Photo courtesy of Esthr

There is an additional potential benefit that may make putting arrays of solar cells in outer space worth the cost. An array of solar cells, appropriately positioned between the earth and the sun, can absorb some of the incoming solar energy reducing the earth’s temperature and possibly contributing to relief from the greenhouse effect. However, if we bring the energy down to the ground and use it there, we would help counter the greenhouse effect indirectly, since we would use less fossil and petroleum fuels and thus generate less carbon dioxide.

How can we get the solar cell arrays into outer space economically? Rockets work, but they are anything but economical. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, anti-gravity and inertial drives do not work at all and magnetic drives are too weak. Many years ago I built an inertial drive to turn rotating unbalanced weights into a pulsating unidirectional force, but it didn’t work. The equations describing the inertial drive were based on LaGrange’s equations of motion which are based on the conservation of energy. Later a physicist friend explained to me that momentum is conserved, not energy. When I read the article about Michael Laine’s speech about “Nano bridges may precede space elevator”, I initially categorized the Space Elevator to go in the same file as the inertial drive.

On a trip to Dallas last weekend to do Christmas with part of my family, I kept thinking about the space elevator. It fascinated me. Earlier I had read the news release about Liftport’s planned space elevator and how they plan to shoot a rocket into outer space while spooling out a high strength carbon filament. They intend to build the elevator by shooting up multiple rockets like the Romans shot arrows across a river to build a bridge. They plan a “tethered satellite” with a tether or cable down to the ground keeping it from escaping into outer space. The cable will provide the space elevator function. To keep the tether from breaking the satellite must be in a geo-stationary orbit where its angular velocity exactly matches that of the point on the earth directly beneath it. On the way home I jotted down my ideas about the space elevator and when we got back searched the internet to see what I could find. I was surprised by the huge amount of information available on the space elevator, so I think it worth while to summarize it and to describe one possible approach to building a space elevator and to discuss some of the problems involved in building it.

Apologies to you mathophobes, but I need an equation to explain why I am excited about this. Let’s describe the centrifugal force, fC, on a tethered satellite as:

fC = m ω2 (r + rB)

where m is the mass, ω is the constant angular velocity, r is the difference between the actual radius and rB, and rB is the distance from the center of the earth to the radius where the centrifugal force on the mass of the rocket and cable just balances the force of gravity pulling towards the earth’s center. This is analogous to the parking radius, but takes into account the mass of the cable tether, so rB will be slightly larger than the radius for a geo-stationary orbit. The net lifting capability of the tethered satellite is:

fL = m ω2 r

The angular velocity, ω, has to be constant, so we can’t do anything with it. We can use expensive rockets to send a large mass up into orbit to increase “m” in order to get a larger lifting force for the elevator. But, there is another variable available, r, the distance between the balance point and m. As the tether grows longer r increases and the lifting capability increases. Instead of spending a lot to increase m, you can get the same effect by just spooling out more cable.

Why this is important? Once you get the tether out past the balance point, the larger r, the more the lifting force. Given a cable light enough and strong enough to handle this environment extended up past the balance point; all you have to do to strengthen the cable is to crank more stronger cable up into space.2

As you extend the cable, centrifugal force will act to move the tethered mass back to the original angle. As the cable to which the tethered satellite is attached is gradually let out the cable will move back, away from the direction of rotation, but will gradually tend to speed back up stabilizing at the new maximum distance from the surface of the earth.3

Once a stronger cable is in place, you can crank up a still stronger one and so on. However, as the cable extends and the mass moves further and further outwards the centrifugal force will increase more and more. Eventually, if you keep cranking out cable, centrifugal force will create so much tension in the cable that it will break. But, with an appropriate cable design we should be able to go for a long ways while staying within safe limits for the cable tension.

Some analysts have suggested that the optimum cable design is a gradually tapered one with the largest part at the geo-stationary orbit point where the tension is maximum.4 However, it will probably be much more economical to produce a cable with the same dimensions. In fabricating semiconductors, each parameter you have to tweak costs money to control and takes time to optimize. If we are going to be able to get a stable process operating to generate long segments of high strength carbon filament cable, we need to make the process as simple as possible. Varying the dimensions will complicate the cable fabrication process which is already very difficult. So it makes sense to just make one size of cable. If this cable is light enough and has enough surplus strength to support a reasonably sized mass extended several hundred kilometers beyond the balance point, it could be used to build a space elevator.

