Vacuum balloons

karov · 2014-01-30 12:36:14

It is pretty obvious that buoyancy maximizes in any fluid medium when the vessel is "full" of vacuum.

The engineering problem is the vessel ('s walls) to have sufficient compression strength to withstand the pressure around.

Usually orbital rings, kinetic towers and various other kinetic structures or "dynamic compression members" ( acc. to Paul Birch's terminology ) are regarded as "toposphere" construction "material" ( or rather meta-material ), for setting supra-world shells which to counter the inward "pressure" of underbody's gravity.

Similarly some barrels and submarines and tunnels are enforced by orthogonal rings ( ribs ) which massively increases their overall compression strength.

Lets now "marry" happily "orbital" rings with balloon. Similar to enforced concrete, we have a wall made from ordinary materials enforced with "hoses" with vacuum through which with negligible, almost zero loss are running electromagnetically driven and suspended mass-streams exercising outward counter-pressure equal to the inward environmental fluid pressure. ( Indeed it's not even necessary neither the vessel to be submersed in liquid or gas or plasma -- but in solid also - imagine ultra-deep mining shafts or underground caverns, nor it to be strictly round as a whole - cylindrical, oval, cigar-shaped, toruses... Also, no need the DMC enforcement to run through the balloon's wall material , but enough to let the mass-stream run inside it in motorcycle ball of death way - http://gracen327.files.wordpress.com/20 … =284&h=300 , of course in multi-layered or other collision-avoidance dynamic pattern ).

Such vacuumed baloons would be ideal for aerostatic platforms, continental size and modular if necessary.

4.190.476.190,4762 kg ( that much cubic metters ~ 1kg per each or air in troposphere ) minus 12.571.428,5714 kg ( the area of the sphere multiplied by approx. 1 kg per 1 m2 areal density of total hardware ) = more then 4 million tonnes of payload, FOR ... 1km wide sphere Buckminster Fuller's Cloud Nine style.

If mass-streams of plasma used such globe could be structurally integrated with fusion reactor, too - a mesh / cage of tokamaks.

100m wide sphere, with 1kg/m2 areal density with vacuum inside will factor in 1000 times less volume and 100 times less area, hense 4 mln. kg lift minus 125 thousand kg structure ... still area (weight) to volume (lift) negligible, but bigger the better.

of course in H/He, CO2, N2 the buoyancy will be different, but still the max.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-01-31 15:41:36

Has anyone ever tried to make a vacuum balloon. Seems to me it would have to be a minimum size, it would also have to float high in the atmosphere where the difference between the eternal pressure and a vacuum is small. An incandescent light bulb is an example of a vacuum balloon, problem is the glass is too heavy. If you can make an incandescent light bult that was large enough without adding to the weight of the glass and it not imploding then it would float.

karov · 2014-02-01 03:38:25

Tom,

Namely to avoid the necessity to use "unobtainium"-level strenght envelope materials for bigger then microscopic ( say Hall Weather Machine bubblets), I'm playing with kinetic structures counter-pressure support.

The very high in atmosphere floating is not a solution, but just a consequence from the very high buoyancy. Vacuum balloons float high if not payload-ed heavily.

Also, this is excellent alternative for thermal aerostats for worlds with H/He atmospheres. Instead of steady thermal flux ( serious expenditure = maintenance cost ), the energy flow to support buoyancy will be with negligible losses, due to lack of friction.

Tom Kalbfus · 2014-02-01 15:18:52

karov wrote:

Tom,
Namely to avoid the necessity to use "unobtainium"-level strenght envelope materials for bigger then microscopic ( say Hall Weather Machine bubblets), I'm playing with kinetic structures counter-pressure support.
The very high in atmosphere floating is not a solution, but just a consequence from the very high buoyancy. Vacuum balloons float high if not payload-ed heavily.
Also, this is excellent alternative for thermal aerostats for worlds with H/He atmospheres. Instead of steady thermal flux ( serious expenditure = maintenance cost ), the energy flow to support buoyancy will be with negligible losses, due to lack of friction.

Ah yes gas giants like Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Jupiter has too high gravity for humans to live in for extended periods of time.)
The problem is not dissimilar to placing planetary shells supported by dynamic compression instead of internal atmospheric pressure. One can circulate pellets and use dynamic centrifugal force to supply the outward pressure to counteract inward atmospheric pressure on the outside pushing in. For example you could have three hoops of centrifugal particles at right angles to each other's planes of rotation. The hoops would have to be of slightly different radii so their paths wouldn't cross. If you want to increase the outward centrifugal pressure, you simply increase their velocity without increasing their mass, and you need some membrane to keep out the exterior gases to maintain the vacuum inside, this would cause the membrane to bow inward due to external atmospheric pressure. It would help if the membrane was of high tensile strength material like grapheme for instance. That way the bigger your vacuum balloon, the lower the density, since the mass is only in the hoops and the membrane of the balloon, the mass of the membrane and hoops increases according to the square of the radius, while the volume of the vacuum inside increases as a cube function of radius, though the grapheme might stretch further and reduce the internal volume of vacuum somewhat. the more hoops you add to the balloon the better the support. You would probably be obligated to add more hoops as you increase the size of your vacuum balloon. I think in the case of Saturn, Vacuum balloons could be constructed in space, decelerated by the fringes of Saturn's atmosphere due to its low density, and settle in the atmosphere proper. One can regulate altitude with ballast tanks by letting in or pumping out atmospheric gases, much in the same manner that a submarine does.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2014-02-01 15:20:10)

