ENGINEERING EARTH • PART III
How would space solar arrays be better than Earth-based solar panels?
What is the name of the space station planned by the Oxford team, and how big is it?
How long would a space elevator cable need to be?
What would power the rail cars going up the space elevator?
What is the biggest challenge in building a space elevator?
How small can dangerous space debris be?
How high above Earth would a basic orbital ring be built?
What could dangle beneath orbital rings?
Where could the materials for orbital rings come from to avoid impacting Earth?
How much could a prototype orbital ring cost?
SPACE POWER
By placing large-scale solar power arrays in space, we could capture uninterrupted sunlight nearly 24 hours a day, then beam the power down as lasers or radio waves.
Unlike those on Earth, orbital power systems would shed their excess heat into the cold expanse of space, instead of heating up our atmosphere.
China is now planning a 1 kilometer wide solar array, with the long-term goal of beaming gigawatt-levels of clean electricity down from orbit.
And a team from Oxford is planning an even bigger station, 1.7 kilometers across, called Casseiopia, designed to be built in orbit.
But collecting the power in space and beaming it down still has its own waste heat problems, as energy is still being added to the Earth system.
The solution is to move our power hungry industries entirely into space, where the energy can be collected, spent, and radiated completely outside of Earth’s fragile system.
This way, we can scale our energy use indefinitely without overheating the planet.
And to get all this material into space efficiently, we need something incredibly audacious: a bridge from our planet to the final frontier.
SPACE ELEVATORS
Like a highway to the skies, a space elevator would open safe and easy passage to the next technological frontier, enabling the buildout of next-generation space infrastructure. A keystone technology for the new space age.
To build it, a cable over 36,000 kilometers long would be lowered from a counterweight out in space, then anchored to a port station on the equator.
A space station could then be positioned at geostationary orbit, at the point where the gravitational and centrifugal forces balance out.
Laser or nuclear powered rail cars would ascend the cable carrying multiple tons of cargo at a time. which could drive launch costs down to under a hundred dollars per kilogram – ten times cheaper than today.
This could accelerate the mass production of solar power arrays, orbital data centers, and other structures like habitats, research stations, and space ports, laying the foundation for a new orbital frontier.
But building this beanstalk to the heavens would be a daunting engineering prospect, requiring tether materials far stronger than anything that exists today.
And moving human industry into space comes with its own major risks – especially space debris.
Tiny pieces of scrap metal as small as a fleck of paint can tear through satellites and infrastructure, creating even more debris, and causing a chain reaction of destruction known as the Kessler Syndrome.
To solve this, A.I. guided laser systems could rapidly identify and deflect small debris, while larger pieces could be safely captured and deorbited.
If we can neutralize these risks, then a space elevator could be just the beginning of an even greater vision for our planet’s future.
ORBITAL RINGS
This is the crown jewel of space infrastructure: The orbital ring.
This superstructure could become the backbone of our future civilization – a hub for everything from energy and transportation to climate management and tourism.
In its basic form, a simple ring of wire would orbit the Earth around 200 kilometers up, with a stationary platform magnetically levitated above the spinning ring.
It could be built as a free-floating structure, or be tethered to the Earth at multiple points.
Skyhooks and even hanging skyscrapers could dangle beneath the ring, serving as launch points, research hubs, or cities in the sky.
Rotating the inner side independently would generate gravity through centrifugal force, making the area habitable, and offering spectacular views.
While no current technology can simulate gravity on the outer edge, it could still serve as a zone for microgravity industries and research habitats.
An intricate network of rings could be built at different inclinations, offering rapid point-to-point travel almost anywhere on the planet.
These layers could extend far outwards, even potentially networking with the moon.
RISKS
But the sheer size of orbital rings would pose their own dangers. A shadow the width of the ring itself would sweep over the Earth each day.
For narrow rings, up to a few hundred kilometers wide, this would have little impact on ecosystems below.
But wider rings, stretching over 1500 kilometers, could cause major disruptions to the climate, blocking out the sun for an hour or more daily.
Building one would be a towering engineering feat, as the ring would require tens of billions of tons of raw materials, and constant active computer control to prevent collapse.
To avoid impacting the Earth, the resources could be mined from asteroids, by intelligent autonomous machines.
This may all seem like a far off dream. But there are already proposals for prototype orbital rings that cost as little as 9 billion dollars.
Altogether, our innovations comprise a whole new layer of the Earth: The Anthroposphere.
We have only scratched the surface of what this layer could become.
Perhaps our growth will plateau, and we will find a quiet symbiosis with the Earth.
Or perhaps Earth will be a stepping stone in a much bigger journey: The Engineering of the Cosmos.
Anthroposphere - The human-made layer around Earth
Arrays - Large groups of things arranged in order
Audacious - Very bold and daring
Autonomous - Able to work by itself without human control
Casseiopia - Name of a planned space solar power station
Centrifugal force - The force that pushes things outward when they spin
Counterweight - A heavy object used to balance something else
Daunting - Looking very difficult or scary
Debris - Broken pieces of something scattered around
Deflect - To change the direction of something moving
Ecosystems - Communities of living things and their environment
Equator - An imaginary line around the middle of Earth
Expanse - A wide, open area
Frontier - The edge of what is known or explored
Geostationary orbit - A path around Earth where satellites stay above the same spot
Gigawatt - A very large unit for measuring electrical power
Gravitational - Related to the force that pulls objects toward each other
Inclinations - Different angles or tilts
Indefinitely - For a very long time, possibly forever
Infrastructure - The basic systems needed for something to work
Kessler Syndrome - A chain reaction of space debris hitting more objects
Keystone - Something very important that other things depend on
Levitated - Lifted up and held in the air without touching anything
Magnetically - Using the power of magnets
Microgravity - A condition where things weigh almost nothing
Orbital - Related to paths around planets or other objects in space
Plateau - To level off and stop growing
Prototype - An early model of something new
Radiated - Given off as energy or heat
Skyhooks - Cables or structures hanging down from space
Superstructure - A very large structure built on top of something else
Symbiosis - Living together in a way that helps both sides
Tether - A rope or cable that connects and holds things together
Uninterrupted - Continuous, without stopping
► COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
— please answer with complete sentences
How would space solar arrays be better than Earth-based solar panels?
What is the name of the space station planned by the Oxford team, and how big is it?
How long would a space elevator cable need to be?
What would power the rail cars going up the space elevator?
What is the biggest challenge in building a space elevator?
How small can dangerous space debris be?
How high above Earth would a basic orbital ring be built?
What could dangle beneath orbital rings?
Where could the materials for orbital rings come from to avoid impacting Earth?
How much could a prototype orbital ring cost?
► From EITHER/OR ► BOTH/AND
► FROM Right/Wrong ► Creative Combination
THESIS — Argue the case…
ANT-THESIS — Argue the case…
SYN-THESIS — Create a better solution…
