Picture a typical orbiting space station. An air hose of any diameter comes down, to earth. Yes, I know, it will pull the station back in, out of orbit. But about the hose.
On earth, 14.7psi or whatever ambient is, will be measured. On the station side, 0 psi or thereabouts.

So, if we'd pump additional air into the hose, how many would we need to get it to 14.7 at the station? Quick logic says another 14.7psi, but it probabaly doesn't work that easily. Pressure also dependant on total amount of air in orbit, right? Or do we have all the air in orbit that will "stick", do we lose excess on the vacume

Another thought. Once the hose is pressurized, 30 or more PSI at the surface, to get a nice breathable desinity at the station...an air balloon would have less issues reaching great height, going through it. It's easier to build a ligher-than-air  vessel, if the air is thicker. If the vessel floats in 14.7psi, it will make it up there, into space, just floating on the pressure.
Perhaps a naive thought, but that seems like approaching OU. You have the pressurized column of air, and we keep sending up goods (with mass) into space this way.
Sure, we could use this idea today building skyscrapers.

Idea for an air-inflatible cold-air balloon, that will go UP.
Balloon features double walls.
Inner wall is sealed, no valve there.
Valve sits between the walls
Walls are placed close together, and risistant to distancing under pressure build-up, yet flexible concentrically to act as a balloon.

Inflate the double wall, it increases in size. A vacume in the core is formed. If constructed well, the air weight "missing" from the core will be greater than the balloon' weight plus the additional air inside the double wall. Floats up!

The double wall is additionally filled with liquid sealent, so that any puncture on either wall, will be self-mending. This works great on bicycle and rally tires.

In my little theory, the vacume balloon  will float higher than a helium one.

Alternatively, one could attempt to build a lightweight rigid sphere, concentrically stiff. Sphere might well feature a 64x tetrahedran shaped inner skeleton. I need to credit Nassim Haramein and his fractal presentation for giving me that idea.
Deflate, and let it take off. Never quite into space, due to weighing more than a vacume, and starting in the grip of earth's gravital pull (or aether dip if you will).

On step further would be the make the inner skeleton inflatible, possibly pushing the outer skin of the sphere out more than air was added. Far-fetched...

Anything useful in my long uncontrolled brainfart?

Thanks,

J

I think the vacuum balloon was done in the 20's though I could never find any articles on it, it was a thin walled sphere made of pure Beryllium, the volume of air displacement made the Beryllium sphere lighter than air and would float to the ceiling.

the best material to use for Vacuum bubbles is ultra thin diamond walls though nano tube carbon fiber might do the trick if it was constructed into a solid but very rigid material and keeping the weight ration down to a minimum.

1 pound of displaced air should be able to lift 1 pound of weight.

Thanks for the responses!

I'll try to find something about vacume balloons in my language, we have some pretty good aerospace universities.

Indeed, large bodies don't like pressure. And compressing a structure takes more engineering to withstand than expansion. A friend of mine patented an aluminum O-shaped bolt in 2 or 3 parts, which wedges itself stuck, creating immense pressure. Sufficient to take out the slack from a high-load spline connection.
Perhaps the balloon would need to be comprised of many smaller ones. I instinctively like the tetrahedran stick figures, although the sticks are bound to be multiple times more fragile in compressed mode than in pulled mode. This to the increased likelihood that forces will be offset. A pulling tension by design is a straight like. A compressed rod buckles up.

The same reason a dome is a great structure for a church, a sphere works great for a vacume vessel. Ever particle supports the other. One might be inclined to place some extra support rods in there, but those would only weaken the structure by creating disbalance in the stresses.
Nice about spheres is they have minimal surface area for the number of volume units it holds. It might turn out that large is better. Once you're set on a skin type, centainly increasing size until the maximum it'll take is worth it.

It would be a great design assignment for an aerospace university, to come up with coputer models of the lightest possible sphere, relying on air displacement by a large body of (near) vacuum. Basically, a lightweight vacuum container. Withstand up to one bar, and weigh significantly less than air at 1 bar. Existing materials, or make materials of your own.