Terraformer · 2014-02-01 16:18:28

As far as vacuum balloons go, I'm interested in the possibility for ultrahigh altitude ballooning here. Make a balloon that can tolerate a 10mb pressure difference, and it will float at ground level if big enough. Keep pumping it out and it will rise higher, allowing you to pump out more air, until you're floating 50, 60km up. The question is, does the reduced mass from inflating with hydrogen (no helium, too scarce) outweigh the increased mass from the hydrogen?

karov · 2014-02-02 02:12:24

Terraformer wrote:

As far as vacuum balloons go, I'm interested in the possibility for ultrahigh altitude ballooning here. Make a balloon that can tolerate a 10mb pressure difference, and it will float at ground level if big enough. Keep pumping it out and it will rise higher, allowing you to pump out more air, until you're floating 50, 60km up. The question is, does the reduced mass from inflating with hydrogen (no helium, too scarce) outweigh the increased mass from the hydrogen?

In fact vacuum has the maximum possible lifting power, as harder the vacuum as higher the balloon goes.

Can't get my head around your last question, though...

karov · 2014-02-02 02:45:15

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I think in the case of Saturn, Vacuum balloons could be constructed in space, decelerated by the fringes of Saturn's atmosphere due to its low density, and settle in the atmosphere proper. One can regulate altitude with ballast tanks by letting in or pumping out atmospheric gases, much in the same manner that a submarine does.

Tom,

EXACTAMENTE! - for the first part ( ommited in the quote above ). You described my idea with other words. The "hoses" or "hoops" cage's or grid's geometry or fractallity has numerous obvious solutions.

For the space construction and deceleration into the atmosphere of the gaseous under-planet - OF COURSE!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballute

In our case the whole habitat is ballute/vacuum balloon. Such multi-miles diameter ones could be mass-produced where cheap materials and energy are located and moved by cheap solar and gravity assist power into and onto Saturn or other sufficient atmosphere planet ( For places like Venus the most competitive both energy and materials source is en situ ), where these vacuum balloon habitats to be assembled together in really huge habitat structures.

They can be made exponentially self-replicating and being balloons - i.e. with enormous surface to mass ratio, they are best for implementation of YARKOVSKY effect type of solar sail.

Indeed, every other type of machinery ( not only habitats ) could be attached to these balloons. Per instance - Paul Birch's supramundane habitats designs envisioned the rims of habitable plates or strips to be fended by 200+km high airwalls made by huge hexagonal inflatable "blocks" ( with miles long sides - called by him "gasbags", lets dub our vacuum balloons - VACBAGS, a? ... ).

Kinetic structure balloons are better for this two, because you get "dial-up" pressure/buoyancy/strength for the different vac-balloons without to be necessary to build them with different walls thickness and strength and to fill them with different soup of gasses, but to work with uniform VACBAG bricks for the floor, the airwalls, etc. etc. with regulating the amount, DIRECTION(!!!) and other props of the in-wall vacbag's mass-streams.

===

There is another interesting feature.:

IMPACT FUSION.

The problem today with our fusion energy attempts is mainly the bremsstrahlung comming from the plasma confinement methods.

Having huge vacuum spaces + huge speeds of mass-streams -- putting them together gives us ( almost ) present day tech-level impact fusion power.

Accelerate LiD pellets to 100+ km/s speeds collide them and fusion is imminent.

The vacbags could house in their vacuum hearts impact fusion mini-suns, as just a by-product of their design, but not as deliberately sought effect.

THUS, vacbags give not only the TERRA FIRMA ( the "geosphere" ) but also the LIGHT ( aka "luminosphere" ) for the habitat, they are scale-able , can build terraformed surface/s incrementally/exponentially like mosaic and...

... in general, they are candidates for kinda-sorta "swiss army knife" type of terraforming equipment ( "Macrolife" = where not the living things, but the living environment/biome/the ecosystem/the habitat itself self-replicates... ) unit, which could be let to spread across the galaxy ( and beyond ) and to infect with habitat ALL AVAILABLE star-bound and free-floating planets.

Going back to the beginning -- such mass-stream inflatable structures have much more mundane applications too - per instance for shaping huge astronomic and/or solar power capture structures...

DO you think I can patent this?

karov · 2014-02-08 01:22:12

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShaft

with such made from toroid vacbags we could mine really deep into gas planets.

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#1 2014-01-30 12:36:14

Vacuum balloons

#2 2014-01-31 15:41:36

Re: Vacuum balloons

#3 2014-02-01 03:38:25

Re: Vacuum balloons

#4 2014-02-01 15:18:52

Re: Vacuum balloons

#5 2014-02-01 16:18:28

Re: Vacuum balloons

#6 2014-02-02 02:12:24

Re: Vacuum balloons

#7 2014-02-02 02:45:15

Re: Vacuum balloons

#8 2014-02-08 01:22:12

Re: Vacuum balloons

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