[extropy-chat] Re: balloon stations at the edge of space

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Johnius <Johnius at Genius.UCSD.edu> wrote:
>   I forwarded a few of the comments (with initials,
> not names)
> >to the inventor(Win Wenger, cc'd at
> WWenger101 at aol.com)

Invention is 99% persperation, 1% innovation.  He may
have innovated, but if he hasn't even tried to reduce
it to practice (and from his Web page, it doesn't look
like he's so much as built a scaled-down model of any
of the components), I'd hesitate to call him the
"inventor" (mainly since that implies he has the
intellectual property rights to this, which must be
earned).

> Does anyone here know what it would take to do a
> feasibility
> study or at least an accurate simulation, draw up
> appropriate 
> blueprints, come up with an estimated budget and
> projected 
> profits, turn this into a real project, etc.?

Well...let's break it down, shall we?  You've got
high-altitude ballooning, which is being done by JP
Aerospace among others.  It may be possible to simply
buy their services, once they are ready.  Certainly,
one could ask them for a non-binding estimate.
(Emphasis on that non-binding!  They're not ready to
sell service today, so they can't know 100% what it'll
cost.  But they can certainly give an educated guess.)

Then you've got mass drivers, better known as large
railguns or coilguns.  Google around.  The state of
that art is amateur and custom made, and this would
definitely be a custom project.  So if one were to
seriously pursue this, one would do well to start by
building a small, amateur-grade railgun; there are
recipies one can follow for this.

Note that this class of device isn't specifically
covered under most gun laws, and thus may be able to
be built and carried without a license anywhere you
could carry other generic weapons - for example, a
sword (main purpose: weapon, but it's not a gun) -
though if you seriously consider doing this, it'd be
best to check with a lawyer, or at least the local
police, first.  (Usually little problem if you keep it
in the workshop, and most amateur railguns are too
fragile to remove from there.)

Third part: the orbiter.  Satellites aren't actually
all that hard to build; the reason they cost so much
is because of the launch system.  When you're spending
half a billion dollars just to launch the thing,
what's a few extra million dollars to make extra-sure
it'll work?  If you want the orbiter to re-enter the
Earth's atmosphere, then you start getting into more
complex turf, but for a sample system you could get
away with just considering a simple transponder with a
railgun shell - and by the time you've built and
succesfully tested a small railgun, you should know
enough practical electronics to BOTE calculate how
much you would need to build this part.