I'm now re-intrigued by my own double wall idea. Bicycle rims (bikes are my forte) are also double walled, for strength. A double balloon wall, tension-tethered against distancing and yet also aerogel filled against compressing. A double wall would logically perform better as size was greater. I can see that resisting the one bar external overpressure... Thinking star stadium sized. A stadium holds some air weight.

Look here, similar, but more classical approach:
http://semiform.semiarch.com/URBAN_Solar%20Molecules.html

Aerogels (polymers with nano structure, consisting mostly of air) have been used in fabris already. I read that a lightweight snowboard jackets was marketed, but dismissed by athletes for being "too warm". Think of millions of still air pockets. Less air per pocket to move around and distribute heat, and millions of transfers needed to get to the other side.

I do believe firmly that insulation is the #1 way to reduce energy consumption on earth. Out houses in the winter now mostly heat up the outdoors (like carrying water to the sea), not the indoors. Good insulation and some living inhabitants with sufficient food to biochemically burn, will offer all the heating needed. In the end, all the house will be 37C/100F, just from the people in there. Any leakage of the house could be overcome by lighting a candle.

So, Sparks, the idea of a super-insulated your hot air balloon intrigues me. The low surface per volume of a sphere comes in handy in terms of insulation as well.
Even it would need to be heavier, it could be filled up with hotter air. If it flies up high enough, it will get a lot of extra sunlight. How hard, in 2010, should it be to make an air tight aerogel insulator that doubles as solar/heat collector? It might even send a laser down to receiving stations, to transmit heat gathered. This would be direct injection global warming, of course. More evil than any perceived CO2 effects currently utilized.

If good repeating lift could be generated, all that is needed is a long wire wrapped around a generator axle to make use of that.

All these effort looking up to the skies, though... If we just dig a hole vertically, we can lower a heat>electro converter, and just enjoy free energy from the earth. Modern houses here actually HAVE this today. No heating bills to speak of. Send cold water down, and it will come back warm. The technology consists of a deep hole, and a waterpipe going down and looping back up. Energy needed to pump water up is offered by just pooring some water in the other end.

I like the air as a personal and cargo transport medium. If the century old air ship were to be pimped some, with eather vacume or better insulated hot air designs, as well as solar collectors (relatively low but still huge surface aera and low friction from cigar-shape), we could be looking at long distance air ships rivalling highspeed trains, certainly for start-up costs, as well as for speed and ticket costs.

Smart design might also help to create vacume train tunnels. Air drag is the main enemy here (we have Maglev for propulsion and zero rolling friction). Vacume would also make it a 100% silent affair. New highspeed train projects get expensive because of noise violations. Deep tunnels, ugly sound screens... If a modular vacume tunnel with Maglev) could be attached onto an existing road road track foundation, with simple airtight train wagons, we'd be looking at mach 1 trains that make no sound, and take very little energy.
You can imagine what speeds can be attained when no friction bothers a typical train. Not wheels, bearings, or air. The initial accelleration, given the same weight and power, would be maintained continiously. 500kph in a matter of a matter of a minute or so. And once at desired speed, engines are turned off. Once near destination, KE is extracted by the engines, back into the batteries. All the energy required for an additional trip with be the difference between input (acceleration) and output (decelleration). So little, that in fact solar energy should be plenty to self-power the trains. Energy collected all through the day light, and used only to make up for losses during regeneration.
Vacume transport is like perfect insulation. A candle can comfortable heat a skyscraper, or a hand calculator's solor cell can power an entire train network. Just get rid of the losses. They are not so hard to figure out.
Energy losses make up for the lion share of our train/plane tickets. Not the drivers/pilot's salary. One ticket IS the price of the cabin crew's salary. The others go to fuel and profits, relatively speaking.

Thanks @onthecuttingedge2005,
I unfortunately lack the education to be able to interpret aerogel spec sheets for tensile stength and such. I'm sure though, that I could find applications to a material with unique properties.

Spheres for space stations, perhaps even ships. But for penetrating and manouevring an atmosphere, saucer do seem like decent shuttles. The round shape sure helps to cuts corners, by not taking them at all. No front side to the craft to always have in the direction of travel.

