Ring Around The World

Ring Approach Around Atmospheric Issues

There are upsides and downsides to the earth's atmosphere.

  • The greatest advantage is that it provides the oxygen needed for life, our life. 
  • It provides a medium to navigate through using aerodynamic flight. 
  • The atmosphere generally provides humidity that can condense into rainwater and drinking water for consumption and irrigation.

From an engineering standpoint, it has numerous disadvantages:

  • Puncturing the atmosphere costs fuel through drag.
  • Weather systems in the atmosphere interfere with operation.
  • Solar energy collection is less efficient due to the light-scattering factors of the atmosphere.

The Ring

The ring around the Earth is a self-supporting scaffolding and arch that circumscribes the Earth. Located at around 40,000 to 60,000 feet in the atmosphere, it would be accessible by winged aircraft which could land on the ring, and then dock in a pressurized terminal. Living chambers in the ring could be pressurized, and self-sustaining agriculture, water-treatment, and solar energy could be produced on the ring.





The ring would not be good for:

  • The ring would not be particularly useful for a communication platform for earth because it is so low in the horizon only a small band of the world would have line of sight.
The ring would be good for:
  • With fiber-optic cables and efficient solar energy, the ring would be a great place for data centers that can link to earth stations efficiently. 
  • The ring would be a good location for telescopes.

The ring would be about 25,000 miles in circumference. 



Building the Ring

I've run calculations on the arch looking at how much weight it would have. Using only the compressive strength of concrete, and integrating across half the arch, I came up with the approximation that 5000-mile thick concrete would be needed to satisfy supporting the arch entirely by compressive  forces. This is far too thick, clearly. However, it's a baseline on which additional optimizations can be made.
  • Aerodynamic elements such as wings and rudders would be positioned around the ring to keep the positioning of the ring proper and to provide lift. This could account for an estimated 5% improvement reliably.
  • Portions of the ring can be riddled with vacuum cells to provide "lighter than air" lift.
  • Steel is much stronger. The analysis can be looked at using buckling equations and girder construction. This can provide significant improvement.
  • Centrifugal forces were not considered in the calculations. Even floating freely on the lubrication of the atmosphere, the ring will rotate. Estimated 5% improvement.
  • A stronger ring construction will require less ring to support it. 
  • The radial gravity field over the 12,500 mile arch reduces the effective weight to 68% of the mass of a circular arch on a flat gravitational field.

Constructing the Ring

I remember reading about in the construction of bridges across rivers, Roman Soldiers would first shoot a cannonball tied to a thin piece of string. And, little-by-little, larger and larger cables would be pulled across until eventually bridge sections could be pulled across. As an analogy, I'm convinced that if any circumscribed ring high in the atmosphere can be built, then ring of any size can be built. 

The two most compelling methods I can see for starting the ring would be to fly the base platform up in segments, and to use balloons to lift the structure from a factory point on the ground. 

Fly It Up

Imaging a squadron of 600,000 Boeing 757-sized aircraft flying at a high altitude and attaching themselves nose-to-tail around the planet. Each plane would have structure included that would allow the planes to connect securely, and cabling would allow the underside of each aircraft to secure itself several miles back to another aircraft forming a interconnected lacing of spokes (such as in the following picture).
The advantage of fly-it-up is that it could be assembled relatively quickly. 600,000 is a lot of planes considering that there have been only 5% of that number of aircraft size ever made (gross estimate). Creating a specialty construction vehicle of 600 feet long consisting primarily of sail wings and construction girders, the 600,000 count can be reduced to 250,000. Fly the planes up, connect them together, and winch the cables tight.

The Balloon Method

Extruding strong tubing from a factory, lift it using balloons into position around the earth. As the tube makes its way around the earth, it will eventually come back onto itself, where it should be lashed together. Factories extruding structural material could come around the world. 

This is where the idea of the Balloon Method starts to run thin. Getting materials into position around the globe seems possible with this method, however, there is not a convenient platform for workers or worker robots to do anything to facilitate the construction once the material is suspended by the balloons.


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