Nullifying all victimless crimes and retroactively

I contemplate what would happen if a federal law were passed that nullified all victimless crimes, and do it retroactively. After all, if there were no injury to person or thing, why is it a real criminal thing? Law enforcement moneys ought to be much better spent dealing with things that cause injuries to people and property.

Now, in contemplating this thought, I realize I am treading into territory I know little about. And am dimly aware that the whole subject is like a can of worms, tangled and interconnected, including with lots of egos, reputations, and fortunes involved. And actually the only "victimless" crimes I have read about, at first thought, are the pot smokers and the prostitutes, who had hurt nobody or anything. But I have read there are millions of such people in prison right now, costing the taxpayer many millions of dollars each year, along with ruining the lives of those victimless-crime doers. Even imprisoning someone who did no harm to a victim, would seem to me to be an injustice itself; but obviously, since that is the way the system is now, there is lots more to it all, and the legal system is the high authority that created the system as-is. And powerful entities rarely take lightly someone examining them with a critical eye, ever.

But looking back, I see where I have several other times naively mistook the real motivation of major entities.

For examples, in 1972 I attempted to get NASA and JPL to give my Mooncable concept a careful look, and have me be part of that since I had created the concept of an anchored tether on the Moon extending up through the L-1 balance point and the structure supported in place by the near-equal weights on either side of L-1, and being used for very efficient lifting of resources from the moon and enabling their easy deliver to Earth orbit and surface markets, such as foamed nickel-iron steel cast in zero gee at L-1, then to be used for fireproof wood-density structures. This would use the two Saturn 5 launch vehicles already built but not used, and would initiate profitable business in space in a big way using existing materials. I had thought that NASA and JPL had the goal of opening up space resources for use fully by civilization as soon as possible. Nope; that was not NASA's charter, nor was JPL's, theirs were different purposes.

Then many years later, starting in 1989 I attempted to get the aerospace industry interested in my hoop-self-centrifugally-energy-supported structure enabling direct electrically powered access to the geostationary earth orbit, all space access transportation without rockets and potentially very energy efficient and low cost lift up to there - a couple dollars per kilogram, say - enabling the solar power satellites to be built and maintained in GEO so as to deliver all the electrical energy needed by the world civilization on into the future, electrical energy 24/7 that needed no storage facilities and produces no carbon pollution in our air. The dreams of all the space enthusiasts could be realized in my lifetime, and enable a clean earth environment to be restored, enabling the saving of lots of species from going extinct. But again, no, aerospace was only interested in space as a means to support their rocketry-based businesses, and had no other interest in space, or even of helping civilization. And the space enthusiasts were more interested in the exciting orgasmic fiery roar of huge rockets being launched, than a placid rail structure that would undramatically get the job done without star wars or such; no fun in that.

So I have lots of examples that I ought to not mess with trying to improve huge industries - and the prison system is a huge industry, along with all that contributes to it - when those huge entities like things to stay just they way they are, nice life it gives to those on top.

But back to the conjecture that seems to me to be helpful to lots of people, millions of them, all those whose lives have been ruined by imprisonment for having been accused of doing victimless crimes. I had more casually previously suggested freeing all those non-violent peaceable prisoners - who themselves somewhat seem to be the real victims of the whole thing - so as to save the government millions of dollars a year, and use the resulting abandoned prisons to be modified to be homeless shelters. OK that would enable those millions of former prisoners to be free to start to rebuild their lives, many from scratch; so given the retroactive pardoning, they would need compensation for the wrong done to them by the penal system, which would provide a monetary supply to help them get started again in life, get settled and seek jobs, which lead them to becoming supportive of the American economy again.

OK, nice on that side of the equation; but what about the other side of the equation, all those who are currently deriving jobs, group esteem, and investment income from the system as-is? That might include, um, say, the owners and investors in the prison system, its prison physical structures and human personnel like guards; the law enforcement personnel whose esteemed jobs were to stalk&assault those who had done those victimless crimes, would be out of a job, not a nice thing to happen to most anyone. The legal system itself with its books of precedent laws that somehow created those victimless activities as crimes, those folks are the big bosses of the slow crawl of changes to laws, and the suggestion that I am contemplating here would be an enormous transient in that system.

Well, I might as well post this in my blog that few if any can find; what is one more big entity added to those who already ruthlessly vilify any who might point out potentially better ways of doing things. And with enough coverage by calculated vilification, eventually physical manifestation will strike down the offender, and all will just say that's great, the vile monster won't bother us anymore... something that also could be some longstanding "secret" militants who think I had seen too much and am too smart for my own good, would even more thankfully breathe into relaxation.

And here all along I was thinking I was helping those big entities that control civilization's opportunities, silly me; most likely the only response will be for the powers that be to make sure that everybody fully realizes it is they who are boss here ... and for any others with ideas about thinking for themselves, watch and see what happens.

