Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-10-06 22:39:27

What I'm proposing here is a space colony, one that is easier to build than the O'Neill colonies, you build it in space, but you don't have to travel to space to get there once complete. The site of this space colony is the Transantarctic Mountains, it has all the things you need to survive except heat and light in the winter, with orbital mirrors we can add than missing element.

As you know, Antarctica is mostly covered with ice sheets, some of the exceptions to this are the tops of the transantarctic mountains, they jut above the ice sheets and their rocky surfaces are exposed. Now lets say we build a flat orbital mirror. The diameter of the Sun is 1.392 million kilometers, and its average distance is 150 million kilometers, now lets say we have a mirror orbiting the Earth at a 90 degree inclination to the equator, and it was 196.86 kilometers in diameter. Since the mirror is angled about 45 degrees to incident sunlight, its apparent width as seen from the ground will be 139.2 kilometers, this is about 10,000 times smaller than the Sun's diameter and since it is 10,000 times closer, it will produce an image of the Sun that is the same apparent size as the real sun. Now if we want to illuminate an area that is 50 kilometers in radius, we will have to increase the diameter of the mirror by 141.42 kilometers giving it a diameter of 338.28 km. This will produce an area on the ground where an image of the Sun will appear the same size as the real sun in the sky over an area that is 50 kilometers in radius or 31.25 miles. We would want to focus on the Transantarctic mountains because their tops are ice free and will readily absorb sunlight while the ice sheets will reflect that sunlight back into space. Those mountains will reradiate heat and melt he surrounding glaciers creating more land area around them and melt water lakes. The melt water will be dammed in by the surrounding glaciers of Antarctica. This melt water can be used for drinking, and watering of crops, a source of life for the transantarctic mountains, and they would b mush easier for colonists to get to than outer space.

The 15,000 km radius orbit will have an orbital period of 8.63672 hours, so there will be about almost 3 sunrises and 3 sunsets per 24-hour day, this extra sunlight will add to the sunlight during Antarctic summer, and create short 4+ hour periods of daylight followed by 4+ hours of night during Antarctic winter. his should make the area illuminated more habitable, allow for growth of vegetation and allow people to live there more comfortably.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-10-06 22:43:26)

karov · 2016-10-07 05:36:22

Thank you, Tom, for the good back-on-Earth topic!

Thoughts, inspired by this.:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transantarctic_Mountains are 3500km long and 200-ish (average) wide. I.e. Total area of 700 000-ish km2. That is twice Japan, or 20-ish Swirzerlands. I.e. fits hundreds of millions of people easily! And only 5% of whole Antarctica.

[2] The soleta ( orbital mirror ) could be not orbiting, but Solar sail ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Materials ) material Statite ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statite ) which to hover exactly over Antarctica. Other mirror ( Optics ) hardware materials option is host of vacuum baloons ( I already shared these: http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/ … 4Crowe.pdf & http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/ … 4Crowe.pdf ), too.

[3] The mirror material can be launched this way.: http://www.iase.cc/accelerator.htm -- shooting machine gun way with enough Hertz of frequency in plasmoid way could keep open atmospheric exit corridor. This corridor acting like giant cable shortcuting the ionosphere could actually provide much of the energy for the launcher ( also we have ready available massive hydro- , wind and geothermal power )...

[4] The sail-mirror ( or the swarm of such ) kept 'inflated' and static by balance of redirected sun-light and earth's gravity over the target -- could also be modular-ly managed and to run diurnal and seasonal cycle of ... as it is desired or seen fit.

[5] The presence of well lit and warmer patch of 5% the Antarctic total area, could be mitigated so this to not switch-on negative effects ... the surrounding areas could be additionally cooled off to compensate. ( Blanketted by insulation layer, solar powered Peltier fridges ... etc., so exactly to mimic the conditions and effects - regional and global of an Antarctica without terraformed TAM area ). This is achievable by preventing evaporation/precipitation/air humidity effects and keeping the extra illuminated 'oases' very dry on the top, i.e. drop irrigation systems. And by illuminating ONLY the exact targets while keeping the surroundings into the dark?

