Kilotower

In 2021 my cuz Amia Ross and three others proposed "Tall Towers on the Moon". On Earth the standard is the Gulf's Caliphburg. This has to deal with wind, and 9.8 ms^-2 gravity. On the Moon there is no permanent wind although landers kick up some dust; gravity is 1.625.

Ross' crew wanted this for the south polar basin so they could get gigawatts of solar power all month long. I want it at the Lunar base of the spaceline, where I've banned landers. For here, let's talk how one might end up having to work inside a kilotower, if not live in there.

We both must endure radiation - including the Bremsstrahlung effect upon metals. Ross isn't living in the tower so doesn't care, except that she's not using rebar (nor any reïnforcement). I do want to reïnforce my tower: so, instead of steel, I'd use Jensen's anhydrous glass. Both are common on the Moon; in fact, any slag used to reduce metals could serve to feed the glasswork. I might still wire the innards for electricity because, like Ross, why not get free gigawatts (if only for half the month). I believe a little copper and silver will deliver much less pain than a titanium shell or even a lot of iron rebar would.

MS Copilot (beyond the flattery) is telling me that I can raise this monster into the low kilometers; Ross reckons higher. But I'd hardly start that way. I'd start with a Burj+ height of 1000 meters. Then build the kilometers-high shell around that, which would involve internal support atop that centre. It would keep growing around the spaceline which can itself serve as a central crane. Ross estimates that for the concrete - sans rebar - the structure must use 760 mt for 1 km height; 4100 for 2km.

Copilot is warning about supporting the Burj upon that regolith, but I'm scooping regolith away to concoct the anhydrous rebar, maybe some concrete if we get spare water. One hopes eventually to hit the basement rock of the nearside or deep polar basin, either-which should expose lunar-mantle basalt. I don't think this is to buckle much.

Concrete can be manufactured in the south pole at 2 mt per Earth day. It might at first need making down there, because it requires water (and megawatts). So I guess the pole has to shoot it to other Lunar outposts by mass driver. Luckily if it comes in goop form, that's water we hope to preserve, maybe even to start our own 2 mt/day factory.

What Rosses get inside the structure is a vast, shielded interior which we can water and oxygenate at a nice ~290s K (20ish C) without rusting the rebar. The exterior suffers temp swings over quite the timescale, so we'll need an insulating outer wall. Unless like Amia you're building it in permadaylight.

For whatever plantlife we're growing in the interior, the famous Biosphere had a problem: carbon-exuding life on the inside may carbonate the concrete instead of the ficus. So where we are sharing our space with plants, like hydroponics; we'll have to tile the interior as not to expose the concrete.

Ezekiel in Babylonia

In 2020, a handbook for Ezekiel came out. I haven't, and maybe can't, read all of it. I may not need to - Dalit Rom-Shiloni produced what is certainly one of the best chapters in it, "Ezekiel among the Exiles".

This sets the prophet in the community of Jehoiachin. The prophet may or may not love that king, but he - famously - is clear about what he hates. That would be Jerusalem: whether this be the kingdom of the Babylonians' stooges, or the province now inhabited by subjects ("servitors", Carl Sargent might say).

We also get several Akkadian loans and calques. Like the Babylonian barber the gallâb[u]. At least Dan knew of people who performed this task (Judges 16:19) and one has to assume so did Israel recording Samson's legend at Tel Dan, and then Judah accepting their exiles. Well... Ezekiel didn't want Israel's barber.

I don't see where Ezekiel and other Persian-era prophets like 2 Isaiah react to one another, and Rom-Shiloni doesn't mention any. Of Persian tropes, the critic must note that KBR canal. We concede the rarity of this or any other such trope, compare Daniel. Rom-Shiloni would likely dismiss such as gloss.

Britain's Meiji

Last year on Galveston Liberation Day, Rod Martin explained its merits.

Well: not the merits of this particular day. The ratification of Amendment XIII (always a lucky number for the Union) would have been a better day worth the annual memorial. But we happen to have this day off soooo...

It may be moot for me anyway inasmuch as I am pretty-much not American. My ancestors didn't keep slaves and didn't want 'em. They say my Jewish side might have been 'em, but they were slow to extend that as a principle for the Banu Noah. I might, however, speak to the Institution's retarded sibling Serfdom.