It is only about whose game it is and who is able to play it

The "other" major hobby I have indulged in, much of my life, is an Asperger's OCD search for a workable way for major access to space from the ground, and putting nearby space to good use in a suitably big way.

My struggles to design and build a bridge within a specific scenario back circa 1970, put my otherwise electronics focused attention toward the nature of materials and of the history of bridge building. That it succeeded in creating a 40 foot long bridge, with a 26 foot long center span 10 feet wide and easily capable of carrying the load of a car, was probably the needed turning point of my attention that got me to seeking a structural way to reach space, which seemed utterly impossible on the surface, considering the known construction limits of tall towers.

Multi-stage chemically fueled reaction engine powered rocket launch vehicle access to space had gotten enormous attention and by then had landed a few men on the Moon and brought them back to the ground; its potentials seemed refined by the best of minds and resources, and it still took enormous resources to put even a little payload into orbit.

The bridge studies and construction success became the idea of using the earth's rotation to swing around a tether, to provide the holding force for vehicles moving from the ground up into space; but then found the strength to density of materials just could not support its own weight of the tether, even without moving payload. A year later I had shifted attention to building a similar structure on the lunar surface through the balance point toward the earth, for efficient transfer of lunar materials for construction, and built of space rated fiberglass, and basic glass material was by then known to be abundant on the lunar surface. But the world was not interested; don't both them, they are doing something else.

The strength to density ratio seemingly insurmountable materials problem of an earth surface to orbit was way too hard a problem for materials researchers, and that seemed to put mankind back on the severe limitation of rocket based space access to space.

Reading of several people who were exploring a way to get around the limitation of an earth-swung tether for space structural access, I even urged the National Commission on Space to explore them in my testimony in 1985, but that was ignored in the commission's resultant report.

I sought why the structural access ideas Lofstrom, Hyde and Smith had put forth were being snubbed, and found the weaknesses of each of them, each severe enough to conceivable justify snubbing by the NCS. That report also had not mentioned my Lunar tether transportation system made of fiberglass, too.

So these things stewed in my mind until I got an insight that began to congeal it into what appeared a fully integrated technique with its enabled applications, and called it the "KESTS to GEO" concept.

("KESTS to GEO" is an acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit.")

This got snubbed by the space activist community too, despite their claim to have the purpose of establishing a spacefaring society. I did not realize this was most likely fueled by the vision of a relatively few elite individuals accessing space via rockets and those few then multiplying and populating the solar system and stars, leaving the rest of us behind.

The concept I had proposed had the potential to indeed enable every person on the planet to economically reach earth orbit (if for some reason they would want to do such a thing) along with means for building habitable facilities for living in high earth orbit. That was snubbed; it was not limiting the exclusive population rights to the few elitists, like limiting of space access by rocketry does.

So I was left to burble in my beer uncomprehendingly, rewriting my KESTS to GEO concept in many forms and presenting it in technical papers at space conferences, just not realizing what I was proposing would wipe out the dreams of those who were on the rocket road to space path.

They suddenly resurrected the earth-swung tether concept, claiming a proper strength-to-density tether material was available and all they had to do was get the money and it would be built; even though such a material was in actuality non-existent, the proclamation and followup space conferences devoted to that concept totally took interest away from the KESTS to GEO concept, which was still in the conceptual design stage. Clever ploy and it worked perfectly.

So let me point out what KEST to GEO was about.

The need I assumed was for structural access to space in a potentially large scale and low cost with very high energy efficiency. The earth-swung tether for climbing, now called the "Space Elevator" had extreme materials problems, but the basic concept would utilize centrifugal force to support the structure. The centrifugal force was supplied by the 24 hour rotational period of the planet. The concept was stuck with this rotational rate and the specific outward force that would provide as supplied by the counterweight being swung around by the planet. And that combined with the molecular bonds that provided the strength of materials of potential tether materials; the two no way were close to matching. And there were construction problems of the tether too, especially if it had to be tapered, that is, maximum girth at the balance point, GEO in the case of the earth access tether.

The KESTS to GEO insight was to provide the centrifugal force that supported the structure as part of the structural function itself, instead of depending on the centrifugal force from the earth's rotation.

This would take the form of an eccentric hoop, resembling the orbit transfer trajectory ellipse between ground and GEO around the Earth, attached to the ground at the equator, and looping around the planet to its highest altitude above the opposite side of the planet. It could go to low earth orbit, but payload would still need reaction engine propulsion added to stay up there in orbit, since the anchored earth stationary part of the hoop structure still would have the same angular velocity as the planet, the 24 hour period of rotation.

The ideal upper altitude was GEO, where the orbital angular velocity matches the planets angular velocity. There, payload would stay in orbit even without any intermediary rocket propulsion step.

