink phase array microwave antenna that uses GPS signals to
paint stationary doppler corrected virtual cells across the face of
the Earth. Simple low cost chipsets maintain communication through a
wide range of digital devices including low cost handsets and
broadband computer links. $100 billion per year is earned by the
network that costs less than $60 billion to install. Additional
services include;

i) basic internet - $100 billion
ii) banking and financial services - microbanking - $1,000
billion
iii) international shipping and trading and tracking services -
$1,000 billion
iv) telepresence/telerobotics - $3,000 billiion - service side
+ hardware sales

I think you will have a job doing this from space. Fiber optics is the
dominany technology. This is pushing up to 800GHz per strand

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,193344,00.html 100GHz with 10
colors. 80 colors will be 800GHz

Any satellite system is going to be pushed to keep up with such speed.
The problem would seem to be not the speed of trunk networks but in
transmission from node to computer.

b) 2.2 GW solar power satellite - a 225 ton power satellite
consisting of thin film concentrator high intensity PV cells, and free
electron lasers - tuned to the bandgap energy of silicon - power large
terrestrial arrays at high efficiency, increasing their output 16x
from pure sunlight alone - permiting each satellite to earn over $10
million per week in energy sales.

c) 4.0 GW solar power satellite - a 500 ton power satellite
consisting of thin film concentrator as above - earns $1 billion per
year in revenue for 30 years while costing less than $700 million to
build and deploy.

2.2 and 4GW seem very small. Feasibility studies. I would be looking
to demonstrate highly sterrable beams. That to me would be the main
point. 4GW is small beer in global energy terms.

In fact 4GW would probably be what you might need to power a Nerva
type engine. At 10km/s 4GW represents 4*10^5N or about 40 tons of
thrust. If you were to concentrate the radiation into 1m square
(perfectly possible using phase locking) you would have the Nerva
engine - 10km/sec using LH as working fluid without any nuclear
reactor.

Feasibly study for this. Power aircraft too using this radiation. I
think 2.2/4 GW is significant and would represent a feasibility study,
but would consitute quite a small fraction of terrestrial capacity.

3) Modify upper stage (from inline booster) to operate as reusable
injection stage and lander.

a) Lunar operations - a kick stage puts a direct ascent lander on
course to the moon while returning to Earth for vertical descent and
landing near the launch point. The reusable lander places 25 tons on
the moon and returns it to Earth - an 8 to 10 day cycle time - flown
twice per month. The vehicle may also deposit 40 tons one way. It
carries up to 40 people on board. Two flights can place 40 people on
the moon for a year. A small fleet opens the age of interplanetary
tourism and settlement.

b) Mars operations - modifying the kick stage to execute a 2 year
orbit out and back is a simple way to return kick stages to Earth -
and send payloads to Mars quickly. The lander and kick stage tether
together and spin up -as in the Gemini tests with the Agena target
vehicle - to produce artificial gravity. The kick stage has a habitat
built into it - launched 'wet' - to allow living quarters in
transit. Upon approach to mars the crew enters the lander - climbing
the tether from one ship to the other - disconnects the kick stage,
and aerobrakes to a landing on the Mars surface. The 2 year orbit is
such that 6 months after landing, the kick stage passes Mars on its
way back to Earth. The lander then uses its propellant to take off,
and meet the returning kick stage, and spend 6 months returning to
Earth. Upon approach to Earth the lander and kick stage separate,
both aerobrake to a soft landing near the launch center - both are
reusable - cycle time 2 years -

c) Asteroidal operations - using the lander propulsion system to
circularize the orbit in the asteroid belt allows exploration of
several asteroids before returning to Earth by firing the lander
propulsion system again.

4) ICF experimentation - hydrogen flouride laser initiated
deuterium-tritium primaries set off boron-protium secondaries of
arbitrary size.