[6] The overall natural sun light flux would be far smaller then the total TAM area of 700k km2 multiplied by the average Swiss-equivalent flux, and the Soleta could be quite smart beaming EXACTLY as much as needed on area and in time! With very high precision. More advanced optical system can modulate not only by intensity, but also ... color, phase, ... Thus agricultural patches will peak in red and blue, the towns and cities will either have 24/7 noon or what the inhabitants vote for ( and buy from the National Climate Stability Board similarly to the 'carbon credits' - all illths' mitigation could be marketized, tokenized, monetized ... ).

[7] In fact Transantarctica would be a terrific country!:

- quite linear which will give quite good geometry of the trans-country backbone transport system ( most probably www.et3.com ! )

- it will have North Coast and South Coast, which could have dozens of thousands of miles coast line each if so fractalized as , say, Greece or Norway. Plenty of coast length to have lotsa ports, beaches, 24/7/365 tropical resorts few miles away from 24/7/365 ski resorts. ( It is comparatively easy to keep cold waters from shallow balmy waters apart by underwater barriers of different kind - inflatable, bubbly dynamic ones etc. ).

- the TAM country one of the biggest on Earth in terms of prime realty, would be right in the middle of a vast region of over 20 mln. km2 of natural riches - land and oceanic ones, mineral and biological ...

- beautiful nature! clean air. marvelous sightseengs and panoramas. http://wallpaperfolder.com/wallpapers/swiss+landscape or https://www.google.bg/search?q=southern … landscapes . Also think Chile, Norway, Himalayan countries ...

- 99% of the freshwater on Earth. Safely kept frozen. ( The minerals mining can go selectively under the ice sheet ).

- blue sky. never rain... but lush land. 99% wilderness (national park) by area on land and sea. ...

[image] http://img.wallpaperfolder.com/f/58EEDF … e-best.jpg [/image]

Last edited by karov (2016-10-07 05:43:45)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-10-07 08:00:40

karov wrote:

Thank you, Tom, for the good back-on-Earth topic!
Thoughts, inspired by this.:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transantarctic_Mountains are 3500km long and 200-ish (average) wide. I.e. Total area of 700 000-ish km2. That is twice Japan, or 20-ish Swirzerlands. I.e. fits hundreds of millions of people easily! And only 5% of whole Antarctica.
[2] The soleta ( orbital mirror ) could be not orbiting, but Solar sail ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_sail#Materials ) material Statite ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statite ) which to hover exactly over Antarctica. Other mirror ( Optics ) hardware materials option is host of vacuum baloons ( I already shared these: http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/ … 4Crowe.pdf & http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/library/ … 4Crowe.pdf ), too.

I thought about this too, then I thought, do I want this "Sun" to be up all the time? If we were to turn off this "Sun" so the people in Antarctica can have some night, this statite would fall towards the Earth, you see what keeps it up is radiation pressure, and it not only has to reflect light towards a particular area on Earth, it also has to levitate itself with that same light, the direction the light has to be reflected in in order to levitate itself might not be in the same direction we want to reflect light in in order to warm a patch of Earth. It might be better to use a thicker, heavier mirror, still a solar sail, but one which can't levitate itself against the force of gravity, instead it uses light pressure to constantly change it orbit, when it is not over Antarctica, the orbit change is so that it is orbiting at right angles to the direction of the Sun, we call this a Solar Synchronous Orbit, it orbits in such a way that the Sun is always visible, it orbits over the poles, and is angled at 45 degrees to the incident light rays, and as it passes over that particular patch, it changes its orientation, using light pressure, to reflect light on that particular patch of ground. From the point of view of those on the Ground, the Sun will appear to rapidly rise from the South, go directly overhead, and then set in the opposite horizon, at times where will appear to be two Suns in the sky at the same time, one, low above he horizon, and one rising to its zeneith almost directly over head and then setting in about 4 hours. During winter, the transantarctic mountains will experience a series of 8-hour days with about 4 hours of sunlight and 4 hours of darkness.

