The Jetson Conspiracy III

Still curious?

In the Jetson Conspiracy I, I discussed water as a natural bouyant, not needing extra heating at above about 25,000 meters. In The Jetson Conspiracy II the topic was the great cold barrier between the surface of our blue planet and (let’s call it) the Jetson layer.

My suggestion was that we could put this to work for us.

Now, for those of you who are curious but don’t want the details, I’m willing to give you the short version first:

            Pump (salt) water in a pipe 25’ meters high, let much of it evapate/boil into balloon-like structures while the remaining quite salty water is siphoned 5,000 meters (or so) and let it shower back down to the surface, perhaps seeding already moist air, causing rain. The water vapor is “piped” into enormous (glass?) balloons where they create lift for the Jetsons’ world. The water vapor is then piped back down in an arch to a cooler, denser part of the atmosphere where it re-condenses as pure water, to be used as such.

Benefits:

-         fresh water

-         “steam” to drive a turbine or to propel Jetson transportation

-         natural lift in the arch to hold up the Jetson’s world

-         salt particles in the air, acting as aerosols to conduce precipitation

-         an existing physical infrastructure for other purposes at or below the ozone layer

-         absorption of sunlight in the stratosphere (working against surface warming)

Now, I concede that the idea sounds horridly expensive for the benefits received. And I must admit that my first question is not whether we can make a profit from building the structure and a colony accompanying it.

On the other hand, constructing something significant in the “middle” atmosphere (stratosphere) could provide a great Platform for research and experimentation concerning our atmosphere (e.g. in regards to global warming) while bringing our quest to implement any sort of geo-engineering closer to fruition, in the case that we might just happen to need it.

At the same time, collecting solar at these heights is incomparably easy in comparison to on the surface. There’s no wind to fight, meaning that the structures (mirrors or pv-pannels) need not be nearly as stable and therefor heavy (!) as those 5 to 25 kilometers lower. And there are never clouds in the way of the sun, while daytime is a little longer. Maybe we can still only get half a “day”’s worth of sunshine out of it, but 12 hours plus are much better than 5 in cloudy regions, while 25km away from the point of consumption is much better than the 100(s) or even 1000(s) of kilometers needed for some of today’s solar and wind sites. And finally, the efficiency for the solar panels (if pv is the preferred method) is higher because the excess heat in the cooler environment (0°C) and with much thinner materials is carried away quickly.

And it won’t hail on the parade.

And there’s no-one around to steal them.

In the event of war, on the other hand, such a construction would make an easy target.

The “umbilical cord” pumping water 25 km up will certainly be an engineering challenge. But hardly impossible. And besides, getting it constructed would be the first step to the dream of building a space elevator. For how are we to build something reaching 25-50 thousand kilometers if we can’t build one 25-50kms high?

The first challenge, of course, will be getting through the weather layer, meaning building a tower-like structure 20km high. The sky scrapers, tv-towers and wind turbine towers will hardly offer much of a model, simply because they are generally based on a pyramid sort of mentality: wide(r) base stacking up to a point at the top. Our model corresponds more with an inverse pyramid – the point is on the bottom where water is sucked up (with elevator or whatever type of transportation construction) going up into a broad top. Actually more like a mushroom.

Of couse I have ideas on how all this might just work – but I don’t want to give all the ideas away at once.

If you would like to discuss this, please contact me at dominic at schmelzer dot com. I would especially be interested in people who would like to establish a sort of atmospheric nasa.

Yes, let’s colonize the stratosphere as a very important stepping stone to the stars!