He3 is the thing to use in space, as I have explained.

a) This is first used to create 50 GW space power systems that
use Free Electron Lasers to power terrestrial solar installations
without large power satellite. A 75 ton satellite carrying 150 tons
of pulse units is capable of operating 30 years without resupply.

b) This is next used as a propulsive unit testing a wide range
of capabilities

5) ICF high thrust high performance drive

a) conversion of chemical booster fleet of 5 HLRLVs into 35
interplanetary cruisers capable of sending 500 tons to the moon in a
matter of hours, and 500 tons to Mars in a matter of days, and 500
tons to the Asteroid belt in a matter of days.

i) Lunar Republic
*) First bank of luna
ii) Mars Republic
iii) Asteroidal development
*) asteroid survey
**) asteroid return

b) build custom fleet of 'handy-size' interplanetary shipping
- 35 ships each carrying 20,000 tons of payload operate throughout the
inner solar system to support a variety of interplanetary objectives

i) Lunar dvelopment
ii) Mars development
ii) Earth development - build industrial ring to support Earth

6) Factory satellites - bring tens of billions of tons of raw
material from the asteroid belt safely to Earth orbit each year and
lift teleoperate factory elements to them Each year., Powered by
laser energy beamed to them from GEO, operated telerobotically by
people on Earth, and making things more cheaply than they can be made
on Earth, and in unlimited quantities without harming the environment
- products rain down precisely to where they're needed. Anyone may
work from anywhere and receive pay and buy any product. While Earth
is a primary consumer, the Moon and Mars are large secondary conumers
of space made products at low cost.

a) mining
b) smelting
c) industrial goods
d) consumer durable goods
e) consumer non-durable goods
i) food
ii) paper and wood
f) space homes

7) Laser powered VTOL MEMs based propulsive skin aircraft widely
available - promotes dispersion from major cities and provides
personal ballistic transport anywhere within 42 minutes or less.

Propulsive skin is an interesting concept. There is research I know on
skin to reduce drag. In point of fact though electric propulsion might
mean that you could get away with conventional propellors.

8) Fuiller style 'Cloud Nine' floating cities - made on orbit and
deorbited to float. Each 1 km diameter sphere is guided heated and
powered by lasers from space - and carries 50,000 people on board.
66,000 cities eventually provide quality food, clothing, homes, jobs
and lifestyle for the 3.3 billion of the world's poorest people -
allowing them to accumulate rather quickly an asset base for their
future. These people will be among the firstr waves of emmigrants
off-world, joining the wealthy early-adopters among the stars.

9) Space homes - as the cost of space homes decline to less than the
cost of terrestrial homes, more and more people emmigrate from Earth.
Financial planning software along with appropriate payscales and
banking services worldwide, allow most of the 3.3 billion to retire
after 15 years of labor - as fully autonomous industrial robots
displace telerobotic labor over the same period. Many elect to buy
homes for the first time, and most, having become used to life aboard
'cloud nine' residences, elect to own their own space colony. VTOL
ballistic transports gain orbital capabilites in this time period.

10) Improved propulsion - propulsion and power systems for space
colonies drop in price to make a mobile interplanetary colony a
reality. This combined with autonomous robots and stable financial
growth - make this the golden age of interplanetary development. Mars
and the Moon gain their own industrial ring - and massive space colony
'parks' are developed throughout the Asteroid belt and beyond.

11) sun orbiting power satellites - long distance beaming of terawatt
and more laser energy throughout interplanetary space - along with
compact powersats operating within 3 million km of Sol, give fusion
generators a run for their money. And provide the basis for first
generation laser light sail spacecraft for interstellar voyages.
Smaller space colonies are highly automated, and reduced in weight -
with improved life support - to carry families across interstellar
distances - this includes stasis and longevity research success -
along with improved virtual reality and social contextual software.

12) high mass high energy atom smashers - black holes smaler than
atoms but massing more than a mountain range are assmpled by colliding
shaped pieces of iron-56 at 1/3 light speed or more. Slight variation
in collision conditions charge and spin the black holes precisely -
precisely engineering their event horizons. A decade of research has
the potential to create a new class of engineered product - one
capable of warping space and time - and building such things as time
telephones (instantaneous ...

I think you need to keep the far future vision in mind, yes. but tou
also need to think in terms of pushing present day technology in the
near term, and think of what you can do in terms of feasibility
studies.

I also think that in terms of launcher development, you need to think
internationally, towards Arianespace and Energia.

- Ian Parker

interesting that you both think I'm against helium 3 merely because i
take certain realities into account.

The first reality is that we don't know how to do fusion - other than
in a nuclear weapon. however, recent declassified literature
indicates we might very likely build a hydrogen-flouride laser that
triggers a deuterium tritium primary that in turn sets off an
aneutronic secondary of any sort - in an ICF process.

So, I assume that's solved. The supply problem for helium3 is not
solved.

he3 has a lot higher specfici energy than boron - but both are awesome
when compared to chemical fuels.