[3] The mirror material can be launched this way.: http://www.iase.cc/accelerator.htm -- shooting machine gun way with enough Hertz of frequency in plasmoid way could keep open atmospheric exit corridor. This corridor acting like giant cable shortcuting the ionosphere could actually provide much of the energy for the launcher ( also we have ready available massive hydro- , wind and geothermal power )...
[4] The sail-mirror ( or the swarm of such ) kept 'inflated' and static by balance of redirected sun-light and earth's gravity over the target -- could also be modular-ly managed and to run diurnal and seasonal cycle of ... as it is desired or seen fit.
[5] The presence of well lit and warmer patch of 5% the Antarctic total area, could be mitigated so this to not switch-on negative effects ... the surrounding areas could be additionally cooled off to compensate. ( Blanketted by insulation layer, solar powered Peltier fridges ... etc., so exactly to mimic the conditions and effects - regional and global of an Antarctica without terraformed TAM area ). This is achievable by preventing evaporation/precipitation/air humidity effects and keeping the extra illuminated 'oases' very dry on the top, i.e. drop irrigation systems. And by illuminating ONLY the exact targets while keeping the surroundings into the dark?

The surrounding areas are ice sheets, one particular effect I think would be and artificial hurricane, you see warm air would rise in the center pulling it surrounding colder air. I think it would to a large extent be a "snow Hurricane" as a lot of precipitation from it will be snow. Snow will tend to pile up on top of the glaciers, the glaciers would tend to move inward toward the melt water lake and then be melted, and thus we continue the water cycle. If the area is small, say about 50 kilometers in radius, the rest of the continent wouldn't be affected much at all. All that ice surrounding it would isolate the ecology around the transantarctic patch from the more environmentally sentivie coastal areas of Antarctica, so the penguins and seals would hardly be affected at all, as the warmed up areas would be deep into the interior of the continent. And this would be good practice for terraforming Mars.

[6] The overall natural sun light flux would be far smaller then the total TAM area of 700k km2 multiplied by the average Swiss-equivalent flux, and the Soleta could be quite smart beaming EXACTLY as much as needed on area and in time! With very high precision. More advanced optical system can modulate not only by intensity, but also ... color, phase, ... Thus agricultural patches will peak in red and blue, the towns and cities will either have 24/7 noon or what the inhabitants vote for ( and buy from the National Climate Stability Board similarly to the 'carbon credits' - all illths' mitigation could be marketized, tokenized, monetized ... ).
[7] In fact Transantarctica would be a terrific country!:
- quite linear which will give quite good geometry of the trans-country backbone transport system ( most probably www.et3.com ! )
- it will have North Coast and South Coast, which could have dozens of thousands of miles coast line each if so fractalized as , say, Greece or Norway. Plenty of coast length to have lotsa ports, beaches, 24/7/365 tropical resorts few miles away from 24/7/365 ski resorts. ( It is comparatively easy to keep cold waters from shallow balmy waters apart by underwater barriers of different kind - inflatable, bubbly dynamic ones etc. ).
- the TAM country one of the biggest on Earth in terms of prime realty, would be right in the middle of a vast region of over 20 mln. km2 of natural riches - land and oceanic ones, mineral and biological ...
- beautiful nature! clean air. marvelous sightseengs and panoramas. http://wallpaperfolder.com/wallpapers/swiss+landscape or https://www.google.bg/search?q=southern … landscapes . Also think Chile, Norway, Himalayan countries ...
- 99% of the freshwater on Earth. Safely kept frozen. ( The minerals mining can go selectively under the ice sheet ).
- blue sky. never rain... but lush land. 99% wilderness (national park) by area on land and sea. ...
[image] http://img.wallpaperfolder.com/f/58EEDF … e-best.jpg [/image]

