aagaardofspaceandtime

[aagaardofspaceandtime]

here's an idea for you, take an asteroid, get it spinning on only one axis, heat it way up, cut off metals by density and collect them as they spiral off so, a solar sail float station in either the L4 or L5 point, or both, it uses the solar wind to maintain position, and also is capable of flexing the solar sails in such a way as to focus the solation wherever you need it to go. could put another at the L3 point. anyways, these three giant sun focusing arrays each focus the radiation at the one ahead of it in orbit, and also the one trailing for balance, only, it's targeted slightly off so it can be utilized by the station or habitat servicing it. a large torus in which people live, one side is a parabolic reflector, the other side is a solation receptacle, which provides heat and electricity. regular shipments of volatiles are shipped in, but the recyclers make it pretty self-sustaining. space suits are going to need a redesign, weave electro-sensitive fabric in something like a wetsuit, you have that on all the time, via electronic wizardry this suit not only keeps track of your health in numerous ways, it can serve asa full body sensor for humaniod robots that can be controlled by the body's movements, with the addition of a modified eeg hood(paired with a distributed neural network ai), it allows direct interface with pretty much any ship systems you need to interface with. it also serves as the base layer for the eva suit, which is a much more advanced version of a really stretchy but impossible to rip oversuit that basically only serves to provide you with convenient data ports and places to hold things. The helmet is the only thing that needs to be fully pressurized in this rig, the skinsuit provides the necessary pressure to prevent unhealthy differentials thereof, the helmet snaps onto a neck-ring and seals the skinsuit. while the operator is in an evactuated environment, the skinsuit will be like a second epidermis, tailored to the rigors of vaccuum, while the oversuit will have the necessary data connections for the skinsuit as well as an integrated computing module. Now here's a thought, how about a ground-based focusing array that beams ridiculously strong EM waves upward? This would either replace or augment the thrust of the existing launch vehicle and could also be used to transmit power to any electrical systems that require a lot of it, such as the new ion engines that have been created recently. It could also be used as an energy weapon, in extenuating circumstances. There are numerous ways to acheive orbit, more given higher g-force tolerances (i.e. non-organic payloads), using a particularly long railgun you could launch all the pieces of a space station into orbit with basic maneuvering thrusters so they don't drift apart, then launch one large ascent vehicle with the crew necessary to assemble it.