The concept developed from there, into various configurations, the best was in the form of a synchronous electric motor infilling the perimeter of the eccentric hoop, with its internal armature mass stream being driven by mass drivers on the ground, to be in such a velocity that their above-orbital-velocity component outward restrained centrifugal force was picked to slightly exceed the inward force of gravity on the mass of the earth-stationary part of the hoop, along with the vehicle's live load it carried between ground and GEO.

And some of that internal hoop armature segment momentum could be electromagnetically coupled to lift the vehicles with their payload from ground to space, thus needing no energy source to be carried or beamed at them.

It looked like it could easily finally enable the economical construction of the Solar Power Satellites envisioned from the 1960's; and one of them thusly built in GEO could beam energy down to power the mass drivers on the ground terminal of the transportation hoop. Many applications would become feasible in GEO. It all fit together quite well, thus providing a path for the masses of humanity to head for space to live and work, and using existing materials and close-to-present electric motor technology.

Did this stimulate excitement and a lets go do it cheer? Nope. It got snubbed.

It did not provide the rocket access to space bottleneck that would enable a small elite to go out to populate space with their genes exclusively. A horde of humanity would have instead have the potential to populate space; thus, no benefit to the few anymore. So it was ignored, and the population assumes anything ignored by the "experts" is worthless.

And that is where it stands now. My Asperger's obsession to provide a way for near future mass access of nearby space by large quantities of people, solved the technical problem, but did not solve the people problem: they wanted to play their game, not mine.

And that was a pattern I discovered on the playground in kindergarden. It is only about whose game it is and who is able to play it. It is not about what different opportunities are enabled by the various kinds of possible games.

Failure analysis of lack of acceptance of space access system concepts

In engineering doing development work, there sometimes is a need to debug something. The first step in debugging is to evaluate the data which discovered the failure to live up to expectations; this data and its failure analysis needs to be as thorough and accurate as possible, so as to be more likely to fix the problem in the subsequent effort.

The development of space colonization might benefit from a similar approach. Looking back at failures is no fun; but if we don't learn from our mistakes, it is wisely said we are doomed to repeat them.

I personally know of several such failures on the path to space colonization; so, despite my dislike of rehashing the unpleasant and often incomprehensible, subsequent events have provided me with significant understanding of what was going on in the bigger picture, that probably caused the failures to get those early starts in space colonization.

Sifting out what seems the most pertinent parts - the whole scenario and sequence of related events would take volumes to write - the following items are some of those failure analysis findings:

The first one has to do with the failure to build Space Elevator technology on the Moon, using the leftover Apollo Saturn 5 launch vehicles to emplace a seed elevator cable on the moon. This concept was informally gotten to NASA and in mid-1972 was given a rejection by the NASA Inventions & Contribution Board. This concept showed that an existing material, space-rated fiberglass, was capable of being used to build what is now called a Space Elevator, but I called it the Mooncable back then. A cable made of space rated fiberglass, built into a tapered constant-stress-cross-section shape, could be built linking the lunar surface with a somewhat lower gravitational energy level toward the Earth, going through the L-1 balance point, where the thickness was greatest. It took me months of hand calculations to prove that the material was up to the task; and my concept description described a way to utilize motor-generators traveling up and down the Mooncable, using conductive tracks on the structure to connect the earthward-downward electrodynamic braking energy over to lift another motor generator tractor up off the lunar surface toward L-1. The system thus provided a siphon-like effect, so my more extensive description was titled "The Mooncable: Gravitational-Electric Siphon in Space"This was a deeply integrated concept description, where it integrated the mooncable structural transportation mechanism with a major product so as to make it a profitable activity, supplying a useful material to the Earth. Foamed steel, a material only create-able in zero-g, would be made at a manufacturing plant located at L-1 balance point on the Mooncable, by using focused solar energy to melt nickle-iron brought up by motor-generator tractors from the Lunar surface. The metal would be filled with gas bubbles there in zero-g at L-1, while being input to a mold, which would shape the material into the form of a re-entry glider, for the trip from the earthward-end of the Mooncable to the Earth's surface. The cast gliders, with the durability of stainless steel yet the density of wood, would float in the ocean after landing, and be towed to land where it would be sawn up and used for construction material, such as for energy-absorbing crash barriers lining the middle of freeways; and building fireproof homes that were nearly impervious to weather effects. The Mooncable structure itself would be made of fiberglass, and glass is an abundant material on the surface of the Moon; so the only thing needing landing by Saturn-5 launch systems would be the original seed cable, plus a robotic operated glass materials plant. The timing was right; we were still landing astronauts on the Lunar surface, and this seemed an appropriate next step to build upon Apollo, and enabling economical establishment of a lunar manufacturing facility on the Moon, a first space colony. And the project could be started immediately, right then in 1972.