karov · 2016-10-07 08:43:32

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I thought about this too, then I thought, do I want this "Sun" to be up all the time? If we were to turn off this "Sun" so the people in Antarctica can have some night, this statite would fall towards the Earth, you see what keeps it up is radiation pressure, and it not only has to reflect light towards a particular area on Earth, it also has to levitate itself with that same light, the direction the light has to be reflected in in order to levitate itself might not be in the same direction we want to reflect light in in order to warm a patch of Earth. It might be better to use a thicker, heavier mirror, still a solar sail, but one which can't levitate itself against the force of gravity, instead it uses light pressure to constantly change it orbit, when it is not over Antarctica, the orbit change is so that it is orbiting at right angles to the direction of the Sun, we call this a Solar Synchronous Orbit, it orbits in such a way that the Sun is always visible, it orbits over the poles, and is angled at 45 degrees to the incident light rays, and as it passes over that particular patch, it changes its orientation, using light pressure, to reflect light on that particular patch of ground. From the point of view of those on the Ground, the Sun will appear to rapidly rise from the South, go directly overhead, and then set in the opposite horizon, at times where will appear to be two Suns in the sky at the same time, one, low above he horizon, and one rising to its zeneith almost directly over head and then setting in about 4 hours. During winter, the transantarctic mountains will experience a series of 8-hour days with about 4 hours of sunlight and 4 hours of darkness.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

radiation pressure vectoring for propulsion and for illumination can be made simultaneous by various methods.:
- using more mirrors and creating complex photonic pressure kinetic system
- using multi-direction reflection and/or photonic thrusting ( via say absorbtion ) and
- more complex trajectory / quasy-orbit(s) ...

'cuz countries might not be so happy about big mirror orbiting over their territories.

How much big, and on what orbit you say?

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-10-07 09:44:51

In total, at the distance of 15,000 km, it would have to be 338.24 kilometers in diameter, this will take into account the fact that the mirror will have to be angled at 45 degrees to reflect incident light rays from the Sun, so this reduces its apparent diameter to 0.7 of its actual diameter. At a distance of 15,000 kilometers the orbital period is 8 hours and change, if we want, we could increase the orbit to 24 hours, but then we'd have to increase the size of the mirrors too. the size of the mirror would have to be proportional to the mirror's distance from the Earth. If we increase to orbit to 35,870 km we would get a 24-hour orbit, if we did this however...
35,870/15,000 km = 2.39133.
2.39133 * 338.24 = 808.84 km
We'd have to increase the mirror diameter to 808.84 kilometers the Sun would then rise on a 24-hour schedule, it could be synchronized with the appearance of the real Sun to produce twice as much sunlight, the mirror doesn't have to be 100% reflective of course, and the real Sun when it appears is at a low angle, heavily filtered by the atmosphere, so it won't be quite twice as much as we see the Sun at high noon in the New York area for example. You probably do want to warm it up more to compensate for the cooling effect of the surrounding glaciers.

This is to cover an area on the ground that is 50 km in radius, beyond that, you get a reflected partial image of the sun, and a transition zone to a normal polar climate. This zone will be quite isolated by these ice sheets, you won't get penguins or seals or walruses, or krill that are disturbed by this, and very little life exists in the interior of Antarctica, except for that which we place there.

If we can use material from the Moon, it might prove cheaper to do this, that to build a 50 km radius floating platform on the Ocean, and less environmental impact as well. Reflectors in space don't have to withstand the rigors of a churning ocean after all.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-10-07 09:52:38)

Antius · 2016-10-07 10:20:30

Tom, its a terrible idea. Would you really want to risk destabilising the whole Antarctic ice sheet and raising sea levels by 10's of metres, all for the sake of a few worthless mountains in Antarctica?

