Space fountain
Encyclopedia
A space fountain is a proposed form of space elevator
Space elevator
A space elevator, also known as a geostationary orbital tether or a beanstalk, is a proposed non-rocket spacelaunch structure...

 that does not require the structure to be in geostationary orbit
Geostationary orbit
A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator , with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period and an orbital eccentricity of approximately zero. An object in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers...

, and does not rely on tensile strength
Tensile strength
Ultimate tensile strength , often shortened to tensile strength or ultimate strength, is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before necking, which is when the specimen's cross-section starts to significantly contract...

 for support. In contrast to the original space elevator design (a tether
Tether
A tether is a cord, fixture, or signal that anchors something movable to a reference point which may be fixed or moving. There are a number of applications for tethers: balloons, kites, tethered wind-energy conversion systems, anchors, tethered water-flow energy conversion systems, towing, animal...

ed satellite
Satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

), a space fountain is a tremendously tall tower
Tower
A tower is a tall structure, usually taller than it is wide, often by a significant margin. Towers are distinguished from masts by their lack of guy-wires....

 extending up from the ground
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. Since such a tall tower could not support its own weight
Weight
In science and engineering, the weight of an object is the force on the object due to gravity. Its magnitude , often denoted by an italic letter W, is the product of the mass m of the object and the magnitude of the local gravitational acceleration g; thus:...

 using traditional materials, fast moving pellets
Pelletizing
Pelletizing is the process of compressing or molding a material into the shape of a pellet. A wide range of different materials are pelletized including chemicals, iron ore, animal compound feed, and more.- Pelletizing of iron ore :...

 are projected upward from the bottom of the tower and redirected back down once they reach the top, so that the force
Force
In physics, a force is any influence that causes an object to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape. In other words, a force is that which can cause an object with mass to change its velocity , i.e., to accelerate, or which can cause a flexible object to deform...

 of redirection holds the top of the tower aloft. Satellite payloads ascend or descend by coupling with this stream of pellets or by climbing up the side of the tower. The space fountain has several key advantages over a space elevator in that it does not require material
Material
Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to...

s with extreme strength, can be located at any point on a planet
Planet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...

's surface
Surface
In mathematics, specifically in topology, a surface is a two-dimensional topological manifold. The most familiar examples are those that arise as the boundaries of solid objects in ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space R3 — for example, the surface of a ball...

 instead of just the lower latitudes, and can be raised to any height required. Its major disadvantage is that it is an active structure
Active structure
An active structure is a mechanical structure with the ability to alter its configuration, form or properties in response to changes in the environment....

, and so requires constant power
Power (physics)
In physics, power is the rate at which energy is transferred, used, or transformed. For example, the rate at which a light bulb transforms electrical energy into heat and light is measured in watts—the more wattage, the more power, or equivalently the more electrical energy is used per unit...

 input to make up energy losses and remain erect.

History

The concept originated in a conversation on a computer net in the 1980s when some scientists who usually worked in artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...

 of MIT and John McCarthy
John McCarthy (computer scientist)
John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He coined the term "artificial intelligence" , invented the Lisp programming language and was highly influential in the early development of AI.McCarthy also influenced other areas of computing such as time sharing systems...

 and Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec
Hans Moravec is an adjunct faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on...

 of Stanford, were speculating about variations on the skyhook
Skyhook (structure)
Skyhooks are a theoretical class of cable based techniques intended to lift payloads to high altitudes and speeds. The name skyhook is a reference to an imaginary hook that hangs from the sky....

 concept with Roderick Hyde and Lowell Wood
Lowell Wood
Lowell Wood is an American astrophysicist who has been involved with the Strategic Defense Initiative and with geoengineering studies. He has been affiliated with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Hoover Institution, and chaired the EMP Commission. Wood invented the Mosquito laser.-...

, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , just outside Livermore, California, is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center founded by the University of California in 1952...

 who usually work on laser-initiated fusion. As a means of supporting the upper end of a traditional space elevator at an altitude much less than geostationary, they proposed a ring of space stations hovering 2,000 kilometers above Earth, motionless relative to the surface. These stations would not be in orbit; they would support themselves by deflecting a ring of fast-moving pellets circling Earth. The pellets would be moving at far greater speed than the orbital velocity for that altitude, so if the stations stopped deflecting them the pellets would move outward and the
stations would fall inward.

