Brad Edwards "Starlight Express" or bust

by; Brad Guth / IEIS ~ GASA    updated: October 11, 2004

"Nanotech's promise is out of this world. Just ask Brad Edwards, who's planning to build a carbon-nanotube elevator that goes 62,000 miles straight up."


This page is somewhat two fold, in that it's openly critical of what the mainstream status quo sees absolutely nothing wrong with, and of the penny on the dollar alrernatives that they'll share whatever dog-wagging spin, hype, damage-control and keep reloading those cannons so that their flak circumnavigates the globe in order to discredit anything that's the least bit NASA/Apollo negative, much less if it's suggesting upon less spendy and considerably more profecient uses of our talents and limited resources. Thus I believe the differences between the ESE and LSE are great, at least within the limited ways I've figured out how we're all being snookered, some of us having already been snookered to death, with lots more carnage on the way.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/nanotech.html
Interesting math; Arthur Andersen as well as ENRON might be proud.

In spite of the horrific aerodynamic issues dealing with 500+ mph jet-streams, plus whatever the bulk of lower atmospheric variables has to offer, of spendy CNT fibers tolerating perhaps a thousand per year worth of those multi GJ lighting strikes, and of somehow fooling radiation from degrading those CNT fibers, of otherwise diverting and/or having to vaporise a few thousand objects zipping nearby, of subduing and/or bribing numerous Earthly idiots currently running amuck (including a few too many resident warlords), of establishing those least costly and most reliable French nuclear reactors that'll most likely be required in order to sustain all of those laser cannons transfering energy to the elevator pods, of just covering the remote logistics issues and of the otherwise surviving the testy worth of whatever's residing deep into the Van Allen zone of death where their ESE outpost will need to be situated, and should all of these and far more complex issues be resolved and somehow afforded, as then we're off to the races, as surely every want-to-be warlord is obviously going to insist upon having their very own ESE, or otherwise thaking out your ESE.

I forgot to mention upon the absolute mega tonnes of artificial CO2 that'll be created in the multi-decade process of establishing and just operating this first set of ESE, as according to the borg collective of everything ESE or bust huggers, Earth obviously needs all the CO2 it can get it's global warming hands on.

If all goes well (like that's ever happened in the past), technology resolves all barriers, and advance manufacturing utilizes sweat shops based out of Iraq in order to affordably mass produce those CNT (carbon nanotube) filaments. Since we don't have any surplus energy on hand within America (can't hardly keep the lights we've got on) to spare in this country (hardly any spare energy left in the world, short of converting rain forest into energy), perhaps they should wisely purchase some of those efficient and remarkably reliable French nuclear reactors to power those sweat shops, as well as all of those horrific megawatt class CW laser cannons as needed in order to power-up those space elevator cable climbing transports (energy up as well as energy down) and, let us pray that somehow they manage to keep delivering three of those units per day with an average of 10 tonnes per delivery per transport. That's sustaining a lot of those hefty pods per ribbon and of further assuming there's an UP elevator as well as an independent DOWN elevator, sort of working side by side, minus a few days for maintenance (such as replacement CNT fibers as they're being microscopically TBI to death) and a few unexpected glitches (like a few of those multi-tonne tether pods breaking loose, along with CNT wrapping itself around Earth), so that they manage to actually deliver upon a total of 1000 units per year, year in and year out per ESE.

A good thought is that 50+ years from now all of this becomes a reality, as well as inflation having created the minimum sweat shop wage of $50/hr and whatever security issues were being best resolved by those Venus Cathars that have finally returned in order to kick some serious Pope butt. Where the investment to date (including all of the trial and errors) having exceeded the 10 trillion mark and, we've only lost or fried another couple of dozen of apparently expendable astronauts in the process. Thus, so far so good.

Now then; If in fact we suggest that the annual full-service space elevator budget were to include a reasonable return on investment, as well as covering their actual operationals of wear and tear, of possibly involving foreign real estate usage fees, plus whatever the 100 GW hours/year of independent energy consumed will cost, all toll this becoming their affordable amount of one trillion bucks per year. Doing the math brings that cost per pound (based upon delivering 10,000t/y/ese) in at $50,000/lb, or perhaps a little as $25,000/kg. That's hardly the $200 bucks suggested by Brad Edwards which wasn't initially planing on delivering 1/10th that amount, though I've certainly been known to be way off on my calculations, as opposed to their Arthur Andersen/ENRON accounting that supposedly knows best.

Of course, by the time this human race manages to survive another 50+ years worth of intellectual incest, not only will there not be all that much left of Earth that's above water but, a "Happy Meal" will likely cost you a U.S. Grant ($100), as well as a gallon of anything crude oil based will have become equally as costly, and a shuttle mission capable of delivering 25 tonnes will likely be exceeding a billion, perhaps half that if the shuttle is reconfigured as entirely robotic like it should be, thus $10,000/lb, which actually isn't all that bad for the year 2054. The only good news out of all this will be that we've gained upon at least 25% more ocean area due to the ongoing/unchecked global warming and, dry land is now going for at least a million bucks per m2 (the old movie "Water World", as bad as it was, has an established cult following).