Once we get a good functioning space elevator, the resulting space station needs to have enough reserve propulsion capability to correct it’s orbit if the cable is cut. A series of links to other cable stations would be logical. However, if all of their cables were cut, they would need a way to keep from sailing off into outer space. Probably the best thing to do would be to keep the stations near the geo-synchronous orbit and if the cable is cut, cut the upper cable to their ballast masses. That way if the tether cable is cut they will not go sailing off into outer space.

Of course this is a simplistic analysis to illustrate the concept, in real life we should include the effect of the decrease in earth’s gravity as the radius increases and other second order effects such as the moon’s gravity, the oblateness of the earth, etc. My goal for this article is to explain the concept, leaving the details for future articles.

That is what amazed me, the math says it will work! Not only will the Space Elevator work, but depending on the cost, availability, and reliability of light weight high strength cable, it makes good economic sense!

The ideal location for the base of the space elevator would be a high mountain on the earth’s equator in order to start as far as possible from the earth’s center. The higher you start, the less energy you have to spend to climb out of the earth’s gravity well and the less cable you need.

The highest point on the Equator is 4,690 m, at 77° 59′ 31″ W on the south slopes of Volcan Cayambe (summit 5,790 m) in Ecuador. This is a short distance above the snow line, and is the only point on the Equator where snow lies on the ground. 5 Other possible locations include Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka which Arthur C. Clarke used as a base for a space elevator in his 1978 novel, “The Fountains of Paradise”.6

On the other hand, Michael Laine’s company, Liftport, seems to favor a sea level launching pad according to the news release, this could solve a lot of the political problems of trying to build a the base for the space elevator within some foreign country.

According to Bradley Carl Edwards “some of these challenges would be met merely by locating the elevator’s Earth anchor in the eastern equatorial Pacific, west of the Galapagos Islands, where the weather is unusually calm and the threats from hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning, jet streams, and wind are greatly reduced. This location is also about 650 km from any current air routes or sea lanes, significantly reducing the chance of an accidental collision and making the site easier to secure against terrorists. An anchor in the Pacific obviously implies a floating platform, but such structures are already commercially available, thanks to the offshore oil industry.” 7

Next, assume that we can get the needed ultra light high strength cable, what are the risks involved in the Space Elevator? As my old supervisor used to say, “It’s the questions you don’t ask, that get you”. One potential show-stopper may be Van Allen Belt and other radiation in outer space changing the molecular properties of the cable causing possible fracture. Also, the motion of the cable may cause a phenomenon called strain hardening which can leads to stress fractures. This may be exacerbated by some of the cable crawlers they are postulating which would flex the cable a lot.

Brad Edwards ribbon cable idea with a cable composed of many parallel fibers may reduce flexing by using cable climbers with roller clamps which cause minimum damage to the cable.7 A way is needed to check for developing fractures in the cable before they become catastrophic.

Other risks include: corrosion; airplanes; other satellites; space debris; meteors; mechanical resonances such as they had in the Tacoma Narrows bridge 8; Terrorists/Sabotage; if the cable or part of it is conductive the effect of electromagnetic waves from the sun or from a nearby nuclear event must be taken into account; and finally the political Implications of deploying solar cells between the earth and the sun. This could absorb some of the incoming solar energy reducing the earth’s temperature and relieving the greenhouse effect. But, will some countries be upset or sue if we deliberately change their temperature?

So to conclude, when ultra-light, ultra-strong cable fiber becomes available in large quantity, at a low enough price, we should seriously consider building a space elevator. Before building it, we need to evaluate and minimize the various risks, and to build a robust, redundant system which will not easily fail catastrophically, or have significant vulnerabilities. Given an operational space elevator with a solar array generating plenty of power, we will leave the transmission of the power back to earth for future study.

References
1)	Nano bridges may precede space elevator Michael Kanellos
	CNET News.com

http://news.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029672,39193526,00.htm

2)	http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/space%20elevator
	"Brad Edwards' proposal"

3)	http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/space%20elevator
	"Launching into outer space"

4)	http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/space%20elevator
	"Cable Taper"
5)	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equator
6)	http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/space%20elevator
	"History"

7)	http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aug05/1690
	"A Hoist to the Heavens"
	By: Bradley Carl Edwards

  http://www.vibrationdata.com/Tacoma.htm  by Tom Irvine

As a result of its design, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge experienced rolling undulations which were driven by the wind. Strong winds caused the bridge to collapse on November 7, 1940. Initially, 35 mile per hour winds excited the bridge’s transverse vibration mode, with an amplitude of 1.5 feet. At that time engineers did not fully understand the forces acting upon bridges and how they would react with the natural frequency of the bridge structure.

