Space Sustainability - Problems and Solutions

16th of January 2025 SpaceX Starship disintegrated over the Caribbean Sea. This reminded the problem of space debris and environmental hazard on EARTH to explore the rest of the Universe. It is funny to make Earth uninhabitable (for humans) just to send a handful of people to extremely uninhabitable extraterrestrial objects. We cannot nix out Space Exploration all together. We have to come up with solutions to problems and discuss them.

1. Spaceships should be more reliable and their failure rates should be reduced. (Look at aviation)

My solution is to use more reliable solid boosters which are simpler and have low failure rate. For sometime forget the idea of reusability of rocket stages. Except for the Stage Zero I proposed earlier.

2. In case of failure, disintegrating rocket stages should have minimal impact on people and environment.

My solution is to use glass rocket casing which would disintegrate into small pieces (tempered glass). Also glass is environmental friendly.

Hope more people start developing and discussing ideas. Problems are not solved by complaining but discussing solutions.

The Poles are The New Straits

A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the Earth.

More and more satellites are utilizing this orbit such as Starlink, Iridium and GPS satellites (not all satellites use this orbit but some) making the arctic circles critical regions for satellite security like a strait for the navy. Increasing the importance of Alaska, Canada and Scandinavian countries.

Solar Parachute and Atmospheric Skipping

Space Capsules returning to Earth have very high speeds.  Capsules slow down using the atmospheric drag which heats them up to very high temperatures. I recommend we use Solar Sails to slow down the capsules like a parachute.  Solar sails utilize radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large surfaces. Coupled with the atmospheric skip maneuver the capsules would experience much less heat, less g-force and much higher accuracy in the landing location. (You may check Orion Skip Maneuver)

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2022/orion-skip-maneuver.html

Nine Men's Morris against Nikola Tesla

Nine Men's Morris using Wireless Led pieces. I designed and created to play it against Nikola Tesla. He would have loved that.

Robot Built Modular Piezo Wind Electric Generator

All my construction ideas are based on automated swarm robots powered by wind turbines. Current wind turbines are designed to be manually constructed by cranes and human workers. I propose a new generation of wind turbines that is build using smaller parts that can fit in a container. Their connectors would be designed such that the automated robots can easily construct them. The construction should be from inside out. The construction robot would move inside the hallow shaft of the tower and built it like LEGO tiles. One important feature of these wind electric generators is that they will generate electric using leaves attached to piezo electric generators. The movement of the leaves will generate electricity. This design allows the wind electric generator to be build in small modules compared to giant blades and dynamos and gears. The wind harvesting area can be increased using branches like in a tree. The electric will be generated during the construction. Therefore the tower can be build in stages depending on the power need. The lack of bearings and gears is also beneficial in desert areas where fine sand particles from sand storms wear out them fast.

The main goal of this idea is to come up with a design that can be fully robot build using smaller parts.

Sustainable Construction of Single Stage Panama Canal

To travel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, ships must bridge a 26-metre height difference. The ships go through 3 locks: the Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun locks. 82km long Panama Canal transit can be completed in approximately 8-10 hours. I propose the swarm construction robots to enlarge the canal and decrease the lock stage count to one. 26 meter water level difference can be high for a single lock but I suppose engineers would find a clever way of solving it. The locks can be build in the lake section of the canal to allow more than two locks to be build to speed up the canal transit. Wind farms would be build to power the all electric construction robots. After the canal construction finishes they would power the cities nearby.

Sustainable Construction of Dual Lane Suez Canal

Suez Canal is a long narrow and single lane canal. I propose an extension of the canal using autonomous robots. The robots will be all electric and their batteries will be charged from the wind farm build on the banks of the canal. The enlarged canal will be separated with floating walls to make it dual lane. The robot based construction will allow 7/24 work with minimum number of workers required. No need to supply fuel, water and food. No need to construct temporary housing for the workers. The construction rate can be increased gradually by increasing the number of robots and wind turbines. Once the canal is finished the wind turbines would power the cities nearby.