Technological concepts are steppingstones to reality

My ideas and especially space-related concepts, are created in order to inspire others to build new neat and useful things; and I also build concepts on the shoulders of prior giant concepts. This is a process that is handed down through time, and is how civilization is seeded for each stage of development. Other types of people are far more interested in physically doing something with those ideas and concepts; as it is said, it takes all kinds of people to make a world.

Anyway, today I discovered that my current computer's operating system, the latest Mac, no longer is able to open some of my old reference graphics. Eventually I found that I can get a rough thumbnail sometimes, and so I have gotten some low quality images saved in current format.

One such graphic that I had fortunately scanned in many years ago, although its format is no longer fully openable by my software, brought back memories from the early-mid 1980's, at a L-5 Society meeting in Sunnyvale, CA. I took my girlfriend Mary - with whom I was still desperately trying to make the relationship work - to the L-5 Society meeting in the big auditorium; I had a flyer about the meeting, which looked interesting although unusual. I recall making lots of notes as the lecture went on, extremely interesting stuff; but I had to miss some of it when going to find where my girlfriend had vanished to - she was out in hallway with a bunch of guys all smoking cigarettes - so I missed some of it. And, since then, my notes got lost. And in fact, the flyer got lost too but then temporarily was found and I then scanned it in; and so here is the best I can get the image to appear at this point:

Rod Hyde's lecture and the above simple hand-drawn graphic on the flyer, really got my attention.

Eventually I even braved the spotlight by giving testimony before the National Commission on Space, in November 1985, including urging the serious exploration of Rod Hyde's vertical fountain-supported tower space elevator Starbridge concept; along with Keith Loftstrom's "Launch Loop" technique for lifting a rocket up to the fringes of the atmosphere via a trapezoid-shaped loop on the ground which reached up to the upper atmosphere, from where the rocket would launch, thus not needing to punch through the atmosphere to reach space. I have a page on my website with the text of my testimony to the NCS, which seemed well-received there; although did not appear in the subsequent report by the Commission:
http://www.escalatorhi.com/GenieFilesH/gesp475.html
Even that 1985 testimony's initially-discouraging outcome was helpful, as eventually I began to ferret out the weaknesses in each of those great concepts, and find ways to overcome them in combination with more ideas, and ultimately produced my "KESTS to GEO" space transportation concept.

While am at it, here is a graphic from my subsequent presentation on my KESTS to GEO concept, in 2004 - some 16 years after I initially conceived the concept integration in 1988 and posted a file about it on the GEnie network:


Hopefully my efforts at concept building toward rapid expansion of civilization into nearby space resources, will eventually be well received, even though currently they are apparently considered unwanted rivalry to the existing aerospace industry. Probably that is because the space access techniques more appropriately will begin as Civil Engineering projects, then back into space projects really big-time, including reaction-engined propelled applications too. That is why my technical papers stopped getting laughed at by aerospace, and finally accepted for formal peer-reviewed presentation and publication in space conference technical paper proceedings, by ASCE starting in 2000.