But it did not happen. What was the failure in the system? So here is an engineering failure analyst effort:

Looking back, there seems to be multiple points of failure, and each provides an example for preventing similar failures for present and future efforts striving for space colonization.

One factor was that it required Congress to vote to provide appropriations. And that congress was showing its meaningfulness by hacking off a percentage of the funds asked for Space Shuttle development, standard Congressional practice, to show they are doing their job. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle proposal did not provide extra fluff to play the game of having its funds chopped back some; thus solid rocket boosters had to be put into the design, and ultimately we lost a spacecraft because of that, the Challenger and her crew. So NASA was in deep struggle for money to get its job done; the Mooncable project would have required a significant amount of money to achieve even its first steps, despite use of the two Saturn 5 vehicles that were built but not going to be used.

Much of this was explained in the brief letter the NASA ICB chairman sent to me with the rejection of my informal proposal. This rejection had another major effect, in that when my wife read the rejection, saying no grant funds were forthcoming, she was quickly out of my life, very pragmatic lady she was, and I was no longer as good a money source as other men would be. The effect on me was that, being an Asperger, now without a pragmatic mate to take care of the social etc aspects of my life, in despair I threw away my promising career at JPL and basically just existed for the next half dozen years. Occasionally I would try to find someone interested in my Mooncable concept, but I had no connections. In the early-1980's I made another effort, by writing an article for the L-5 News, but it was rejected.

I think a significant part of the failure of the system for establishing Space Colonization that way in the mid-1970's was my lack of credentials: I was an unknown in the field. the concept was not allowed to speak for itself, in other words. This seems to me to be a significant failure mechanism in the overall system: not letting a concept speak for itself, but instead first looking at the originator's standing. It is analogous to people in the military look at the number of stripes on your shoulder, to decide whether or not to pay attention to you. The academic standing, the industrial position standing, is where the evaluators looked, and they found I was a nobody, had not even graduated from college, had even switched from a physics major to a psychology major for a semester before dropping out, clearly a loser. And possibly a related factor, how could PhD's in high positions, admit that someone who was a college dropout came up with a concept to get the job done, and the credentialed folks had not thought of it, what would people think about that; better just ignore the originator, and no one would pay attention to the concept. Later, the concept could be revived by accredited folks who could build careers on it. And that happened: Pearson wrote an excellent paper on such concepts four years later, in 1976; and even today there are businesses proposing building a Mooncable-like Space Elevator through L-1, so it was not a dysfunctional concept. It was a failure of the human aspects, not the technological aspects.

So the failure mode here is that of using the originator's credentials to speak for the capability of the concept, rather than let the concept speak for itself. Part of this may be the inability of the initial evaluators to evaluate the concept adequately, especially if it is a really different thing from their field of expertise; and they do not want to admit that.

The second example for this kind of overall system failure analysis, is my effort to gain interest in my concept for rapid expansion into high Earth orbit, initially with the purpose of building abundant Solar Power Satellites to provide plentiful clean energy to nations around the world. This concept would bypass the Space Elevator's severe limitations, yet be able to do the same efficient access to high earth orbit, probably even more capably too. It would use the outward force of internal centrifugal force to balance the weight of the structure in the planetary gravitational field, instead of utilizing strength of materials to do the job.

I created this "KESTS to GEO" concept - acronym for "Kinetic Energy Supported Transportation Structure to Geostationary Earth Orbit" - to bypass the problem with the Earth Space Elevator concept, that of the lack of a material strong enough for its mass to support its own weight between GEO and the ground. I was keenly aware of this problem, having thought of the earth space elevator idea in 1969 - not the first person to do so, it turned out - then realized that the tensile strength to density ratio problem that really made a problem for the concept. (However, that effort later enabled my 1971-1972 creation of the Mooncable concept.) So I constantly sought other ways to have large scale access of earth orbital space.

The early 1980's concepts of Keith Lofstrom's Launch Loop rocket lift to the fringes of the atmosphere by a trapezoid shaped tethered out-flung loop of continuous material, and Rod Hyde's "StarBridge" vertical tower to the fringes of the atmosphere, supported by electrodynamic drag of high velocity paramagnetic beryllium disks flung upward inside the structure, excited my hopes for early large scale space colonization in my time; even Earl Smiths' "Texas and Universe Railroad" concept of an out-flung expandable iron belt from the earth surface to GEO, although had some major flaws in it including that it would not go to GEO if anchored in the high latitude of Texas, got me to do my first speech supporting those concepts, as well as my Mooncable space elevator concept, to the National Commission on Space in 1985. But to no avail, the Commission's report did not mention any of these things.

I mulled over the why-not for a few years, and finally figured out how to combine all those concepts and add some new components, to make what appeared a workable large scale ground-to-GEO access space transportation structure of high efficiency, supported by the outward force of high velocity armatures circulating throughout the quasi-elliptical hoop around the Earth, connecting the equatorial surface to GEO. The materials and technology were well within the contemporary capability.