Brain fart, work with me here. A bicycle wheel is kept from a collapsing rim, by having a centrally hub be radially connected with tensioned spokes. Let's 3D this. We start with an inner sphere, with spoke holes. The other end mounts to an other sphere. Tension is applied for strength of the other sphere. Weight kept under that of air, by removing air inside.
Are the spokes redundant, due to the perfectly even pressure that atmosphere puts on the sphere as inner supporting air pressure is taken out? I keep struggling with the huge task of a material and design that resists pressure like a pile of bricks under a car axle then the jack is needed for another wheel. It takes so much material to make the support. The same car, can be lifted off the ground completely, suspended from a wire weighting a few grams per meter.

Another idea.
The vacume might also be used to our advantage. As a force keeping components together, as they make up the multiple-wall outer structure of the  sphere. The vacume is not only pressure from the outside, it's also a design parameter adding to the structural integrity. "Somehow" being the essential addition to my idea. Im keep seeing vacume sub-spheres and tetrahedran structures, though.
Hey, if a shere can apparently be fragmented into 4-point 3D parts, then surely the sphere can added upon, like a shell, made up of the came strong components? A sphere can be build from 64 fractal. How large is the next step, and the next? The fractal bridging one sphere diameter to the next (say, from 1000 to 1050 size units) would form a perfect support design, the "double wall".

Good point on the wheel. Yet, it is stronger from inward pressure than without the hub and spokes, right? Or is it?

Popular non-mainstream-media thought is that, by lack of gravity, and many ideas of missing mass, surplus energy, old stories and UFO sighting, the earth is hollow, with a "sun" or perhaps singularity suspended in weightlessness. And of course our loss cousins living on the other side of the crust, trapped as much as we are exposed to the universe.
Come to think is such a structure, big as earth, 2,000km thick crust for gravity, huge hole in the middle... When placed in the centre, are you being pulled apart by gravity (3D, but equalized), or does the gravity even each other out to make a non-effect without side-effects, just central positioning?

I'd love to talk with Nassim Haramein, if only it were to discuss the fractal geoemtry between closely matched for size spheres. I already have a 3D designer who might come in handy.
If this could be built from 1 or 2 sizes of stick, and 1 or 2 styles (8-point or so I suppose) of connectors, it would take but a gym ball to start building a proof of concept.

But back to the 3D spokes wheel (thus, sphere)...
If the central hub, say tennis ball, would have spokes going out evently spaced toward the outer sphere (say gym ball), could those spokes not be inter-joined by a grip forming a sphere halfway the diameter? Between the hub and the half-way-grid, it would form as many tetrahedrans as it has spokes, (wet finger in the air guesstimate). The grid being just that, multiple triagles, and the spokes making it 3D, might increase the stiffness of the support greatly, by not only halfing the spoke length, but also offering a grid that might even be put to tension, holding itself in place.
Wow, I really like this idea...Just a grid of some cross-spokes, and it add way more stiffness for weight, than additional full-length spokes would... Lighter than one-size fractals, stiffer than full length spokes. If indeed this mid-way grid out of pull-tensioned wire (or multiples like it) could add stiffness, than the support spokes might be lightened some. Or even replace with more criss-cross placed shorter ones, having a grid to support them AND tensioning them against outer pressure! Hmmm....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel

thanks, seems it was greatly improved since I last read it.

"The world's lowest-density solid is a silica nanofoam at 1 mg/cm3,[6] which is the evacuated version of the record-aerogel of 1.9 mg/cm3.[7] The density of air is 1.2 mg/cm3.[8]"

Imagine a 2cm thick layer of aerogel, the shape of a sphere, a meter across. featuring a valve, and an air-tight coating on the outside. If the 2cm or similar wall would hold...the sphere might have some good lift!

It would lift to 15km high (for instance), open the valve, and let in really cold air, and especially moisture. Come back down, and let the cold air (insulated well) run over a heat exchanger of some kind.

If windows in our houses would be replaced by (partially) see-through aerogel, out heat bill would be reduced dramatically.