Boron

the world currently produces over 1 million tons per year of the right
isotope of boron to do a protium boron anuetronic reaction - at a cost
of $7 million per ton. It would take an ICF nuclear pulse spacecraft
burning boron protium mix (borane) 1,000 tons of the stuff, costing $7
billion to return 25 billion tons of material from the asteroid belt
each year - at a cost of less than $100 per ton..

Helium 3

the world currently produces zero tons per year of helium three, there
is no market for it since none exists in sufficient quantities for a
market to form - even so a $12 billion per year effort might gather
the bulk of the 5 tons of helium 3 that exists in ALL the worlds
natural gas production - basically you pay to process ALL the world's
1.1 billion tons of natural gas, separating out the helium, and then
separating out the helium 3 isotope from that. - that's $2.4 billion
per ton production cost. It would take an ICF nuclear pulse
spacecraft burning he3 200 tons of he3 per year to return the same 25
bilion tons of material from the asteroid belt each year - the cost is
indeterminant since there is no helium 3 available on earth to do
that.

Obviously for anyone who has solved the ICF nuclear pulse rocket
problem they'll use boron for the bulk of the early flights, and
reserve helium 3 - if they trouble themselves to gather it - for high
energy flight - to the outer solar system.

think of boron as the deisel fuel and helium 3 as the racing fuel..
and lithium 6 as premium gasoline.

Some have worried about our current economic and political situation
and opined that we won't survive to see anything as visionary as food
from space.

To get a thing, you must work for a thing. Nothing is ever handed to
you. You've got to work for it.

So, the only thing I would ask anyone who is unhappy with the way the
world is, what are you doing to make it a better place? Look around
you. Do *something* instead of whining. Pick up a broom and sweep
out your house. Look around for something to do and do the right
thing, as often as you can as well as you can.

As far as my accomplishments. I've sponsored eight energy projects
around the world with my technology and they are all in various stages
of construciton. The first will be operational August 2011..

I have put out three proposals this week in the USA. One to the
Defense Energy Supply Center for 200 million gallons per month of DOD
jet fue, we'll know about that in July, and start producing in 2013 on
that onel.

Another to an aircraft manufacturer who will offer forward contracts
for jet fuel with each jet sold for a percentage of the selling price
paid when the jet is purchase. Since it takes 5 years to build a jet
once ordered, and it takes me 5 years to build a facility at a
greenfield site, there's a match. When an airline buys a jet, they
also buy a portion of a facility to supply jet fuel for the jet, so
they end up paying discounted prices. Actually, jet buyers are
smarter than that. They asked to buy enough capacity jet fuel to sell
fuel to others, to end up zeroing out their fuel price for 7 years.
They don't even have to take physical delivery of my fuel to benefit.
I sell it at market rates and give them the difference. At the end of
five years, they renew or buy a new jet.. A sweet deal.for everyone,
manufacturer of jets, operator of jets, the travelling public, me..
lol.

A national printer is a big user of electricity and natural gas. They
generate their own electricity with natural gas, and then use heat to
dry the ink and paper and so forth. Very energy intensive. We're
working on a deal to take the methane produced in my jet fuel plants,
pipe it over to the Henry Hub, and sell it. Since money now is worth
more to me than money later, I have worked a deal with these guys to
buy natural gas at a discounted price for a portion of it. That way
when I produce it, they again sell the excess and zero out their
energy costs. They do pay a small premium today howver. Again a win
win situation. I get my facility built and revenue today from it by
discounting a portion of the revenue to an energy intensive customer,
and that customer gets to zero out their fuel costs.

Of course we can look at how my technology affects stocks and move
forward that way, and bring about change. I have mentioned several
times my plans for Sunoco and Westmoreland coal. A great opportunity
to create value generating a 30 to 1 return in a matter of months by
merging these two companies..

I have also looked at airlines. Southwest Airlines is worth about
$9.5 billion and falling. They've got 500 airplanes that burn 350
million gallons of jet fuel per month. Just the size of one of my
facilities. I build a facility for $8 billion and produce jet fuel
for $0.20 per gallon, and make 370 million gallons of jet fuel per
month. I sell 20 million gallons at market rates, and that pays for
the whole thing. I burn the other 350 million gallons - and add $15
billion per year to the bottom line of the company. At 20x earnings
that's $300 billion increase in value. Well worth the $17.5 billion
acquisition and construciton costs.

Again, the airline doesn't need to take physical delivery to benefit.
They trade fuel and swap fuel with others with a slight over
production at these prices, to zero out their costs.

They already have the trading desk to hedge it. Getting into
production is the next logical step.