Robert L. Forward joined the conversation at this point, suggesting that instead of using a pellet stream to support the top of a traditional tensional cable, a vertical pellet stream shot straight up from Earth's surface could support a station and provide a path for payloads to travel without requiring a cable at all. Problems that were initially raised with this proposal were friction
Friction
Friction is the force resisting the relative motion of solid surfaces, fluid layers, and/or material elements sliding against each other. There are several types of friction:...

 of the pellet stream with Earth's atmosphere at lower altitudes and the Coriolis forces due to the rotation of the Earth, but Roderick Hyde worked out all the engineering design details for a space fountain and showed that these issues could theoretically be overcome.

Design

The space fountain acts as a continuous coil gun with captive projectiles travelling in a closed loop.

In the Hyde design for a space fountain a stream of projectiles is shot up through the bore of a hollow tower. As the projectiles travel upward through the tower they are slowed down by electromagnetic drag devices that extract kinetic energy from the upgoing stream and turn it into electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...

. As the projectiles are braked they also transfer some of their upward momentum to the tower structure, exerting a lifting force to support some of its weight. When the projectiles reach the station at the top of the tower they are turned around by a large bending magnet. In the turnaround process they exert an upward force on the station at the top of the tower, keeping it levitated above the launch point.

As the projectiles travel back down the tower they are accelerated by coil guns that use the electrical energy extracted from the upgoing stream of projectiles. This provides the rest of the upward lifting force required to support the weight of the tower. The projectiles reach the bottom of the tower with almost the same speed that they had when they were launched, losing a small amount of energy due to inefficiencies in the electromagnetic accelerators and decelerators in the tower. This can be minimized by the use of superconductors.

When the stream of high speed projectiles reaches the bottom of the tower it is then bent through 90 degrees by a magnet at the tower's base so that it is traveling parallel to Earth's surface, through a large circular underground tunnel similar to a particle accelerator
Particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: electrostatic and oscillating field accelerators.In...

. Electromagnetic accelerators in this tunnel bring the projectiles back up to the original launch speed, and then the stream of projectiles is bent one more time by 90 degrees to send it back up the tower again to repeat the cycle.

The downward force from the weight of the tower is transmitted solely by the stream of projectiles to the bending magnet at the tower's base, and so no materials with extraordinary compressive strength are needed to support the tower itself. The tower's base requires a foundation capable of supporting the weight of the tower, but this can be constructed with conventional materials available cheaply on Earth's surface. Together, the stressed structure and flowing projectile stream form a rigid, stable structure that is not limited in height by the strength of materials.

The lower parts of the tower would have to be surrounded by an airtight tube to maintain a vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...

 for the projectiles to travel through, reducing energy losses due to drag
Drag (physics)
In fluid dynamics, drag refers to forces which act on a solid object in the direction of the relative fluid flow velocity...

. After the first one hundred kilometers or so the tube would no longer be necessary and the only structure that would be needed is a minimal framework to hold communication and power lines, and the guide tracks for the elevator cars. When the projectiles return to the base of the tower they have nearly the same speed
Speed
In kinematics, the speed of an object is the magnitude of its velocity ; it is thus a scalar quantity. The average speed of an object in an interval of time is the distance traveled by the object divided by the duration of the interval; the instantaneous speed is the limit of the average speed as...

 and energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

 as they started with, only with the opposite momentum
Momentum
In classical mechanics, linear momentum or translational momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object...

 (downward instead of upward). As a result, the input power required to support the space fountain is determined by the inefficiency in the electromagnetic motors and air drag on the projectiles.

The elevators that would take payloads up the space fountain could conceivably ride up tracks on the tower structure using electrical power supplied by the tower, treating the space fountain solely as a mechanical support. A more attractive option would be to design the tower structure so the elevator cars can interact directly with the projectile streams themselves, and not couple to the tower structure at all. In this manner the momentum needed to raise the elevator car up against Earth's gravity would come directly from the projectile stream.

Construction

In contrast to a traditional space elevator, which must be built from space downward, a space fountain concept can be built slowly from the ground up. The driver loop and the bending magnets at the base would be constructed first, then the top station with its turnaround magnets would be constructed right above it. The system could then be loaded with projectiles and turned on at low power, lifting the top station off the ground. The vacuum tube would be built as the top station rises, with the power increasing and more projectiles being added to the loop as the tower gets longer. The rate of construction is entirely controllable, and can be halted at any height. The tower would be capable of lifting payloads throughout its construction as well, including its own construction materials.

