Building Up - jedcline's 2006 NanoWriMo

Day 28 of 30 2006 Building Up JEDCline

Day 28 of 30 JEDCline 2006 "Building Up"

They hooked another fiber to ride along the first fiber, a barbed point occasionally along the new fiber, which also had magnet inclusions distributed along it, the first fiber carried it with itself around the planet, back into the tunnel, and snapped onto itself to form another continuous loop. The second fiber had its own similar linear electric motor armature down through the tunnel, through which the non-floating fiber was diverted, then was accelerated faster that the floating fiber and as the faster portion traveled around the world the barbs unhooked from the floating fiber, and the thin fiber was being supported by its outward centrifugal force. When it was completely unhooked the floating fiber was cut and reeled back in as it finished its final circuit around the planet and back into the tunnel.

This finer fiber was then speeded up until the stator could push it no faster, overcoming air drag losses. But now this fiber was centrifugally reaching quite high, stretched into the upper atmosphere for half of its path around the planet, so the drag was much less there.

A similar fiber on a new bobbin was brought up to the tunnel, and driven by its own synchronous linear motor stator, laced to the loop already speeding through the tunnel, being carried by the first loop, which was dragged down somewhat for awhile in its higher areas, but as soon as the second lop had completed the circuit of the planet, it had been restored to the original shape, above the atmosphere on the other side of the planet.

The continuous form of armature could not be used for peak altitudes of about 170 km, since the constant velocity had to be about orbital velocity at its highest altitude, and the stress on the fiber's tensile strength had to take up the slack below that altitude. To go much higher, they would have to switch to discontinuous armature segments.

They had to proceed by small steps, learning with everything they did, and that being immediately spread to the furthest corners of the education-workstation network for any who cared to access it. Even a great many of the native Ecuadoreans were following the progress every step. They also had to wait for the dual wheel space station, being leisurely but surely towed by the solar powered ionized aluminum reaction engine on the end of the tether, to finally reach GEO, so as to be out of the way; and hopefully become the initial terminal when the new transportation structure reached GEO.

They were getting useful data out of the current continuous armature structure, however. And the reality of now having a structure that reached entirely around the planet, and extended above the atmosphere in part of the path, had its psychological impact. Something like when the first people flew in the earliest heavier than air aircraft. The moment when analysis and belief that something ought to work, is actually seen and experienced working firsthand.

The easily duplicated microminiature component manufacturing facilities that made the education-workstations, combined with the rapidly expanding competency and enthusiasm of the users of those workstations, began producing test prototypes of sections of laterally coupled magnetic levitation track tubing pairs, along with the microminiature sliding armature segments. When the continuous armature structure had been scaled up sufficiently to carry the passive load of one of these experimental tubing pairs, it was lashed to the speeding loop as it passed through the tunnel, and so it was strung around the planet and joined in the tunnel. It went through its own accelerator as each of the other fiber sections were doing, but this one was different. Once the dual tube track structure was a continuous loop, the synchronous linear motor serving the dual tube, began to pulse electromagnetic acceleration energy to the previously passive armature segments inside the tubes, but one set of armatures went backward to the motion of the supporting fiber motion, while the other set of armature segments in the other tube went in the same direction as the fiber moved. Flapper valves were on the tubing, allowing air to leave the tube but not to enter, and so when the tubing was high above the atmosphere above the far side of the planet, the air inside the tubing was vented to the vacuum of space, gradually creating a good vacuum inside the tubing. This allowed the armature velocity to be unimpeded by gas molecules inside the tubing, and so they were completely floating on their magnetic levitation microtracks. And being speeded up each time the came around through the accelerator in the tunnel, building up speed. In that way, they were able to establish values for the characteristic parameters of the system, including limits that prevented collisions between armature segments and collisions with the track or tubing walls, as they were buffeted laterally by gusts of wind on their journey around the planet when in the atmospheric area.

The real-world values for the parameters thus established, the slowed the dual tube armatures to a stop, and peeled the whole dual tubing off the continuous armature supportive fiber.

Back to the drawing board, for both the track, tubing, and armature segments. And for the tunnel's accelerator pair. Manufacturing the newly optimized value components, they again had the continuous armature speeding fiber strung around the planet, and its dual streams of armature segments in motion, and pumped down by the valves when above the atmosphere. This configuration held together until reaching to twice the orbital velocity all along the path. The average mass of the armature mass stream was the same as the mass of the tubing it passed through. Then the forward-moving armature segments were triggered to deliver a small portion of their momentum to the tubing through electrodynamic tubing through which it passed, speeding it a bit faster that the supporting fiber loop was going, freeing it of the distributed barbs, unzipping it free of the continuous armature fiber; then the velocities of the pair of armature mass stream was adjusted and braked such that the tubing became slowed, gradually reaching a state of motionlessness , while the armature mass streams inside it were going far above orbital velocity, their outward resultant centrifugal force balancing the weight of the tubing inside which it flowed. The targeted configuration had been achieved. The tubing was anchored to the inside of the tunnel, and a new characterization was made, refining the parameters of components for this motionless tubing track configuration.

Several more similar tubing pairs were put in place by the continuous armature fiber speeding structure, and each of these then were internally sped up to support the weight of the tubing, detached from the fiber, slowed to halt the motion of the tubing, and then it was lashed to the first tubing pair. In this way the armature segment form of structure was scaled up until it could support the weight of a passive pair of tubings that were caterpillared along the multiple tube structure, being dragged along by the dynamic braking against the upward-bound set of armature segments excess velocity. Eventually reaching around the planet, that new pair soon joined the bundle, adding to its scale up.

The dual wheel space station had almost reached GEO, so it was time to go for real. The started one of the tubing pairs moving forward, unhooking it from the rest of the bundle, and when it was an independent loop around the planet, its linear stator motor was modified to operate in a pumped down chamber inside the tunnel, where each side of the tubing was opened, its armature segments coasting in the vacuum briefly, re-engering the tubing on the other side of the gap and continuing on as before. In this gap they were able to able to spool a ribbon addition to the exiting tubing, the ribbon folding around and welded to form tubing after the armature segments had inserted in it; and additional armature segments were added in the same process. This was done in both directions of the motor accelerators exits, and thus the overall length of the structure was increasing. As the length of the loop increased, its armatures were speeded up correspondingly, so as to lift the structure ever higher in its planet-encircling loop. Up it went, bit by bit, until it reached GEO above the far side of the planet.

The similarly expanded another of the low altitude loop tubing pairs, to join the first one. And when the had the whole bundle extending between ground and GEO, they used the whole bundle to support the weight of an added pair of tubings. And when that bundle of tubings was able to support a dual tube of larger diameter and armature segments, the scaling up began to increase rapidly.

When the girth of the bundle had reached 30 square centimeters, they paused the scaling up to attache a tubing pair that carried an additional pair of magnetic levitation tracks on it outside. Then it was looped all the way around the planet, up past GEO and down around to the other entrance of the mountain tunnel, They placed a small test vehicle to slide on the tracks while being dragged along by the upward moving armature segments inside the tubings. Carrying a small video camera and a couple of transducers, it sent its camera and sensor data down the tracks to be picked up in the tunnel.

Watching the video as it crept up and around the planet, it looked down on the planet from GEO briefly, then continued on around and down the other side of the structure, eventually coming in the other end of the Cayambe peak tunnel. The first trip had been made from ground to GEO, carried by that type of structure.

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posted by Unknown @ 4:45 PM