Look at Alcoa - 2.3 billion in free cash flow on $30 billion in
sales. A market cap of about $38 billion - they have a negative
leveraged cash flow, since they're so capital intensive.

Alcoa made 12.5 milllion tons of the 38 million tons of aluminum
produced world wide. Alcoa used 21.6 billion kWh to make all that
aluminum and spent $14 billion on electricity to do that. Reducing
that cost to $2 billion adds $12 billion to their bottom line,
increasing their leveraged free cash flow fo $15 billion from -$44
million - increasing their value to something in the $300 billion
range again!!

It has taken me 14 years to get this far. It will be a few more years
before production, and a few more years after that before we have a
sizeable impact on the market. In another 14 years, oil will be back
down to $30 per barrel because of my efforts. After that? Too cheap
to meter! lol.

Some have said we don't have nuclear pulse propulsion in a dismissive
way that suggested we never will, or won't have it any time soon, or
won't have it soon enough.

Well, here's ONE de-classified document from 1970 - some 22 years
after Ted Taylor at Los Alamos National Lab started thinking about
propulsive uses of small nuclear weapons. At General Atomics Taylor,
Lew Allen and Stanslaw Ulam worke on Project Orion from 1956 through
1966. In 1961 according to MinAtom director Sakharov starte work on a
similar concept for the Russians which is still highly classified.

http://lib-www.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?00384887.pdfhttp://www.sciencemadness.org/lanl1_a/lib-www/la-pubs/00384887.html

Its now been 60 years since the concept first came up. According to
this document we could have a working system along the lines I
described within 3 years. WE MAY ALREADY HAVE A WORKING SYSTEM.

So, this is the first thing to keep in mind.

The second thing to keep in mind is the IMMENSE power of these systems
relative to rockets. A ton of borane has about 20,000,000 times the
energy of a ton of lox/liquid hydrogen.

Because energy is conserved in orbits its easy to calculate the speed
of an object at any point along its orbit knowing its radial distance
from the primary and the size of its sem-major axis

v = SQRT( mu*(2/r - 1/a))

where mu = standard gravitational paramter
r= radius from primary
a= semi-major axis

Body ì (km3s-2)
Sun 132,712,440,018
Mercury 22,032
Venus 324,859
Earth 398,600 .4418 ±0.0008
Moon 4902 .7779
Mars 42,828
Ceres 63 .1 ±0.3
Jupiter 126,686,534
Saturn 37,931,187
Uranus 5,793,939 ± 13
Neptune 6,836,529
Pluto 871 ±5
Eris 1,108 ±13

Earth's orbit is nearly circular with 149.5 milllion km radius
Ceres' orbit is almost circular with 414.8 million km radius

With a 10.6 degree inclincation to the ecliptic, orbits are not co-
planar, but nearly so.

The orbital speed of Earth is 29.8 km/sec
The orbitgal speed of Ceres is 17.9 km/sec

A minimum energy transfer orbit connecting Earth and Ceres has a
perihelion of 149.5 million km and apohelion of 414.8 million km and a
semi-mahor axis of

a = (149.5 + 414./2 = 282.15 million km

So at perihelion the speed of an object in the transfer orbit would be

v = SQRT(mu* (2/149.5 - 1/282.15))
= 36.12 km/sec

So, the difference between the speed the Earth is moving now and the
speed it needs to head on out to the Asteroid belt is

36.2 - 29.8 = 6.4 km/sec

When the object is at Ceres its spee is now

v = SQRT(mu*(2/414.8 - 1/282.15))
= 13.02 km/sec

The difference between this speed and the speed you nee to stay at
this altitude is

17.9 km/sec - 13.02 km/sec = 4.88 km/sec

This is a total of a little less than 11.2 km/sec for the two
boosts.

Using kepler's 3rd law we can compute how long it takes to move from
one orbit to the next in half the orbital period - that's 1.29
years.

Now, at constant gee, travelling tothe asteroid belt is nearly a
straight line. Thats

414.8 - 149.5 = 265.3 million km.

Half this distance is 132.7 million km. To travel this distance at 1
gee acceleration

d = 1/2 a T^2 ---> t = SQRT(2*d/a) = 1.237e+11*2/9.82)
= 164,366 sec
= 45.66 hours

So, you accelerate for this length of time and then flip over and slor
for this length of time - for a total period of 91.32 hours

A little less than four days transit. Top spee is

v = a*T = 9.82 *164,366 = 1,614,072 m/sec

1,614 km/sec

double this speed for a one way journy - 3,228 km/sec
double again to return the same way 6,456 km/sec

Exhaust speed of the boron protium system is around 10,000 km/sec

Choosing a diluent so that exhaust speed of the rocket equals target
delta vee makes the mass ratio of the rocket always

u = 1/e = 63.21%

of the total weight.

