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*********************************Number: 927 Name: LONGTRANS 2Address: J.E.D.CLINE1 Date: 890720Approximate # of bytes: 20160Number of Accesses: 15 Library: 3Description:This is part of a talk given to the SSI SST, summarizing the Mooncable Project, the Two BodyOrbiting Skyhook, and the KESTS/GEO Habitat Ring.Keywords: Mooncable,Skyhook,KESTS,SSPS,transportation.---------------------------------LONG SPACE TRANSPORTATION STRUCTURES AND APPLICATIONSby J. E. D. Cline 890717Prepared for presentation to the SSI Space Studies Team. This part of the talk will be devotedto a view of three unusual space transportation concepts:The MOONCABLE PROJECT, a captive form of tensile structure, or tether, attached to thesurface of a lunar body and supported by an adjacent gravitational well; supportingconductors that couple kinetic energy between the two gravitational wells;
 
The TWO-BODY-ORBITING SKYHOOK, a free spinning tether shuttling back and forthbetween two unequal gravitational wells, along two abruptly changing trajectories;The KESTS / GEO HABITAT RING, which looks like a tether but is actually a very longdynamically supported compressive structure, connecting the bottom of a gravitational wellwith its associated geosynchronous orbit.The picture of two objects in space connected by a long thin structure, is a commonelement among the subject concepts. The fundamental characteristics of each of thesestructures involve associated concepts, such as the Mooncable's zero-gee casting at L-1 offoamed material into atmospheric re-entry shapes; and the enormous ring of space habitats inGEO being accessed directly from the Earthsurface by the KESTS structure concepts.But first I would like to remind you that space, extraterrestrial space with its abundantresources, is essential to a continued expansion of a civilized human population while takingthe load off of the environment that gave us life. Indeed, it might be said that Mother Earth isvery pregnant with humanity, and must give birth soon or both Mother and child will perish!Perhaps it is fitting that the form and function of the following proposed supply links resembleumbilicals. In that service, then, the following inspirations are offered you.THE MOONCABLE CONCEPT:Reference figure 1.The Mooncable concept is a long tensile structure balanced across the L-1 libration pointbetween the Earth and the Moon, and attached to the lunar surface at one end. Withessentially equal weights in either direction from L-1,it hangs in place, forming an energytunnel from the lunar surface to a slightly lower gravitational energy level 1/6the way into theEarth's gravitational field. The structure is made of fiberglass, which has a strength of500,000 lbf due to being made and used in a hard vacuum...there is no air to force its way intothe surface microcracks that are the primary breaking mechanism on Earth. The structure istapered to provide a constant-stress-cross-section, thickest where it passes through L-1.
 
Conductors along the length of the structure couple energy generated by payload brakingdown the Earthside of the cable, over to the Lunarside of the cable to lift more payload up toL-1, in a process analogous to a siphon. In the initial version of the concept developed in1971-72, Lunar nickel-iron meteoric debris was to be hauled up to the manufacturing site at L-1, where solar furnaces melted this natural stainless steel and foamed it into molds casting itinto re-entry glider shapes. After being dropped off the earthside end of the Mooncable, andremote-controlled atmospheric entry and gliding to near seaports, tugs would go out toretrieve the floating glider, haul it to port and saw it up for use in building freeway crashbarriers, fireproof homes, and impact absorbing car bodies, for example. Pockets cast intothe gliders would transport smaller amounts of other exotic materials and devices, such ashollow ball bearings, to Earth markets. Large spacecraft would have been built at L-1 formanned exploration of the solar system in relative comfort. It was to be built in a bootstrapprocess, where one of the remaining Saturn V boosters would be used to launch a craft to L-1,where a micro-diameter Mooncable of fiberglass would be de-spooled in both downwarddirections, and in the process soft-landing a robot glass-factory on the Lunar surface at thatend of it. From the solar furnaces in that robot fiberglass plant, up would be lifted fibers togradually increase the girth of the Mooncable....The TWO-BODY-ORBITING SKYHOOK:This is a modified Moravec-Skyhook useful for transferring payload from the surface of amoon to a point dominated by the parent planetary body, using the greater gravitational fieldof the nearby planet as an energy pump to sustain the process. A permanently orbitingspacecraft would dangle a long tether to briefly touch the farside of the Lunar surface as itpasses by, grabbing awaiting payload. Then the combined whirling masses would continueon around the Moon in an orbit that passes near the Earth. At the precise instant that thewhirling tethered mass pair as the payload deepest in the Earth's gravitational field, thepayload would be released, restoring the kinetic energy to the spacecraft that was given upwhen the pickup was made off the Moon. The tether would be reeled in or let out beforerelease, to compensate for varying payload mass when restoring kinetic energy to thespacecraft...letting the whirling payload drop deeper into Earth's well before release wouldgive the orbiting spacecraft extra energy, such as for compensating for having some of thepayload move aboard the spacecraft, for example. The tether attachment on the spacecraftwould have to loosely spin around its CG, like a yo-yo with a loose string, or a "Y" fitting toeither side of craft's CG, unless it was unmanned and didn't care if it wobbled erratically. Thespacecraft-skyhook would then continue on back to pick up another payload off of the Moon.
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