Richard V. Rupp

November 15, 2021

Good Monday morning. I'm author Richard V. Rupp, writing from Burbank, California. Welcome to RUPP'S NOTES/FBI SPECIAL AGENT HARTMAN SERIES posts.

 

I'm continuing to hideout from the heat in my air-conditioned apartment. One of the headlines in this morning's LA TIMES reads "Southland Broils Through Another Day With Record Temperatures." One of those records was here in Burbank.

 

Yesterday, my RAMS had a good day in their division without even playing, as the Arizona Cardinals lost to the Panthers. I thank my son Matt for reminding me of this. Tonight, my RAMS play their long-time rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, and 'when' beat them, they will be tied 8-2 for the division lead with the Cardinals. There will be another big RAMS Monday Night Football on December 13th when the RAMS and Cardinals go head to head.

 

In the last couple of posts, I have mentioned the concept of steppingstones and waystations in my novel SKYWARD. My Clique of boys (Norman, Chris, Gavin, Elon, and Jeff) has decided to liken this concept to the Intercontinental railroads that allowed American to rapidly expand. Before the invention of the locomotive, humans moved at the same speed since pre-Biblical times. Now it's time to speed up the colonization of space.

 

A transcontinental railroad is defined as a contiguous network of railroad trackage that crosses a continental landmass with terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Based on this, the Clique has determined their railroad as – a contiguous system of steppingstones with electromagnetic catapults and waystations that cross through space to arrive at Earthlike landmasses located in distant star systems.

 

My research indicates that the concept of a space catapult is simple and has been explored at length since the beginning of the Space Age. Such catapults are also known as mass drivers or coilguns.,The concept relies on a set of powerful electromagnetic rails to accelerate spacecraft or payloads to escape velocity from their steppingstones and launch spacecraft horizontally.

 

Just as the railroads connected American, they believe their railless catapult-launched space vehicle system with steppingstones and waystations will establish a similar system to the stars with their potential earthlike planets. Not only will they transport humans skyward, but they will also transport space mineral resources (SMR) back to Earth.

 

This is from a Winter 2015 article by Brad Blair on the NATIONAL SPACE SOCIETY website titled Space Mineral Resources -  

 

"A recently released study by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) found that space mineral resources (SMR) can serve as an economic gamechanger, opening a vast new source of wealth to benefit humanity. The study examined technical, economic, legal, and policy-related requirements to enable SMR, and offered specific recommendations to international space agencies and commercial enterprise for moving humanity forward into a new era of space settlement and commercial resource development.  . . . Study findings on SMR technology and engineering design are that mining asteroids and lunar regolith is within reach of the current state of the technical art. The extrapolation of Earth-based mining appears to be a one-for-one trade with alterations due to vacuum, low gravity, and temperature, with bench and lab-scale testing to date in private and government labs on Earth. . .  The study found that the cost to develop Moon or asteroid water sources could become significantly lower than the delivery price from Earth, especially as distance increases, making space water a potential basis for future currency. Indeed, establishing spaceports and selling water mined in space is a key to unlocking a robust and sustainable space economy, enabling human expansion into the Solar System. . . .The study synthesizes a roadmap intended to maximize the speed and likelihood of economic SMR development, with the corollary benefit of protecting humanity from civilization-ending asteroid impacts.  A . . .This work is based on a space population forecast stemming from Elon Musk's stated goal to put 10,000 people on Mars within his lifetime.  . . .During the first half of the 21st century, space leadership must come from commercial enterprises and not depend upon government space programs. One concept that would leverage this series of initiatives is to convince government agencies that commercial enterprises will be there first and will be able to support government explorations by selling products to them at designated locations. These types of actions, in the past, have led to the development of major new industries."

 

As you can see, I'm trying to base my sci-fi novel SKYWARD on the latest science. Then I'm guessing how that would actually apply to building a colony on the Moon and the concept of using a catapult to speed up further exploration and colonization of the universe.  

 

Back to writing until 5 pm and then GO RAMS!!!

 

Cheers,

 

Richard V. Rupp, Author

Website – www.richardvrupp.com

Email – rupprisk@gmail.com

Copyright©2021 by Richard V. Rupp