This has the advantage of reducing the total amount of energy needed
to carry out any mission.

So, by using gamma ray blasts from micro-nukes to vaporize asteroidal
materials in controlled ways allows us to use 63.21% of the asteroidal
mass as propellant - energized by say borane that is fused in an
aneutronic reaction. - which has 40 million tons of TNT equivalent per
ton. That's 165.6 million gigajoules per ton of borane.

Now each ton of returned asteroid has to eject 1.718 tons of material
at 11.2 km/sec. This is a total energy of

E = 1/2 m V^2 = 107.7 giga joules.

So each ton of borane returns 1.536 million tons of useful material to
a safe stable Earth orbit.

A ton of borane of the right isotope runs about $7 milion on the open
market. If you buy the mine, its less. If you find boron in space
and mine it, its less.

Even so, at $7 million per ton, this is $4.55 per metric ton for fuel
costs.

If we assume that we only get 25% of the total energy into the
propellant and moving in the right direciton. And if we assume that
fuel costs only constitute 20% of the total costs - then, we're at
$91.10 per metric ton.

Buying the mine and reducing costs to $70,000 per ton and increasing
efficiencies to 80% and overhead so that fuel counts for 40% - then
costs drop to $0.14 per ton.

So, the mission profile is this..

We build a fleet of nuclear pulse rockets;

This takes 0 years if we already have them
3 years if we do not

We fly them to the asteroid belt

This takes almost 4 days if we go at one gee

Find a rich appropriate asteroid - one in the right position -the
right size - the right composition

this takes 1 month to 2 months

Prepare it for a journey to the inner solar system - cover it with a
reflective film so it doesn't evaporate,

this takes 1 week to 2 weeks

Impart a delta vee to it by creating a jet of asteroidal material on
its surface using controlle gamma ray blasts.

this takes a few days at 1/100th gee

Wait for the asteroid to arrive at Earth.

1.3 years

Repeat this exercise while you wait for the first one to return...You
send a total of 6 or 7 asteroids per ship. Total weight of each one
is 4,000,000 metric tons. A total haul of 24 million to 28 million
metric tons.

Fly back to Earth to meet your asteroids as they arrive. Slow each
one into an appropriate, stabel safe polar orbit..

4 days to get back, 3 days to slow the first one and guide it
precisely into its safe stable polar orbit.

Meanwhile back at Earth, factory components are under construction.
Fly back to Earth and pick thiem up.

Ship size can pick up 20,000 tons per flight cycle. Each flight cycle
takes about a day - Two to Three telerobotic systems are needed per
asteroid. These are solar powere and driven by remote control. Each
houses up to 25,000 telerobots with all the tooling needed to process
the asteroid - and 500 astronauts on site.

Repeat this for the next 5 or 6 asteroid arriving over the next 1.3
years.

So this is another three years overall.

So we're 3 to 6 years from today.

Each square kilometer takes 53,000 metric tons of material. Each
ship therefore returns enough material to make 528 sq km of growing
surface in 3 years.

At 49,000 people supported per sq km (20 per acre) we need 135,000 sq
km. That's the work of 255 flight cycles. That's the number of
ships wee nee to build to have a chance of growing enough food each
year for everyone.

How long would this take?

In world war two, eighteen American shipyards built 2,751 Liberty
cargo ships, each with 15,000 tons of displacement, between 1941 and
1945, easily the largest number of ships produced to a single design.

Each person consumes about 1 metric tons per year of food, and 1
metric ton of fiber and wood. It takes about 3 metric tons of bio-
inputs in a green house to get 1 ton of useful stuff out - the excess
is ejected to maintain orbits and temperatures. So, 6.6 billion
people would need 19.8 billion tons of materials. We just saw that a
single 20,000 ton ICF nuclear pulse propulsion ship can return 28
million tons in 3 years. So we need 792 vessels with 792 crews to
maintain this flight rate.

So, if we have such vessels now, secretly somewhere, then we should
fly off to the asteroid belt immediately and experiment with moving
asteroids.

We should also conduct a deep sky survey of the rich asteroids and
make an inventory of what we have.

We should also design orbiting farms in detail a