So, now you have somewhere upward of a billion pieces of
interlocking concrete ring floating in the sky hanging from balloons.
You want them to all come together in one ring around the Earth. How do
you get all those pieces to come together despite winds at altitude?
Another modernized version of ancient technology to the rescue; you use steel cables and ropes.
Every section would be equipped with solar-powered winches and tethered to each section adjacent to either side of it with steel cables and ropes. You start all the winches and they pull all the sections together so that they interlock in mid-air.
Crews in the balloons (human or robotic) inject mortar in the joints just prior to interlock. The interlocks are designed in such a way that they force the pieces to position correctly.
Emergency balloons are attached to every section that automatically deploy in the event of an interlock failure. The cables remain permanently attached, and are mortared into place as a perment part of the initial ring structure. Excess cable from pulling the pieces together is strung along the perimeter of the ring, and anchored and mortared into place to provide additional structural integrity.
So now you have a ring around the Earth at 60,000 feet up. It has multiple redundancies and an emergency buoyant fail-safe system. What do you do with it?
Next post…
Dan
Another modernized version of ancient technology to the rescue; you use steel cables and ropes.
Every section would be equipped with solar-powered winches and tethered to each section adjacent to either side of it with steel cables and ropes. You start all the winches and they pull all the sections together so that they interlock in mid-air.
Crews in the balloons (human or robotic) inject mortar in the joints just prior to interlock. The interlocks are designed in such a way that they force the pieces to position correctly.
Emergency balloons are attached to every section that automatically deploy in the event of an interlock failure. The cables remain permanently attached, and are mortared into place as a perment part of the initial ring structure. Excess cable from pulling the pieces together is strung along the perimeter of the ring, and anchored and mortared into place to provide additional structural integrity.
So now you have a ring around the Earth at 60,000 feet up. It has multiple redundancies and an emergency buoyant fail-safe system. What do you do with it?
Next post…
Dan
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