Terraformer · 2016-10-07 10:56:03

If you want to use orbital mirror to warm somewhere, why not somewhere in the northern hemisphere (NOT Greenland)? Those places are much easier to reach, and the risk of sea level rise is much lower.

Void · 2016-10-07 18:54:34

The concept altered allows for the evaporation of ocean water near an ice cap, where it might condense into snow, therefore lowering the ocean level.

Granted we don't want to mess with the Earth more than we have to, but the solution above may be required, if in fact we have already broken the machine.

Having crossed that border, then Tom's proposal is not as bad as it might seem. I'm not ready for it yet though. I'm adaptable though even in my old age.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-10-08 00:00:17

Antius wrote:

Tom, its a terrible idea. Would you really want to risk destabilising the whole Antarctic ice sheet and raising sea levels by 10's of metres, all for the sake of a few worthless mountains in Antarctica?

Do you see that little red circle I drew on this map of Antarctica? that is the radius of the area I'm talking about. Look how so much bigger Antarctica is compared to that little red circle, which I drew to scale! This is equivalent to a space colony on Earth, that little circle. I don't see how melting that little thing would leave Antarctica ice free, do tell me how this could happen.

karov · 2016-10-08 03:29:43

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

In total, at the distance of 15,000 km, it would have to be 338.24 kilometers in diameter, this will take into account the fact that the mirror will have to be angled at 45 degrees to reflect incident light rays from the Sun, so this reduces its apparent diameter to 0.7 of its actual diameter. At a distance of 15,000 kilometers the orbital period is 8 hours and change, if we want, we could increase the orbit to 24 hours, but then we'd have to increase the size of the mirrors too. the size of the mirror would have to be proportional to the mirror's distance from the Earth. If we increase to orbit to 35,870 km we would get a 24-hour orbit, if we did this however...
35,870/15,000 km = 2.39133.
2.39133 * 338.24 = 808.84 km
We'd have to increase the mirror diameter to 808.84 kilometers the Sun would then rise on a 24-hour schedule, it could be synchronized with the appearance of the real Sun to produce twice as much sunlight, the mirror doesn't have to be 100% reflective of course, and the real Sun when it appears is at a low angle, heavily filtered by the atmosphere, so it won't be quite twice as much as we see the Sun at high noon in the New York area for example. You probably do want to warm it up more to compensate for the cooling effect of the surrounding glaciers.

[image] http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/Image8.gif [/image]

I'd suggest the lit up area to be the WHOLE TAM chain incl. the Antarctic peninsula. More than a million km2.

The mirrors could be either a swarm of the total needed for propulsion and positioning and illumination area or combination of balancing mirrors in sun-earth halo and solar orbits.

karov · 2016-10-08 03:34:55

Void wrote:

The concept altered allows for the evaporation of ocean water near an ice cap, where it might condense into snow, therefore lowering the ocean level.

Yes, indeed.

Imagine litting up only the habitable zone and keeping most of West and East icy Antarctica in eternal darkness ( by adding a Hall Weather Machine aerostatic layer on top of the antarctic atmosphere to precisely manage the infalling light. ).

The most of the continental rim will be kept under present day conditions. So to say penguine-wise.

Thus the increased evaporation will get trapped into the Darkness making the ice sheat thicker and lowering the global ocean levels opening up more lands on the continental shelves shallows.

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#1 2016-10-06 22:39:27

Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#2 2016-10-07 05:36:22

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#3 2016-10-07 08:00:40

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#4 2016-10-07 08:43:32

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#5 2016-10-07 09:44:51

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#6 2016-10-07 10:20:30

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#7 2016-10-07 10:56:03

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#8 2016-10-07 18:54:34

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#9 2016-10-08 00:00:17

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#10 2016-10-08 03:29:43

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

#11 2016-10-08 03:34:55

Re: Orbital Mirrors for the Transantarctic Mountains

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