Space Forum / Space Flight / November 2005

I'm looking for citable references to the concept of a "fountain" or
"dynamic compression member" concept for building towers to the edge
space.  The basic concept is that kinetic energy can be used to push
the top of the tower up, similar to pushing a ping-pong ball up on a
fountain of water.  These are the references I have.  Any others?

The earliest reference I have is the cable supported system discussed
originally by Keith H. Loftstom (1985, 1985), who named it the "Launch
Loop."  The essential details of use of kinetic momentum to support a
vertical structure are here.

Several other people expanded this concept and developed variants; the
"Space Fountain" of Roderick Hyde (1985) develope details of support
using kinetic energy.

Robert Forward proposed that the kinetic member could be a pellet
stream, and no cable would be necessary.  In 1995 he summarized a
number of these dynamic compression methods in a chapter in his book
"Indistinguishable from Magic".

References:
Lofstrom, Keith H.,  "The Launch Loop," Analog, Vol. 103, Dec. 1983,
pp. 67-80.
Lofstrom, Keith H., THE LAUNCH LOOP: A LOW COST EARTH-TO-HIGH-ORBIT
LAUNCH SYSTEM, paper AIAA-85-1368, AIAA 21st Joint Propulsion
Conference, 1985.

Hyde, Roderick A., "Earthbreak: Earth to Space Transportation," in
"Defense Science 2003+ Vol. 4", No. 4, 1985, pp. 78-92
also printed as:
Hyde, Roderick A. "Earthbreak: A Review of Earth-to-space
transportation", in Energy in Physics, War and Peace. A Festschrift
Celebrating Edward Teller's 80th Birthday. H. Mark and L. Wood, eds.
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988, pp. 283-307.

Forward, Robert L., Indistinguishable from Magic, Baen books 1995