But the problem remained, of how I, as still an unknown in the field, could get this concept into the awareness of those who could take it to the next steps. About that time, I had gotten connected to the GEnie Spaceport Library, via my 300 baud modem connected to my long-obsolete Adam Coleco computer; as always, I lived on the edge of poverty, earning a living as an engineering technician in electronics. Finally I could get the attention to my Mooncable concept and my new KESTS to GEO concept, I thought.

Even the GEnie Network was sponsored by General Electric, a large company who could possibly be able to build much of the KESTS to GEO system, I thought. I posted the initial insights there in 1988, and had largely fleshed it out in 1989, posting many files in the GEnie Spaceport Library.

But the reaction I got as a result was lots of angry replies, not involving technology, but bringing up other issues that readers would have to wade through before getting to the technical parts of the chat strings back then.

It took me a long time to realize that the KESTS to GEO concept would obsolete the ground rocket launch vehicle industry, on which these folks based their futures. No wonder the anger.

But clearly they were only interested in their personal fortunes, not the vision of large scale economical access and utilization of high earth orbit, and the large scale access of the Lunar environment and Mars' moons and asteroids, all now potentially in the near future, instead of something that would only have to withstand the test of real physical construction and usage generations later, as were the other forms of space colonization views as based on rocket systems alone.

This post is getting too long, so I will continue this in a subsequent post.

Startup America entrepreneurship and my KESTS to GEO project fate

This morning I had stumbled into a videocast "Startup America" and saw the last few minutes of a panel involved with that. http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/startup-america Apparently focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship, although what I observed was the focus only on entrepreneurship, that is, business activities. Note my "KESTS to GEO" project concept remains mere fantasy because there is no associated entrepreneurship involved with making it happen as a business. The exclusive focus seems to have shifted to entrepreneurs instead of innovators, as a major point of it all at the moment is to create jobs for people to do something useful and stimulate the economy.

As my "KESTS to GEO" project effort has shown, even the best concepts with fantastic potential for stimulating the economy and civilization's very wellbeing and perhaps sheer survival, gets nowhere if people do not make it physically happen. And that involves entrepreneurship activity in our system, instead of an overarching responsible direction of creation of the facilities based on KESTS to GEO concepts' purposes.

KESTS to GEO would have initially cut jobs in aerospace as people focused on electromechanics and large scale energy-supported structures, very different from the reaction engined launch vehicle systems that people had prepared for in their career development and business planning; thus, KESTS to GEO was very much in disfavor by the business community.

And NASA, the obvious potential overarching make-it-happen entity, was having none of KESTS to GEO, possibly again because their well-established careers are based on reaction engined launch vehicle access to space, and it is hard to change one's fields of expertise, in this case to those of very large scale electromechanical transportation structures that are unconventionally supported by the centrifugal action of stored energy within those huge-perimeter structures built as hoops around the Earth. Besides, NASA sees itself as only the means of implementation of government-financed projects such as the Cold War Era national-security significant "race to the Moon," instead of seeing itself as the instigator of other major space projects.

And I can sympathize with those directors in NASA, sweating out each launch and return of the Space Shuttles after Challenger and Columbia ... and remembering that the last several Apollo Moon Landing launches were scrapped to minimize the risk for disaster ... at the vision of those directors having to create an unfamiliar electromechanical system with a perimeter extending clear around the Earth, using little of the familiar rocketry, and achieving something on the scale of the early Panama Canal in its implications ... the scary thought of taking on that responsibility could have had them heading for the bathrooms. Not for long; they are experts in control of events.

I have little doubt that there have always been those who quickly grasped the enormous business implications of my KESTS to GEO project's implementation and productivity, and those folks no doubt saw it as a big disruption to their bread and butter industries such as hydrocarbon-based energy, rocketry aerospace. And even the extended-project fantastic real-estate implication potentials of KESTS to GEO to enable construction of the prototypes of 10,000-person self-sufficient artificial gravity cities shielded by water ice and electromagnetic fields in GEO - and cheaply lift those tens of thousands of people up there - which could potentially lead to a huge real estate shift, thus a threat to even something as amazingly far away business-wise as that of real estate. (For example, see my 1988 file http://www.escalatorhi.com/GenieFilesH/gesp747.html pointing out there is room for more than 15 billion people up there, living in condominium-like residences on the inside edges of the wheels, somewhat as foreseen in NASA's SP-413 book for use in L-5.) Meanwhile, I personally was unaware of the potential business effects, other than to abstract that the project could easily double the net worth of America especially if the space cities were built in GEO; that was as far as I got with that point of view, not important to me. (That kind of thinking is probably why I now live at the poverty level, primarily on Social Security retirement, and very thankful for that income. Not a big problem; I have never known anything except the near-poverty level of life, even working as an engineering tech in electronics most of my life. And I would not know how to be a successful businessman even if I had the money to do it. Although some other Asperger's are quite wealthy from business.)