Safety measures

To provide redundancy
Redundancy (engineering)
In engineering, redundancy is the duplication of critical components or functions of a system with the intention of increasing reliability of the system, usually in the case of a backup or fail-safe....

, a space fountain could be built with more than one projectile loop and power supply. In the event of projectile loops failing, the remaining loops would be capable of supporting the structure until the others were repaired. A safety margin would be provided simply due to the extra lifting strength that would be required by the system to raise large payloads to orbit during routine operation. In an emergency, payloads in transit could be jettisoned from the tower to reduce tower loading. Valuable or manned payloads would likely be in capsules capable of emergency reentry as a matter of course.

Even if all of the tower's power sources failed simultaneously, it would still take a long time for the tower to begin suffering. The kinetic energy stored inside the circulating loop of projectiles is vastly greater than the amount lost to inefficiencies, so it would take many hours or even days for the velocity of the projectiles to drop enough to cause problems in supporting the tower's mass. The round trip time for the projectiles alone provides some safety margin; in Hyde's concept design it takes each projectile over three hours to complete one loop, so even if the projectile stream was completely cut off (by the destruction of the top or base station, for example) there would be some time for evacuation of the remaining tower structure and regions that might be affected by significant pieces of falling debris.

Variants

Two variant designs based on the space fountain are the launch loop
Launch loop
A launch loop or Lofstrom loop is a proposed system for launching objects into space orbit using a moving cable-like system attached to the earth at two ends and suspended above the atmosphere in the middle...

 and the orbital ring
Orbital ring
An Orbital Ring is a concept for a space elevator that consists of a ring in low earth orbit that rotates at above orbital speed, that has fixed tethers hanging down to the ground.The structure is intended to be used for space launch....

. In a sense they are variants of space fountains where the projectile stream is directed sideways.

Near-term applications

A closed loop projectile system could be used for energy storage, similar to a very large flywheel, providing load levelling
Load balancing (electrical power)
Load balancing refers to the use of various techniques by electrical power stations to store excess electrical power during low demand periods for release as demand rises....

 for terrestrial power grids. If the closed loop were long enough it could even be used for power transmission.

A very small-scale fountain tower could be used for constructing tall antenna
Antenna (radio)
An antenna is an electrical device which converts electric currents into radio waves, and vice versa. It is usually used with a radio transmitter or radio receiver...

 masts rapidly, perhaps for news events and military operations. A larger and more permanent fountain tower could be ten or twenty kilometers tall, allowing one facility to provide radio and television broadcasts to enormous areas such as the steppes of Asia. Fountain towers might also prove to be an economical alternative to communication satellites for point-to-point television and FM radio communication between the various islands of some of the smaller nations in the Pacific Ocean. An elevator and observation platform could also be added as a tourist attraction.

Arched fountain structures similar to the launch loop could also have useful small-scale applications, notably the construction of bridge
Bridge
A bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle...

s. Projectile-supported fountain bridges could be made arbitrarily long, without the need for support pillars anywhere along their span. However, they would of course require the continuous application of energy to maintain them, to make up for any losses.

See also

  • Orbital ring
    Orbital ring
    An Orbital Ring is a concept for a space elevator that consists of a ring in low earth orbit that rotates at above orbital speed, that has fixed tethers hanging down to the ground.The structure is intended to be used for space launch....

  • Launch loop
    Launch loop
    A launch loop or Lofstrom loop is a proposed system for launching objects into space orbit using a moving cable-like system attached to the earth at two ends and suspended above the atmosphere in the middle...

  • Space gun
    Space gun
    A space gun is a method of launching an object into outer space using a large gun, or cannon. It provides a method of non-rocket spacelaunch‎.In the HARP Project a U.S...

  • Active structure
    Active structure
    An active structure is a mechanical structure with the ability to alter its configuration, form or properties in response to changes in the environment....

  • Non-rocket spacelaunch
    Non-rocket spacelaunch
    Non-rocket space launch is a launch into space where some or all needed speed and altitude is provided by non-rocket means, rather than simply using conventional chemical rockets from the ground. A number of alternatives to rockets have been proposed...

  • Larmor formula
    Larmor formula
    In physics, in the area of electrodynamics, the Larmor formula is used to calculate the total power radiated by a nonrelativistic point charge as it accelerates. It was first derived by J. J...


External links

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