Lofstrom Loop

[kirby urner]

Wanderer Keith Lofstrom gets his name mangled a bit by our narrator in this YouTube I just stumbled upon:

https://youtu.be/4wolnVLsWw0

Launch Loops are A BIG BRAIN Idea

Xandros channel

Here's my blogged write-up of Keith's 2008 presentation:

https://controlroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/wanderers-200885.html

Kirby

[Keith Lofstrom]

Thanks for that. "Xandros" gets the concept "roughly" right
in his unquantified non-mathematical gen-Y-snarky way.
Not much different than our "boomer snarky" ways appeared
to our "greatest generation" parents. When Xandros has a
mortgage and a lawn to mow he will worry about the gen-Z's.

The big thing Xandros misses is prior energy storage and
power transmission aspects of loop technology, which will
happen decades before we do giga-kg/year space launch.

http://launchloop.com/PowerLoop

The illustration on that webpage shows a loop connecting
North America, Asia, Indonesia, and Australia ... not only
storing energy, but delivering dayside generation (solar
PV?) to nightside, and summer generation to winter
customers between north and south hemispheres.

Scaling from watt-hours to gigawatt-days - the cost of
storing a kilowatt hour decreases proportional to system
size and speed, vaguely like the hydro reservoir behind
Grand Coulee stores a lot more energy per dollar than the
10 foot dams some clowns build across a stream on their
property (doing VASTLY more environmental damage per
stored watt-hour than Grand Coulee).

Put all your eggs in one basket, then WATCH THAT BASKET.

A vast power loop will need a lot of scaling and test-to-
destruction before it is deployed at transcontinental
scale. Pinhead bean counters usually hire apologists
rather than test engineers. Budgeting for testing and
failure results in denied budgets. So, large systems
don't get tested, and pinhead project managers enlarge
systems way beyond tested limits because it is cheaper to
ignore consequences than study and test and mitigate them.

At the other extreme, many complain and do nothing useful,
while consuming the efforts of others (whom they disparage).

Sadly, that's human nature, and that's why I haven't put a
lot of effort into pushing launchloop and powerloop ideas.
Otherwise, powerful arrogant nitwits will prematurely
implement huge/impressive/untested/dangerous systems
rather than smaller experimental systems that self-skeptical
problem-solvers can properly design and test and test.

"Put on your management hat, Boisjoly! Those O-rings
haven't burned through yet! When should we launch the
Challenger space shuttle, summer?"

----

Back to the loop; I was recently contacted by a friend of
a friend at DARPA, who asked about the loop experiments
I could build with megabuck funding. $1M could pay for
the design and materials for a 100 meter diameter loop
moving at mach 3 or so, but it wouldn't pay for a large
circular patch of remote land with zero risk to neighbors.
Indeed, I could build a mach 0.5 loop in my large back
yard, but 7 houses and 20 neighbors abut that yard.
I appreciate 95% of them.

First, do no harm. Second, *DO*, and third, *EXPLAIN*.
Then *LISTEN" when smart people explain your errors.
Rinse and repeat.

----

"I'd rather be roughly right than exactly wrong"
- British logician Carveth Read, in his magnum opus
"Logic: Deductive and Inductive" 1898.

"If you've never been wrong, you've never been right"
- me

-----

Keith L.

--
Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com