So instead of being seen as a wonderfully elegant near-future way to provide clean economical electrical energy delivered worldwide (via solar power satellites that it would make finally feasible, that it would enable built and maintained economically in GEO) as well as solar powered full recycling of toxic materials made by our industrial civilization, and make reaction engined spacecraft change from the sleek rockets we now know, to instead become huge non-aerodynamic vehicles built and launched from high above the atmosphere there in GEO, electrically lifted to already be 91% up out of the Earth's gravitational energy well, for massive expeditions to Mars and other places nearby .... instead, it was seen only as a threat to existing powerful corporate interests, and to be dealt with as such.

And the directors of those interests most likely saw my struggling meek efforts presenting the technological concepts of KESTS to GEO at space technology conferences, realized I was no salesman powerhouse and was clearly advanced in age, so all they had to was to sit on it all and wait for me to die off, then all the potentials of KESTS to GEO would default into their business-power mentalities to play with for their wealth in their own good time, say, perhaps when oil has gone way past its peak, to the business need to look for different sources of energy to sell - and by then they could be positioned to use KESTS to GEO and Solar Power Satellites while squeezing the most profit out of the what-the-market-will-bear system.

But anyway, the KESTS to GEO concept complex that I created is in existence, so I have enabled it to physically happen, even if not in the timeframe I foresaw as important for civilization's continued healthy expansion. So, my efforts have not been totally wasted.

Back in the late 1980s when I was putting the basics together for KESTS to GEO and Centristation project concepts, I read of much despair about the inevitable fate of accumulating pollution of land-sea-air from our industrial civilization, and overpopulation of a limited land area world, making preparation for a future seeming to be futile, the KESTS to GEO concept was able to blow that away: clean electrical energy galore for America and to sell around the world, and even showing how population could be greatly expanded via a high level of civilization built in GEO accessed economically and continuously via KESTS to GEO. It made the future have great potential; and even if held back for decades, people could still plan for a future for their progeny. And since then, the KESTS to GEO concept has been expanded to provide the means for enabling industrial-sourced toxins to be fully recycled in GEO-sited huge solar powered mass-spectrometer type element separators for clean reuse in manufacturing, further enabling a potentially bright future for all.

That abundant future potential is still there, including for the long term hopes for Startup America. Let's invent those paperclips and ball point pens to quickly create reasonably nice jobs for everybody and make a profit right away; it will be sturdy practice for getting on with the big stuff later. Life can be exciting conceiving, inventing, designing and building things and making businesses happen; is lots friendlier to life than the former focus on bash and takeover of war and conflict.

P. S. Most likely there will still be lots of romps by those folks who prefer to trick, bash and destroy their way to fame and fortune, instead of taking the creating and building pathway; so I have written a series of high-tech science fiction novels describing one way all this could play out. (And writing the sci fi versions was lots more fun to do than was writing and presenting the formal technical papers, such as "Cline, James E. D. “Kinetically Supported Bridge Vehicle Lift To GEO” Space 2002 Robotics 2002 Conference Proceedings, American Society of Civil Engineers, 2002, 8-21.) The sci fi series I wrote and self-published, author J. E. D. Cline, includes "Building Up", "The Ark of 1984's Future", "It's Down to Earth", and "The Torus Cities Ice Shields Returning Home". See http://www.kestsgeo.com/2sciencefiction/scifistories.html and particularly "It's Down to Earth" http://www.kestsgeo.com/2sciencefiction/idte.html as an ebook at iBooks or Barnes & Noble etc or paperback at CreateSpace: eStore https://www.createspace.com/3371746 .

A tiny scrap of vindication

It is a bit secretly satisfying to see where someone is using a principle that oneself had described to skeptical audiences, long ago. Twenty-two years ago, in 1989, I wrote GEnie Spaceport Library articles on what I called "Microelevator" describing ways to emplace a seed structure for the "KESTS to GEO" concept for economically transporting materials in the near future for building Solar Power Satellites in GEO.

Me being an Aspie social dunce, I did not realize that my audience was all wrapped up in the visions of their wealth to come from privatization of NASA rocket technology for access to space; such NASA-established technology based businesses were to be their ticket to fame and wealth galore; and my non-rocket concept would have dashed water on their dreams of power and wealth via rocketry. Thus all they were interested in was finding ways to do the thumbs-down on my KESTS to GEO concept, so that rocketry would remain the only way to access space in their business lifetimes. So, after my space conference technical presentations, one of the things I was asked, after they could find no fault in the centrifugal hoop weight support and transportation energy delivery mechanism part of the concepts, was how to put such a high thing into place around the Earth in the first place.

