[ExI] keith's article at the oll drum

[hkhenson]

At 05:00 AM 6/16/2009, spike wrote:

>  I have been thinking of Jeff's
>inflatable tower notion set on a mountain top with a linear induction motor
>to get the payload to orbit.  The best I have been able to do so far is a
>craft that is accelerated to perhaps a few hundred m/sec on a tower, then a
>kerosene/lox winged first stage carries it to about 2500 meters per second,
>releasing the payload at about 60 km altitude, at which time the lasers
>start pushing like crazy.
>
>The concept might be worth putting together a paper for SAWE.  If we need to
>carry a whoooole buuunch of mass to orbit, then the tower and the laser
>system are worth doing.  The task ahead is to calculate where is the break
>even point.  I see the numbers in your article for mass, but it isn't clear
>to me what size the panels can be.

Spike, I hardly discussed the power sat design.  If we go with 
thermal, then the underlying structure could be brought up in rolls 
and run through a beam spinner.

I owe you big time for the work you did on the Neptune first stage, 
which I scaled down to 1/20th then added the laser propulsion

So if you want to work on an inflatable structure, will help.

Questions we need to consider, probably off this list include


Scale height for hydrogen, hydrogen/nitrogen mixes.

Mass we want to be able to support at the top.

Taper shape

Neutral buoyancy where the part in the lower atmosphere would float 
and the top would be under compression.

Airfoil shaping

Location  ( do we try to put it on a high mountain?  or out to 
sea?)  related weather effect.

Please add either here or in private email.

Keith