The Space Tube: The Best Kind of Space Elevator

Want to do something even more cool with Evacuated Tube Transport ? Point it straight up into Low Earth orbit and you have a Space Elevator ! Many people think the only design for a space elevator is the Bradley Edwards design, where a spool of ribbon is put into Geo Stationary Earth orbit and then is unwound down to the earths surface, where it is fastened. A counter weight like a small asteroid or space station is then placed at the top of the elevator, which keeps the ribbon tight and straight as the rotation of the earth spins. Climbers then ride the ribbon up and down, as they deliver supplies and people to earth orbit safely and cheaply instead of using expensive and dangerous rockets. Sounds great in theory, but the problem is a smaller scaled version of the space elevator can't be built and tested, because only a full scale version can use the centrifugal force of a counterweight. Not to mention, an over 22,000 mile long ribbon stretching into outer space is an awful big target for micrometeorites to shred it over the course of months and years. Even worse, all it would take would be a single strike from a small meteor or piece of space junk and snap goes the space elevator ! A more practical design would be to take four evacuated tubes, two hundred miles each, curved at the center at a right angle and their bottom half on the ground and their top half pointing upward. The bottom half serves as a counter weight and keeps the top half from tipping backwards. Then place all four against each other and bolt them together. You now have a one hundred mile high space elevator ready to use ! The beauty of this design is that it is scalable. You can build a one hundredth or one tenth scale elevator and work out the kinks before you build a full scale version. Its also sturdy, won't tip over and can withstand meteorite and space junk collisions. People and cargo take capsules up and down the tube, either two of the tubes to a Stanford Torrid at the top or use the other two tubes to shoot them into interplanetary space. The Space Tube will be safe, reliable, and cost a fraction of the price of rockets. Lets start building this immediately, so all of mankind can enjoy the benefits of space travel !   

EVACUATED TUBE TRANSPORT: Space Travel On Earth

It's the best transportation system in the world, and almost nobody knows about it. It's called Evacuated Tube Transport, in which compact car sized capsules filled with people and cargo are wisked through 5 foot diameter tubes at speeds ranging from hundreds to thousands of miles per hour. This is made possibly by maglev rings inside the tube which push and pull the capsules along, by attracting and repelling the magnets attached to the capsules. Also helping the propulsion, the tubes have their air removed, which means zero air and ground resistance for the capsules as they zoom through the length of the tube. It's basically "space travel on earth" so says its inventor Daryl Oster the CEO of the company ET3, which is trying to jump start Evacuated Tube Transport throughout the world. Once implemented, this will revolutionize transportation, rendering planes, trains, automobiles, and sea ships obsolete. ET3 will connect America and Asia via a tunnel underneath the Bering Strait, (just like the Chunnel under the British Channel). This will allow people and cargo to travel coast to coast in less than hour, and from New York City to Beijing in two hours. The sad part is, the technology to build this system has existed for decades, and can be constructed for a mere FOURTH of the cost of an interstate highway. So what's the hold up ? First of all for starters, Evacuated Tube Transport will meet lots of resistance, from car, plane, train, and shipping companies since this technology will put them out of business in short order, not to mention oil companies, since tube transport won't use a drop of gasoline. It should be crystal clear to the reader why multinational corporations like BP, GM, and Boeing will fight tooth and nail, to prevent Evacuated Tube Transport from getting off the ground. For a much more detailed description of this technology, visit the website www.et3.com and lets get the word out about a transportation system whose time has come.  

B.D. Seegebarth        

ASTEROIDS AS WEAPONS ? Will Carl Sagan's Warning Come True ?

In his book PALE BLUE DOT, the late great astronomer Carl Sagan talked about the future prospect of using asteroids as weapons. At the time, the full reality of asteroid collisions with the earth we're beginning to dawn on the various scientists of the world. Several solutions we're proposed, one of which was sending a space probe to land on an approaching space rock, and using its rockets to push it away from the earth. This was deemed the simplest and most effective method of preventing a repeat of the 65 B.C. KT collision or even a 1908 Tunguska scale impact. But many scientists including Carl Sagan quickly realized, this could also be used as the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Because if you have the ability to push an asteroid away from the earth, you also have to ability to steer an asteroid TOWARD the earth !  With a single stadium sized space rock, you could incinerate an entire county like Russia or China with one shot ! Or create an ocean sized tsunami devouring all Pacific Rim countries. This prospect is rapidly approaching, as private space companies such as PLANETARY RESOURCES, begin the gold rush of asteroid mining our very own Solar System within the next decade or two. Let's use caution as we start shoving mile wide asteroids near the earth shall we ? Or we'll suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs.

B.D. Seegebarth    

Artificial Personalities

When most people think of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), they think of Star Wars style robots or self driving cars and such. The reality is most A.I. is actually software inhabiting the hard drives of computers and fiber optic cables. These include but are not limited to friendly self repairing software programs as well as malicious computer viruses. But what I want to talk about today would be something you could call Siri 2.0 . We're all familiar with the smart phone app Siri, that can recognize your voice and answer your questions; but does so in a robotic voice that anyone can tell is fake. But with the coming of "Artificial Personalities" similar to the O.S. on the Joaquin Phoenix film "Her", their voices will be indistinguishable from that of humans. The implications of this are frightening to say the least. In order to create a realistic artificial voice personality, you would need to record it from a real person to create a vast word library. But if you can record one persons voice, you can also record ANY person's voice ! This would be the ultimate in identity theft. Imagine a hacker tapping into your phone line, recording your voice over the course of a few weeks, and building a word and personality library of you, an "audio avatar" if you will. Hackers could then commandeer this digital clone of yourself, and do all sorts of damage. They could call your bank, pretending to be you and remove money from your account. Book vacations for themselves on your nickel and dime. Or for shit and giggles, prank call your friends and family, without you even knowing about it. Worse yet, hackers could digitally copy the voices of authority figures, like say the police, call your phone and order you to come to the police station, and break into your house while you we're gone. The horrific possibilities of artificial personalities are endless. Let's use caution as we drive pedal to the metal, with new smart phone apps, under the guise of "convenience".  

B.D. Seegebarth