One of the techniques I had proposed was to lift the seed tubing up by using backward-directed high velocity mass brought up the tubing and reflected backwards at the exit nozzle array, so that the reaction force would be to pull the front reaction nozzle upward. Typically I would just get a blank stare about that, and then they would drift away, to then just use the ignore-it-to-death approach on KESTS to GEO - which worked.

So this evening I just stumbled upon a photo in a Pop Sci article that very well illustrates that principle, at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-01/just-time-spring-break-water-powered-jetpack-finally-goes-sale "Just In Time For Spring Break, Water-Powered Jetpack Finally Goes On Sale" The photo shows a person high in the air, trailing a tube from the water's surface where a boat was pumping water like mad up the tube, and the water being directed downward at the upper end of the tube, supporting the person's weight in the air by reaction force. A really nice graphic display of the principle in action.

In case anybody has any interest in this - other than to try to find some way to shoot it down to preserve their business technology control - there are some of my early writings available online, including copies of the GEnie Spaceport Library files - (it is still a mystery why the GEnie - General Electric Information Network - public network was not converted to integrate with the internet when the net came along - General Electric Corporation certainly had the wealth and expertise to do that) - and a copy of my 1997 technical paper on KESTS to GEO which I presented to the Space Studies Institute at Princeton in 1997 in hopes of getting their help on that mutual interest large scale space access concept (only to be laughed away and refused to publish my paper - I had unwittingly violated the NIH principle and my concept's implications were too big) but the paper is available online. Here are the links. Of course, the later formal papers and derivative writings are also available on those websites, as well as published conference proceedings.

Microelevator on GEnie:
http://www.escalatorhi.com/GenieFilesH/gesp578.html
http://www.escalatorhi.com/GenieFilesH/gesp581.html
http://www.escalatorhi.com/GenieFilesH/gesp592.html

The 1997 paper:
http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/documents/ssi1997graphics/kesepts-ssi-directhandout.html

The current KESTS to GEO concept:
http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/kests/KESTS2GEO.html

General technical paper's description and links page:
http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/documents/documents.html

(If the website pages don't show up at first, try again after a few days - quite often right after I post a blog entry regarding my concepts using websites as detailed info, the websites get hacked and have to be rebuilt, taking them a day or so to get back online, but after most people would have forgotten about it.)

I also describe the technique in my sci fi novel written in 2007 "It's Down to Earth" (by J E D Cline) available as an eBook at Apple's iBooks, and as a paperback from the CreateSpace eStore https://www.createspace.com/3371746

Could be my blog writing's here are on some troll's "block access" blacklist, but it is satisfying to write about being kinda vindicated after all these years, even if not acknowledged by anyone else.

And here is a copy of my drawing from my 1997 paper on KESTS to GEO:

Incapable of responding adequately to a gradual longterm crisis?

Well, in a few hours here, it will be the beginning of 2011. Already is 2011 in parts of the world, no doubt.

Today I read a comment that had too much of the ring of accuracy, from what I have experienced. It has been quite an experiment, observing how the world - particularly the industrial and governing folks who pick what to do and what not to do - responded to my concepts for helping the near future civilization, and things have been going pretty much as I predicted but the means for coping with it all that I had shown, are still being sat on by the big boys. Anyway, this is not a post to complain a bit more from an impotent position in affairs, but to point at another person's observation:

"http://www.scientificamerican.com/energypoll/poll8.cfm?WT.mc_id=SA_shell_right-ad-vote_q8

"3. cccampbell38 11:24 AM 12/24/10

" We humans have proven, time and again, that we are incapable of responding adequately to a gradual, longterm crisis such as the one we face in climate change. All of this fuss about alternative sources of energy, eco-responsibility, and the like are like arguing about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. If you would like to know what's going to result from all of this just study the history of Easter Island and project it to a global scale. ... "

I have a new hypothesis, little thought out so far, that goes something like this: "People will unconsciously set up the overall ongoing situation as if it were a gigantic never-ending opera, going for the stimulation of maximum drama valence for all to experience, while also arranging to not have it all obliterated as a result ... so as the show can go on."

So, if one cannot get the adequate attention of the pompous directors of the unsinkable Titanic to avoid icebergs ahead ... well, might as well enjoy adjusting the deck chairs for a better view of it all, why not? And, continue trying to get the attention of those pompous directors as to the danger and offer potential well-thought-out solutions, insofar as possible, just to stay responsible.

... So to be responsible thereby, I once again for the last time in 2010 attempt to alert the folks who can make it happen, that the KESTS to GEO transportation concept can utilize mostly existing technology, and definitely easily existing materials, to economically provide the transportation from ground to Geostationary Earth Orbit to built full sized Solar Power Satellites plentiful enough to provide the world's clean electricity needs from then on; we could already be doing it if started back about 1989 when I described it fairly well along with major applications. We could have been building SPS in GEO right now, full sized ones thereby.