Throughout the Middle Ages, daimyos ruled England. The Magna Carta, whatever John promised us in AD 1215, had been rewritten. Serfdom was officially not the law of the land over the seventeenth century... but then, the Austrians claimed not to have serfs in the early nineteenth, also; and look how that went.

In AD 1688, the English lords called in the Dutch. Kara Dimitruk and Ben Southwood tell how landed lords became landowners, who could better use the land they'd held only in paper before.

Also as with the Dutch, owners of buggy swamp around the Wash reclaimed it for production - because they now legally could. Elsewhere canals were drilled. The England of the 1700s became much, much more powerful than that of the 1600s. (1690s Scotland might have benefitted too until they tried colonising the Darien Gap, like idjits.)

One narrative for the stagnation across Europe is to blame the Church. I'd credit that argument for the chilling days of Inquisition. To me also, however; that doesn't ring as true in the age of Newton, whose England didn't follow the Church. The only case of direct Church influence I see in the whole article is where they slapped down Fernando VI's income tax. Based on the other people who squealed: this tax would have befallen equally land-rentiers, capitalists, and high-wage-earners. Which means the tax by nature would have hurt innovation more than the code's simplification would have helped.

It may be that the English Civil War - which the English won - had reïntroduced the Magna Carta into the commonweal. As Yarvin points out, nobody cited "the rights of Englishmen" before Henry VIII. The Tudors (who were Welsh) had cast about for national myths before all that, touting the Arthur cult. Only after the break from Rome (per Opus 4.8) Henry VIII and Elizabeth touted the Saxons. We still don't really have a national epic, or didn't before Tolkien anyway.

Our first fun mistake

The fossil bed at Mistaken Point, delightful name by the way, is yielding up "Ediacaran" eukaryotic fossils. The region may have been closer to Ediacara at the time, if the "VanDieLand" theory pans out; so, call it Greater Ediacara. Specifically this seabed dates 574Mya, at the start of the "Avalonian" epoch lasting until 560 Mya.

The fossils as fossils have retained zero DNA. What they do retain is where the DNA would have spread: close to the parent(?s), or far. Close "stolons" implies cloning or budding, like fungi or aspen (they say strawberry). Far spreading was done through the water in those days.

Budding eukaryotes don't compete with each other. As long as eukaryotes were stolons, their billion-years remained Boring.

More: interfluid spreading is a prerequisite for mixing before seeding. In short, sex (although here the fluid is just water).

They report that predation did happen but only later in the Ediacaran (or Vendian), running up to the 539 Mya Cambrian onset.

Maxwellport is back

So when I was awaiting a World Cup match, I went through a number of past articles I'd posted here. I wanted to consider Jensen's many comments in support of anhydrous glass, especially in vacuum. One such elderpoast was this thing about a tether from the Maxwell Mountains to the clouds of Venus.

And then Google (via blogspot) took the thing back into draft with an ugly red eyeball showing the flagdown. Whaaa?

I'll pipe here the good news: Google allowed it back after a modicum of further change. Maybe a matter of half an hour for them to do it. Which is an annoyance but not a disaster.

As to why the flag, er. All the links were internal except one - to ToughSF, and that one is blogspot too. The internal links went to other science pieces here obviously, none of them subject to review. We did have a link to a post with a title referring to what you do in hot water when you want to modulate the level of tea in it. Some use that term for a rather less wholesome activity. A little "edgy" mayhap. Except that the tea post wasn't flagged, itself.

The one change I made (besides whining about the takedown) was "muh Kevlar" which I just made "Kevlar". So I dunno. Seems arbitrary.

It may be the post got to their attention because it was overly link-heavy. This attracts spiders and robots. I am aware that this 'ere blog attracts those, rather than human readers. Which is kind of sad.

Extra cable for extra power

Over the given sidereal month of any eccentric system, any spaceline releases and pulls its cable. Earth/Luna marks this in the megameters: on the Lunar side of L1, 60-to-61.5. Suppose the L1 station isn't pulling back the cable and releasing it; that's a lot of work and at the cable's sheer scale (and thickness!), I doubt the work is needed. So doubts everyone else who is treating this push-and-pull as a rounding-error ... at L1. They haven't considered the Sinus Medii groundbase. There, they must consider... elasticity.

