Atmospheric mesh

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This article is speculative. It covers topics that are not straightforwardly derivable from current knowledge. Take it with a grain of salt. See: "exploratory engineering" for what can be predicted and what not.
A tube in the sky with sufficient volume of robust metamaterial balloon material to suspend itself mid air and active local windload countermeasures (not visible). It could server many purposes including even transport for people. The integrated transport tube is way thinner than the lifting tube. Don't ask me what the thing on the top is. It may be too advanced for our current level of understanding.
Image AI interpretation of the deployment process of a small scale test atmospheric mesh. Deployed is parallel in a grid of ground connection points. Eventually the pillars will merge and form a truss that then eerily looms high up in mid air. Eventually bigger structures will reach all the way up to the top of the troposphere and a bit beyond. These ground connection points are not counter-force providing anchors! Wind-load forces would be to big. Wind-load forces need to be compensated locally with integrated active systems.

Also "aerial mesh" or "airmesh".

Hypothetical airmeshes are based on robust metamaterial balloons based on gemstone metamaterial technology.
An airmesh is basically a three dimensional mesh network out of vacuum balloon metamaterial floating in the sky
that is kept stationary with respect to the ground by active means. Not by many the connection points to the ground.
The connection points are not counter-force providing anchors in the sense of fixing a thing to a place!

No loads on the ground connection points – they are not anchors

The connection points to the ground …

  • … are NOT meant for compensating the cumulative sum of wind loads (no physical material is strong enough by a long stretch) but
  • … are rather meant for getting energy and materials in and out of the system without needing ferries.

Active structures need to take care of the wind-loads, compensating them right near where they occur.

Basically (and perhaps surprisingly) one can use a wind-speed-gradient as energy source to move against the wind equal or faster than the wind
without needing any counter-force providing anchor points to the ground.
Thus an atmospheric mesh can keep it's ground-connection-points near load free so long the
(hopefully extremely reliable) active structures performing that task (technology so advanced it seems like magic) remain operational.

Important aspects here:

  • Energy can be extracted not only from winds relative to the ground but also from wind gradients
    There is not even need for simultaneous contact to different wind-speeds as dynamic soaring demonstrates.
    Through atmospheric meshes provide simultaneous contact.
  • Extracting energy from the with one can move both with the wind and against the wind faster than the wind.
    This is a very non-intuitive physical fact.
    See related Wikipedia pages at the end of the article.

Size, structure shape and look

Imagine a cartesian computergraphics grid but in 3D with all the lines being replaced by thick translucent lighter than air metamaterial tubes.

  • The grid spacing several tens of meters at least, perhaps more like hundreds
  • The tubes several meters in diamter at least.

We're talking BIG here.

Other (optically more pleasing and or for technical reasome better geometries than a simple cartesian may be possible. E.g. the edges of a regular or irregular foam structure, octet truss, …

Basic properties

Airmeshes could serve various purposes.
Depending on the purpose it may have very different size and shape.

Aerial meshes may have a severe impact on the look of the landscape.
Aesthetically pleasing design might become a quite important aspect. Its yet unclear how well they could be hidden in the human visible spectral range (e.g. with holographic displays). Human flight by eye in areas with optically cloaked airmeshes would be impossible.

Airmeshes sticking far far up into the sky will want to catch lightning strikes.
Thus they must be capable of handling atmospheric discharges.
(TODO: investigate new possibilities that APM opens up for protection against lightning. e.g. nanotube lightning protectors?))

It might be desirable to design airmeshes such that they can be climbed in some way.
Ultra lightweight elevators could be put into the ground grond-connector-points going up the center of the floating translucent tubes.

Survival of wind loads

Similar to balloons and zeppelins lighter than air structures need to be voluminous and thus have the problem of a big wind attack surface.

  • Plus wind loads do not scale linearly with the wind-speed
  • Plus Earth climate occasionally has really bad storms in store
  • Plus (without any active structure counteraction) all the force sums up down at the anchor points

Gem gum metamaterials allow for making lighter than air materials that, when overloaded, reversibly fold up their micro-to-nano structure. Like a soft, fluffy, spread out, untensioned, mlti strand yarn that gets really strong and tough when tensioned as the formerly spreasd out srrands come together. (wiki-TODO: This deserves an ilustrative image). The issue though that the material then is muchbmore compressed, dense, and no longer lighter than air and if too much of this happens the whole thing comes falling down. Who knows how slow or fast.