But no, the investors in hydrocarbons and nuclear want their profits now big time, and nobody is going to interfere with it if they can help it. And that includes stifling this little mouse trying to squeek. Then later, they can build KESTS to GEO to continue their financial kingdoms, done entirely their way, no mention of this person who made the map, provided the conceptual key's design. Bullies rule; has it ever been otherwise? But there the time element and the inertia of progress, that is of concern here. Well, bullies don't care if they rule from the penthouse via the internet, or if they rule with club from the caves, all that matters is that they rule, nevermind all else. I think it is a mentality comparable to football, where all that matters is the game of doing the best to prevent others' success at what they are trying to do, while also doing the best to do what you want to do; and if anyone thinks it is about the football, they are missing something. To them, "KESTS to GEO" and "civilization's fate" are all merely the football.

In case any reader - who somehow finds this post and does not yet know what this is about - there are technical paper references and descriptions galore on these websites:
http://www.kestsgeo.com
http://www.escalatorhi.com
There are even science fiction adventure versions available from there too, for easy reading, including "Building Up, "The Ark of 1984's Future", "It's Down to Earth", and "The Torus Cities Ice Shields Returning Home." All by J. E. D. Cline (Jim Cline) in paperback and in eBook versions.

I have said it in about as many ways as is possible: on computer networks and on web pages and websites, in blog posts, in technical presentations at formal technical space conferences, and writing and formatting science fiction adventure stories involving the concepts of kinetic energy supported structure and its potentials.

Anyway, Happy New Year, everybody! Enjoy the drama. Practice a bit of uncommon responsibility at times, too. Avoid the bullies where possible. Make love a lot. Wake up to life and make it a bit more beautiful with what you have got and what you can do. Leave each place a little better than you found it.

Celebrating 20 years since first hardcopy publication of KESTS to GEO

Celebrating the twenty year anniversary of the first hardcopy published article on my "KESTS to GEO" concept, I have made a web page about it. Although there was clearly ongoing interference with my efforts to communicate my technological conceptual design ideas even back then, as continues even nowadays, as a member of the all-volunteer-published slick magazine "Meditation" staff, there was some consideration of my own efforts at writing and getting published. Thus my article "TreeHouse Haven" ceased to be rejected by the magazine and finally got published, in the Winter 1990 edition.
http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/documents/treehousehaven/treehousehaven.html

The "TreeHouse Haven" article was written to an audience not much interested in technology; but who were interested in healthful things like meditation, and in "saving the planet" from the errors of busy goofy tunnel-visioned mankind. That issue of "Meditation Magazine" was dedicated to "Relationships," so this article focused on mankind's relationship with the planetary ecosystem and civilization's wellbeing, as potentially greatly enhanced by this "KESTS to GEO" transportation system concept, opening up civilization to high earth orbit in a very big way, due to its extremely energy efficient, electrically powered, continuous transportation capacity (in great contrast to extraordinarily energy inefficient transportation by the reaction engined vehicles exclusively exclusively used by aerospace at present.) And, it did not require the development of a super high strength material, such as was required by the more familiar anchored tether "Space Elevator" concepts. Thus the applications it would have enabled would have dealt with such problems as the need for abundant clean electrical energy and room to live well and have plentiful food, all made possible due to that very low cost access to GEO from the equatorial ground. If properly built and utilized, of course.

Sure, it got righteously ignored and suppressed by those whose fortunes were tied up in the conventional aerospace business system, who were the only ones who would be able to implement the KESTS to GEO transportation structure and space applications like finally making possible construction of large scale Solar Power Satellites in GEO. But I did my best to let people know of this great opportunity for their near future wellbeing. I had been publicly writing up the idea as as it grew in stages in my mind, such as on the GEnie network (back before the internet was available to the public) and giving talks on it at small groups in the Los Angeles area at the time. But it's principles were just too different from the conventional way of doing things, despite being only a re-configuration of existing technology uses, to apparently be comprehensible by those steeped in conventional aerospace.

And it was not until 2000, ten years later, that I finally got a formal technical article published, in hardcopy form, as a peer reviewed technical article (ASCE Space 2000 conference proceedings.) Although that article had an exclusive copyright on the article, I do have the slides of my presentation that can be seen here: http://www.kestsgeo.com/1techconcepts/documents/space2000slides/reconstructed vg space2000.htm

So this is really the 20th anniversary of the first hardcopy published of a somewhat non-technical article on the "KESTS to GEO" conceptual design, but also the 10th anniversary of the first hardcopy published peer-reviewed technical article on the concept. Considering the extremely difficult struggles I had over those years, living in near poverty much of the time, I think these are achievements worth acknowledging.

Congratulations, "KESTS to GEO" concept, on your 20th and 10th years as published in hardcopy articles.