AD. Space 2100 (5/10/26, off-topic, under construction, the bones of this file are being fleshed out very slowly, please enjoy the mere bones in the meantime.)

AD1. under construction

Some of my solar, energy storage and transit ideas came from my early space and lunar colony designs. For completeness I want this published.

I recognize that space industrialization is going to have remarkably little to do with humanity surviving climate change for the next century, but some day after that, this will matter. For this moment I'm only going to drop a rough outline of where space colonization will be going. Excuse the mess. Enjoy it if you're a science fiction fan.

Low Earth Orbit resources

Everything launched from earth is vastly expensive, both in terms of cost per kilogram of payload and in terms of fossil fuel expended. We want to gather hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, helium and iron, humanity’s servant metal, in space whenever this is economically possible. .

A high vacuum pump at the very upper edge of the earth's atmosphere

The high vacuum pump will operate in a circular orbit roughly 120 miles (200 km) above the earth at roughly 25,000 kph. All of the quite tenuous incoming gases will be grabbed by a high vacuum pump. The scoop will also be equipped with an ion propulsion engine that can shoot one quarter or more of the gathered gases backwards at 100,000 kph. This maintains the satellite’s forward momentum.

At an altitude of 200 km above the earth, the tenuous atmosphere consists of about 50% oxygen, 50% nitrogen and small but usable quatities of helium and hydrogen. The nitrogen is for the most part usable only for propellant in ion propulsion engines. The money is in the oxygen and the small amounts of helium and hydrogen gas atoms. Oxygen is 16/18 of the mass of water, and if the hydrogen is shipped from earth the oxygen can be combined with hydrogen to create fairly inexpensive water. Next, oxygen is the relatively heavy part of hydrogen/oxygen rocket fuel for fast space transportation needs. Finally, oxygen is what humans breathe in to stay alive.

It may be that we'll want solar-powered lasers at a higher orbital altitude to send energy down to the vacuum pump in a very low orbit. Space is at a premium on the gas gatherer unit because extra equipment causes extra drag. All drag must be compensated by expending extra gathered gas out of the ion propulsion enegine to maintain orbital momentum..

Mining iron asteroids

Build a primitive solar sail with a control unit. Sail it back to low earth orbit or to earth's L-5 point.. Also grab carbon and nitrogen from more carbonaceous asteroids and sail these resources back toward earth.

We need only send one solar sail construction unit to the iron asteroid. One construction method is to blow some kind of bubble surface in a slightly pressurized environment, then vacuum-deposit iron atoms onto a dessicated bubble surface, then use heat to evaporate and recapture the bubble surface material. Then the thin swuare iron panel is slid out of a slit in the bubble creator and gets attached to the end of a long, narrow sail surface. The sail surfaces are all attached to control wires at the center of an incredibly slowly spinning daisy. Each panel must be carefully moved. This moving technology is a technology that we don't have yet but it's certainly possible.

The ultrathin solar sails of people's dreams will be unattainable. This is a rather heavy, lumbering cement truck of a daisy that will take years to get back to earth orbit. Don't laugh, it runs.

The slowly spinning daisy wheel has a relatively tiny and lightweight central control satellite, a spider device that pulls on its control wires to rotate its daisy petals. The daisy can spin faster or can spin slower almost down to zero. For re-orienting itself toward the sun's rays, the daisy can twist individual petals to face the sun or to not face the sun. This changes the daisy's orientation, the way the entire spinning circle of petals is tacking into the sunshine.

For many decades this will be an economically unaffordable climate change option, but daisies could in theory park themselves at earth's L-5 Lagrange point and block a tiny amount of sunshine from reaching the earth. This would blunt the earth's modern greenhouse effect. The iron daisy would be fully capable of course corrections to maintain its position at or near earth's L5 point. The iron daisy's control unit might need to be upgraded once every 20 years.

More likely, the iron daisies would sail themselves down to a low earth orbit where they would be disassembled and recycled for construction of habitats..

Ice asteroids

Use ion propulsion to visit an ice asteroid. On the way back, spend some of the harvested cargo. Take advantage of slingshot effects. Perform some gentle aerobraking in earth's outer atmosphere, once per orbit and using many orbits, to get the payload close to low earth orbit.

Getting cargo and then humans off the earth,

50% capsule accelerator

It's possible, assuming the existence of quite accurate computers, to accelerate a space capsule halfway into earth orbit from the earth's surface, then to have an orbiting device that decelerates that space capsule the other half way into orbit. Later this orbiting device will accelerate the same capsule halfway out of orbit, maintaining its orbital momentum. At first we will experiment with an orbiting electromagnetic "rail gun" that only decelerates capsules of equipment 1000 kilometers per hour into earth orbit, and accelerates the same empty capsules 1200 kilometers per hour back down toward earth. This will move cargo into space while maintaining orbital momentum..