Eventually possible strategies to prevent destruction by winds

  • full retraction in case of an upcoming storm – (can't deal with very sudden wheather changes or catastrophic events like unannounced pressure waves from very large scale explosions volcanic or human made)
  • active cloaking against the wind – moving the wind contacting surfaces at wind speed with ultra low friction (stratified shear bearings??) – yet unclear how well this might work if it works

Using wind power to move against the wind is possible. Sailships and ventomobiles do so.
It allows the structure to keep itself in a "nominal" position.
E.g. a straight vertical despite a sideways wind.
A straight grid with no visible deflections from the wind would look physics defyingly strange and counter-intuitive.

Energy extraction and weather control

For weather control and energy extraction airmeshes need energy transmission (e.g. mechanical energy transmission cables or chemical energy transmission) integrated into their "filaments"

Wind energy

Inside vertically orientated rectangular or other polygonal rather planar mesh loops there can be integrated medium mover sails. for energy extraction and back-splicing from the weather system. They should be designed to be adjustable such that can be set to let through enough airflow to not disturb the weather system in a detrimental way. Airmesh surfaces might be designed with advanced features for wind cloaking like active surface motion and temporary adiabatic presence cloaking.

Rain energy

Rainwater carries considerable potential enegry that could perhaps be extracted somehow by concentrating the fallingvraindrops high up and near gound level redistribution for environmental preservation. A pretrs significant geoengineering action.

Solar energy

Inside horizontally or better sunward orientated rectangular or other polygonal rather planar mesh loops there can be integrated adjustable sunshade sails that work as advanced solar cells. If the airmesh reaches up through the troposphere into the stratosphere (possible?) one has a permanent daytime energy source.

Transport

Related: Transportation and transmission

Flying without pushing air (sort of)

Roads in the sky. Continuing the super wild speculations here.
The advantage over just flying is avoiding the inefficient use of air for propulsion.
That is: One can avoid getting thrust by moving air and instead push against the solid that is constituted by the atmospheric mesh.

Then again the aerial mesh you push against may in turn push air to keep itself stationary.
As providing all counter-forces by the ground-connection-points is not physically possible in all but very low wind situations.
But this zero relative speed across much larger surface area air-pushing thing may be doable quite a bit more efficiently.

How this would/could look like

For optimizing system performance lifting structures and transport structures may be kept separate.

Imagine a big fat tube in the sky as lighter-than-air lifting structure.
This suspended tube (an instance of a robust metamaterial balloon) is anchoring a capsule transport system situated right below.
Unlike in a rope-way/cable-car there is a fractal suspension below such that
the capsules do not move along arcs but rather along a straight line allowing much higher speeds.
For dense traffic areas the capsules themselves may move in a thin walled lightweight tube that
is guiding the airflow to reduced drag. A suspended vacuum tube would likely be way too heavy at sea level
For extreme speculations on suspended vacuum tubes way higher up for space-launches (and captures).
See: Robust metamaterial balloons
Suspended tubes for capsule transport could even be made backward compatible to conventional cars.
This would be likely more for the experience rather than practicality though.
Same thing (more a bit more practical) for continuous bike lanes, foot walks, and lookout spots hanging in the sky.

Now the whole system would form a (dynamically adjustable)
multi layer mesh network of these transport tubes suspended by lifting tubes.
It wold feature curves allowing for gentle accelerations and low-jerk.
Vertical segments having the transport tube in the center of the lifting tube.

For larger scale more sparse transport this could connect to the much larger scale
cross country aerial meshes that also server energy harvesting and geoengineering purposes.
The optimization priories somehow intermingling. Difficult to take guesses here.