On the other hand, our having a good pair of space elevators, of one going up with another coming down, along with all those nifty transport pods and the energy infrastructure might actually cost a whole lot more than 10 trillion, especially if you included the Homeland Security aspects and of all those "what ifs". At some point in time, backups are NOT going to prevent a catastrophic failure, in fact, the increased mass and complexities associated with any backup plan could just as easily become the literal downfall.

BTW; delivering 1000 of those 10 tonne payloads per year means that somewhere on Earth there's another great deal of CO2 being produced, as in order to create whatever substances and/or mine and process whatever minerals, as to manufacture all of that into whatever is being delivered into GSO+ space. Just the S&H of getting those 10,000 tonnes to the space elevator is worth another great deal of CO2, unless this entire process were powered by those nifty French reactors, or perhaps by H2 that was created from wind and perhaps ocean differential power.

Currently the artificial CO2 return on the tonne that's delivered into space is roughly a 1000:1 proposition.

Just establishing their initial 80 tonne pilot SE deployment outpost will most likely involve the overall creation of at least 80,000 tonnes of artificial CO2 that's generated for Earth's environment, which could be a good thing for improving certain crop yields, especially once hybrids acclimated to their new greenhouse environment and New Yorkers learn to enjoy their Christmas at 125°F. Let us further speculate that this new Earth based SE/ISS and of those nanotube ribbons becomes worth merely 1000 tonnes of launched and delivered materials prior to being fully operational, as now that's only responsible for a million tonnes of newly created and very permanent CO2 for mother Earth. I'm not absolutely certain but, perhaps we need to listen and learn from others that have managed to survive with far more CO2 than you can shake a flaming stick at, thus placing a local area code laser call to Venus might seriously pay off in more ways than we can imagine.

What if the dual space elevator investment were to become 100 trillion?

Try to remember that, 50 years from now a trillion bucks will not likely buy us all that much, especially if certain warlords (domestic and otherwise) are still running humanity amuck.

Of course, we could try to rethink the logics and benefits of otherwise accomplishing a lunar based space elevator, of one LSE-CM/ISS capable of housing our next ISS as a truly well endowed community and mission gateway that's capable of supplying unlimited volumes of clumping-moon-dirt as an external spacecraft mass for life sustaining radiation shielding and protection against whatever folks happen to be running into at 30+km/s, plus whatever side benefits of our utilizing the moon as for exactly what it is and, of our accomplishing all of this within existing technology and the expertise we've got today, at not 1% the cost impact of achieving any similar functioning Earth based space elevator and, of not 10% the construction created CO2, plus otherwise not an operational gram worth of CO2 created for Earth, also remaining entirely no-fault fail-safe to boot, along with providing countless scientific attributes, not to mention being nearly Taliban and Osama bin Laden proof as well.
https://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-01.htm
https://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm

I'm thinking (always a bad sign); We actually do NOT have any significant technology problem of getting ourselves off this planet and headed towards the moon, though once in space we do seem to have a slightly testy issue with regard to a reasonable timeline of surviving the radiation and, sometimes we have a little too much difficulty getting ourselves back home. So, if we had a sufficiently shielded ISS/Gateway as our depot in the sky, and that being situated just near the ME-L1 nullification zone, the to/from aspects could now be extended to accommodating years and, subsequently the CO2 created for launching souls out to this lunar ISS/Gateway would be cut by at least 90%, as almost every other thing needed could be shipped via those reliable robotic Russian technologies, thus volume wise and density efficient and most obviously of imposing the least astronaut risk becaus, unlike our NASA, I actually think astronauts are invaluable souls that shouldn't be wasted upon trial and error, nor of improvements that benefit the NSA/DoD Boeing/TRW Phantom Works ABL program.

It's becoming somewhat odd that so little is actually known about our unique moon, being so far the one and only absolutely synchronized item that's orbiting us that's not only supposedly getting sufficient energy (TJ worth) from somewhere that's still unknown as for sustaining it's orbit, but of even more of such energy as for supposedly leaving Earth's gravitational influence by a factor of 38 mm/year, of such as massive object to be accomplishing this horrific task is clearly indicating upon some rather substantial application of mystery energy.

Although, while being all that it currently is, the moon and of it's ME-L1 (+/- 2.5% with respect to Earth) is essentially offering a highly stable/predictable gravity free zone that's actually quite close to Earth with respect to those Earth L4/L5 environments. So, I'm wondering why there's been all the orchestrated opposition to my efforts of considering upon the possibility of our utilizing this entirely unique and highly stable gravity-well environment (dueling gravity wells) for accomplishing a whole lot of good, at pennies on the dollar as compared to the some day after having trillions invested into any ESE that's being proposed.

Due to the orchestrated email trashing and/or bashings that my research has attracted (I know this because others as well I have other unrelated email accounts that are not being trashed), as such if you'd like to convey something outside of this post, you can try goto the following public email link (gv-bradguth-email-01) and post whatever, or simply call: 1-253-8576061 or fax: 1-253-8575318

A few other LSE UPDATES and there's certainly going to be more to come: https://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-lse-gpa.htm
https://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-se-flywheels.htm
https://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-cm-ccm-elevator.htm
https://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm


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