The gravity forces nonequal tension applying mostly to the L1 plateau; but we're likely saving cost, so that the Lunar side of the cable be thinner. Therefore assume constant elongation throughout. L1-to-Luna elongation needs minimum 2.5%, or we have to add surplus cable. Kevlar-brand aramids give us this minimum, as do Zylon and Dyneema. Most mass will cluster the L1 tension plateau. Also - as noted - overdangling Earth GEO, is our strongest material and there we don't care about elasticity. On our side, is where Toray's T1100G.

Lunaside is the problem. T1100G is only 2.2% (I'm further suspicious about Jensen's anhydrous glass). So the 61.5 Mm apogee (tightest) is extended from 60.17 Mm perigee (loosest). Allowing for redundance (e.g. braiding the cable into rope) will mean more excess on the Lunar side - so the extra cable dump on the Moon is a minimum. By Kepler this slacker-week is shorter than apogee week, but - still.

That means at perigee the loose cable has left 170 km on the moon. At 1 cm² cross-section: 1700 cubic meters if melted into a glob; at 1790 kgm^-3 this is 3043 tonnes. Multiply that if braided.

Coil it, box it, unscroll it - what is the base supposed to do with all this? At the highest apogee, is potential-energy. That's the integral mg(h)dh, but this is a humble blog so we'll assume the 170km is negligible compared to 60+Mm as to treat g as a constant. Highschool lab mgh: 3043 kkg x 1.62 x 170000 ≤ 838,042,200 kilojoules.

I feel like for half this month, which is not quite the month of daylight, the drop of this cable is a steady force - which Loonies can harness. (L1 may or may not be harnessing the central elasticity, for its own part.) Pulling up is energy working on... pulling up, but this too can be harnessed - if we warn L1 we're doing that.

On the leadup to the Lunar perigee when only 60 Mm, when that cable is making its largest pile, is when the trip to/from L1 will be shortest. Maybe not always cheapest because Luna's side of energy depends on the 28-and-a-quarter month we see on Earth.

Under that; I want some structure as can funnel the 1700 m³ to some convenient depository away from useful work. We need to place it somehow/-where so we don't knot it and doesn't get METEORED. The depo would be large and/or deep but - we'll discuss that later. Assume the depo is dustfree anyway. (If we're banning lander-rockets, that should help.)

Traffic with L1 can disconnect at the top, thence to go up and down the internals of our structure (given airlocking); or, roll down to the surface.

Aliens and demons

In case you missed it, or like me chose not to watch it, Stephen Spielberg has some goyslop out. M. Jonathan Pageau reviews Disclosure Day on X and yt. I don't like the term "goyslop" but it's hard to see this any other way.

"Modernity" enjoys about the same cachet in present Christendom as "gnosis" enjoyed in Antiquity. Math is math. "The Science" is he gnosis; although, we concede, real human knowledge can progress - as it becomes engineering. "Vox Day" Beale is right on this much, for which this blog honours him by using his term "scientody" to label advances in, say, chemistry and also in Darwinist evolution and in Earth-Moon spaceflight-and-back because screw Beale.

One recent event in Christendom has stricken the demon-eviction community.

Christians believe in demons, inheriting Jewish reactionary tropes as they/we do. The Catholic Church has instituted a bureaucracy around this. And I'm not here to dismiss it: classical Catholic models of possession may well track mental-illness progression, much as Sigmund Freud (a Jew himself) still finds expression.

Every now and again people have noticed that UFO encounters look a lot like the old demon encounters. Andrew Chesnut has traced this finding back to evangelical Christian Protestants nearly contemporary with the first UFO sightings themselves in the 1950s. One radical postevangelical is Richard Carrier who has written several books pondering if Jesus was actually crucified here; or, on one of those higher celestial spheres - like maybe Mars'. The finding has since found listeners inside the Church like Stephen Rossetti - who does exorcisms. Except that he's going to have to do that somewhere other than under a steeple. People are laughing.

Spielberg seems to be going back to a more Jewish view that the angels are out there in the celestial reaches and that they mean us well. By meaning us well, that means having such elder knowledge as may free the gentilic Nations from their error - of Christianity.

I don't see Spielberg as having any such knowledge himself. He simply wants demons as agree with him.