Big Balloons

the sweet pleasure of weightless love making????

perhaps I'm not to imaginative but what are the mechanics of such? unless one has a VERY large area, it would seem that wild gyrations would potentially be either leading to crashing into bulkheads or straining muscularity.

:-))

orbit orbit?? who EVER said this gizmo was in orbit, a free falling condition that makes one feel like in zero g, which is an illusion... get neutral buoyancy in an under water tank and you can experience the floating sensation real real inexpensively...and yes even try your lovemaking contortions a lot more practically with the water providing some mitigation from unproductive muscular expenditures ...

From: Xenophile
To: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 10:51 PM
Subject: [spacesettlers] Big Balloons

Yes, it does seem (for now) that a humonkious airship that floats
around at 100 thousand + feet altitude (about 20 miles) is more doable
than a space elevator. And if it can be kept aloft for several years
(heck, even several months), it could do some very cool things.

One thing that it can't do is go into orbit. And make no mistake,
YOUR AIRSHIP IS NOT IN ORBIT. It is bobbing around in the upper
atmosphere, but it is no more in orbit than is a helicopter at 5
thousand feet that manages to hover for several days (a solar
helicopter with really good storage might be able to do that).

Anybody aboard would NOT be playing zero-G sports.
They will NOT be enjoying the sweet pleasures of weightless lovemaking.
If they try a spacewalk, they are in for a nasty surprise.
If a vehicle launches off of it, it either needs to use boyancy
(balloons), wings, or a LOT of thrust to keep from falling back to the
ground at 9.8 metres per second per second.

HOWEVER, if you can dangle a maglev tube from it (this might require a
balloon every five miles), you might be able to run a vehicle through
THAT and get it up to the 17,500 MPH you need to get into orbit.

Mike, of course, has written a story based on this, which I would love
to see put on the big or small screen.

BTW, Mike, I've written a screenplay version of your _Building
Paradise_, if you'd like to see it. I'm not trying to sell it to
anybody, of course. It's your story.