H.A.L.P. High Altitude Launch Platform

Copyright © 2016 Jeff Kubitz, @jeff-kubitz [COPYRIGHT OWNER’S NAME]. All Rights Reserved.
H.A.L.P. High Altitude Launch Platform

In order to save money and increase efficiency in the colonization of another planet, or moon, or to asteroid mine a H.A.L.P. or many is necessary.

What is it exactly? It is the Bernoulli principle applied to eliminate the necessity of launching a vehicle from ground to space.

It was proposed that a a tower needed to be built for the same purpose out of carbon nanotubes resins but just as with anything else, this is expensive and most likely will not work. The forces on the tower would be extreme and according to Tesla, the tower would supply a vast amount of electricity from cosmic radiation in space but, it is those extreme forces.

So, let's examine a floating platform, a balloon if you will that does the exact same thing.

If you have ever been around rocket launches and I have watched thousands of launches and launched a few, you know that the flare of the rocket engine is much like a oxy-acetylene torch. It is possible to place the rocket upright in the center of a launch platform that floats in the upper atmosphere and the rocket will ascend without damaging the body of the platform upon firing the engine or engines of the rocket.

Because gravity is inverse to distance squared the amount of fuel necessary to launch a rocket from 30 miles or 46 kilometers above the surface is much, much less.

Likewise, a vehicle that can be retrieved at high altitude requires much less fuel to brake because of the reduced gravity. There is much less wear and tear on the vehicle because the vehicle does not have to burn through nearly as much atmosphere, especially closer to the ground where the atmosphere is more dense.

I like the Torus design myself but there is no reason that a floating launch platform could be shaped like a thick walled cylinder and work very similar to an aircraft carrier. The H.A.L.P. would be capable of ascent and descent by the compression and decompression of gas and is relatively cheap to operate and reuse over and over again.

Carbon nanotube resins being the preferred structural component due to the strength and long term suitability.

By reducing the number of ground launches, safety increases. One, the launch can occur over an unpopulated ocean instead of next to populated land. Launch stresses on the vehicle are greatly reduced because the force of gravity is much reduced. Not only is there a reduction in the requirements of fuel, there is also a reduction in the necessity to design the rocket so that it needs to withstand ground launch stresses. There will be less explosions of lift vehicles on the launchpad. All launches occur above the ground storm level.

Now, as we all know, a H.A.L.P. can also be superconductor based and raise and lower within a contained field so that the whole thing works like an electromagnetic train, an elevator without a shaft.

When we launch from high up, holidays in zero-gravity hotels orbiting the earth, colonization of moons and planets, and the retrieval of space mining of asteroids is easy. Plus, as I have stated before, it is a whole new industry which can employ tons of people at high wages and I only have a hundred or so of those in my head. So, here is one!

So, this will be the focus of my next book, which will of course ask the question, what is love?