Smaller size of urban atmospheric meshes for transport

Aerial meshes for local urban transport (if they'll ever be made) will
likely be much smaller than aerial meshes for energy extraction and weather control.
There are two reasons for the smaller size:

  • Verically: One will want go up only as high as needed to evade all the congestion.
    Further up just means longer travel time and more energy expenditure.
    For one thing one will need to pass through the layer of electric legacy cables from todays age. The urban transport aerial mesh for local transport being situated higher up.
  • Horizontally: Urban centers are rather localized. They now do not (and hopefully will never) cover up the entirety of continents.

Dealing with very limited ground space

The dilemma:

  • One will want a dense grid of surface connecting points for good transport connections
  • One will want to loose as little ground surface as possible

Ground-connection-points for aerial meshes for urban transport need to be capable of lifting transport capsules up.

One may save ground area by foregoing the big fat lifting tube structures near ground level.
One gets heavier then air structures for the atmospheric transport mesh ground connecting access points.
This increases may to some degree increase the risk of things coming crashing down in a catastrophic scenario. Perhaps not worth it.
Perhaps better to have a thick lighter than air metamaterial balloon structures all the way down to the ground.

Ascending up to a local urban aerial transport mesh without permanently taking up any ground level space may be possible via some methods like ...

  • from the mesh above downward dynamically deployed capsule lifts.
  • Weird pillar shaped fee floating ferry balloons that do not take up much surface area but still have enough volume to lift a transport capsule.
    Difficult wind drag compensation here. This won't be fast and is probably a quite bad idea. Related: robust metamaterial balloons

Dealing with limited(?) airspace

The high necessary volume of balloons for a given mass (~ factor 1000) is an potentiate congestion issue.
Then again the airspace volume is big with 10km provided by the thick lifting capable troposphere.
Aripressure air density and lifting capability drops by about half every 5.5km.
(Slight variations by temperature in moderate climate regions.)
So lifting capability at the top of the troposphere has dropped by about a quarter.
Notable but very dealable with.
Note that four times the volume means only cube root of four the diameter of a a balloon.
An only square root of four equals two times the diameter of a lifting tube.
Thus at the top of the troposphere lifting tubes only need twice the diameter compared to near sea level.
It's obviously a bit worse at places that are already quite high up like the Tibetan plateau.

Atmospheric meshes (if ever built) in general will get
in a lot of conflict with existing air-travel quite a lot.

Applicability in the context of a wold with advanced gem-gum-tec

Transport of large scale capsules are is only critically needed for
transport of people and transport of thins that lie beyond the set of micro-recomposable artifacts from gem-gum-tec.
Otherwise in many cases it will be better to just use the global microcomponent redistribution system.
Well portions of the global microcomponent redistribution system will
surely be guided/wired through atmospheric meshes (if they'll be built).
But more as end-use points for these atmospheric mesh structures and
less for ground to ground (short range) transport.

Transport of goods

Note that with advanced gem based atomically precise technology many things can be transported by just disassembling them to their microcomponents and transporting them through the global microcomponent redistribution network or even better using locally "cached" sufficiently similar microcomponents. If want to avoid disassembly and reassembly altogether because you have some non gem-gum-tec things mixed in or you care for the preservation of the exact settings then you may use some advanced form of pipe mail included in upgraded street infrastructure too.

Atmospheric meshes in regions with extreme temperatures

Side-note: In Antarctica in winter (near –90°C) the air density massively increases at same pressure Additional mass may need to be lifted for solutions for thermal insulation and heating. Reversely art hottest places there's need for cooling for habitated portions making air heavier. But these habitated volumes can be kept small compared to the lifting volumes.

Notes

Static aerial meshes are at all times virtually anchored to the ground (abiding the mobility prevention guideline at unusually large scales). <r> Virtually anchored meany by mans of active structures in the mesh.

The point of ground-connections is not to anchor and counter wind-loads. That would not be physically possible.
The point of ground-connection-points is to provide channels for transport of energy and things in and out of the system.

Air meshes quite thick (but wind-cloaked) "air-swimming" cables could be called "airmesh filaments".
(TODO: Investigate how big these need to be in diameter for a) lifting themselves b) lifting a chemomechanical powerline and c) lifting an elevator)

Related

External links

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