Cargo and someday single human capsules will be launched in Ecuador right on the equator. Ecuador has a 6,000 meter high mountain with the northern edge of its caldera sitting right on the planet's equator. A vacuum tube could be built underground in Ecuador and in the nearby Pacific Ocean capable of launching a human at three gees up into orbit at about 1/2 of orbital speed.

I see the orbiting decelerator as being a bit of a spider web with many cables.

Rotational energy is stored by swinging two masses around in a circle at the ends of cables. More masses are countr-rotating nearby. These masses pull on arms that speed up the rotations or slow them down. The arms and various gears pull an electric generator, which generates quite a bit of electric power on demand.

Each capsule has a long "lance" sticking forward for acceleration or sticking backward for deceleration. This 100 meter lance makes for a nice, even three gees of acceleration on the capsule between electromagnets spaced 100 meters apart. For human capsules, it means that we don't have to over-magnetize the human because the heavy duty acceleration is far out to the front of the human capsule..

Hitting the orbiting catcher will be like having a bullet travel up the barrel of a rifle as someone pulls the trigger on the gunpowder. For a cable-based orbiting decelerator, I would expect lots of bounciness and weight distribution on the whole system over a certain period of time. The calculations can be dune in theory.

Low Earth Orbit tourist trap units

Modular to remove units from service for periodic X-raying. I have high engineering standards! Swap in substitute modules as needed.

The units will all be clustered together to conserve total radiation shielding Low earth orbit isn't all that safe for real humans.

--I'm writing at this point 5/13/26...

exoensive genuine earth view real estate on the inside, artificial earth view elsewhere.

How to dance with a partner in zero gee. Pole swinging, launchers/catchers. Flying trapeze fun.

Keep the staffing on earth as much as possible.

Transit within the tourist unit.

Getting from zero gee to one gee

The structure of pseudogravity in space:

A caution about cancer

liquid hydrogen molecules are lightest. Keep it very cold.

1. large ball and ten gee counterweight, good for interplanetary travel

a

2. .95 versus 1.05 gees, what are the limi6ts

the big ball flattens out to a thick disk with a rotational curve, a thick meat pie.

3. the meat pie expands around the circle. Eventually the building jumps to a torus and the expensive shielding around it jumps to a canister.

4. the torus grows longer, into a cylinder shape without the pressurized inside.

5. Multiple embedded Russian doll cylinder rings, each delivering .95 gees to 1.05 gees.

Offices overlooking forested land. Pipe in the sun or just regenerate sunlight.

5a. elevators between Russian doll layers

5b. possible xero gee units in the center, and/or a big sky cylinder in the center.

- - - - - -

kmoon lunar colonization is a separate document

radiation shelters, 10 meters thick of moon dust.

early caves, simply drive a moving habitat around a 90 degree corner. Rails or hardened road? Reduce moon dust, also electrostatic charging of moon dust particles in the air. For a mobile scientific research habitat, send robots to build a new cave out of sandbags somewhere else then drive to it from the old cave.

Drill underground, a well for gathering such air as exists. The moon dust surface can, if you’re lucky or if you groomed it, be impervious to releasing air, allowing buildup in the many cracks beneath the surface. Why mine when it will come right to you:

Power: solar power beamed down with lasers.

Then bounce the power into a habitat around the radiation shielding with mirrors.

Earth eclipses... Faraway high lunar orbit backup power transmitters.

Gravity=based lunar storage, see my earth system.

Helium or Nitrogen-filled robotic workshops in part of the habitatversus full-oxygen habitat for people. Airlocks between them.

When some air leaks out, recapture it.

Bowling ball return lane heat transfer to outside. It uses local materials.

Big solar furnaces to cook oxygen out of lunar dirt and then create useful products for within the habitats. Also rails, posts.

Lunar transport.

Teleport

balancing on one rail

Shielding the transit pods between major habitat units:

My own moon elevator. Exponentially better, set up on the edge of the lunar South Pole's crater..

Iron mining, devices that drive across the lunar dirt extracting asteroidal iron filings. Lunar rocks are simply clean filler for radiation shelters.

Where to find a relatively rare carbonaceous asteroid that has carefully buried itself on the moon

the lunar earth-normal gravity train and how it expands module by module.

a later earth-normal gravity module

transit system, buried under moon dirt

Painting a target in very low lunar orbit with rare earth metals

Interstellar transit and migration

Seeding the Centauri system with a micro-robot

Seeding the Centauri system with human beings.

..