Related Links of Interest

The Space Elevator Challenge
The Liftport Company

IT’S THE OLD chicken-and-egg question: Are people fat because they come to Las Vegas, or do they come to Vegas because they’re fat? The other conundrum that plagues me in Sin City: Why am I here? More precisely, why am I — who does not like to drink Bud or eat steak; watch TV or vaudeville; marry, divorce or pick up hookers; work on the perfect sunburn; or throw money into a hole, never to be retrieved — here?

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To answer the first engima, I approached the Vegas altar: the Buffet. Eschewing the 99-cent shrimp cocktail, I “splurged” an unlucky $13 on the stylish luncheon at the new Bellagio hotel. Its supermarket of dishes could easily give an eater an anxiety attack and put her in a diabetic coma. Bowls of mixed chocolates and baskets of focaccia, cow and pig killed and cured two dozen ways, seven varieties of seafood salad, five kinds of pickle and everything else edible, short of a partridge in a pear tree.

It was clear that people were fat here because they ate too much chicken *and* eggs. The second engima didn’t surrender an answer so easily, so I set out on the town to discover why Vegas had lured me here.

The tourist’s Vegas boils down to the Strip, four miles of casinos and their bewildering mazes of hotel towers, restaurants, theaters, shops, rides and chapels. At north end is the “Fremont Street Experience”. This is casino skid row, the white-trash roots of modern Vegas. These joints use gimmicks like free popcorn and champagne cocktails (i.e., wine coolers) to get cheapskates to part with a few nickels.

From Rome to Rio, ancient Egypt to medieval England, every Strip hotel has a theme that recurs like a nightmare. The rooms at the Luxor (itself a glass pyramid) feature obelisk-shaped shampoo bottles and papyrus-column wardrobes. Treasure Island stages a live pirate battle in its Buccaneer Bay. Excalibur’s moving walkway says, “Keep to the right in case a knight comes by to rescue a damsel in distress!” Paris!, the newest city on the block, has a rather large Eiffel Tower out front. You get it.

The constant in the Vegas equation? The soothing hum of slot machines being played en masse. From the second you step off the plane, it summons you leave time and join the trance. The lights are dim; there are no windows. Slot players are tao masters of ash. They smoke without the cigarette ever leaving their mouth. (What’s not often heard is the payoff, a lovely tambourine of quarters tapping tray. )

Back in daylight, the Strip offers the best free show in town. Its soundtrack is eighties music cranked from casinos. Its sidewalks are a grotesque spectacle of rouge and hair dye, varicose and celluose. Tons of pasty flesh, splotched desert red and clad in neon, clump up at the Strip’s eternal stoplights. Gals and guys, often Latino immigrants desperate for work, accost them with flyers for stripper studs and girls girls girls.

Wide roads, long lights, big people — everything on the Strip is exponentially larger than in the normal world. At last count, the town boasted nine out of the world’s ten largest hotels; its total number of rooms recently topped 100,000.

Some 50,000 people move to Vegas a year. Still, ask locals what’s so great about the place and they’ll answer the weather. That’s like saying a blind date has a nice personality. An ex-co-worker living here gave me a tour of strip malls and subdivisions. “There is no street for window shopping,” she said darkly. She left me her bicycle to explore Vegas further, if I didn’t believe her.

We visited another friend’s ‘hood, a quiet version of Hell involving communism and Martha Stuart. She showed off her lawn, explaining the laborious process of creating green squares in a wasteland. The driest spot on the continent, Las Vegas uses more water than any other place in America — some 300 gallons per person per day!

During my visit, Park Place announced plans to acquire Caesar’s World for $3 billion in cash. AA and the FBI recently held conferences here. The area’s first white settlers were Mormons.

But no one else laughed. This is the Vegas terror: no sense of the irony in this Grimm fairy tale, set in the desert; no sense of anything but what’s designed to charm the eye. People buy “Rehab is for Quitters” t-shirts and ashtrays for Pat’s Butts — and mean it.

Vegas is such an easy target that I got tired of picking on it. Why was I here? Maybe to see that Sin City could bring out my worst vices, too — judgmentalism and hypocracy. Maybe to strip away my cynicism long enough to see the beauty in the beast.

At sunset, just before the night neon takes over the sky, Vegas is gentle. Mirrored casinos catch gold clouds in their facades. Everyone holds hands and gazes at the moon, rising above the Eiffel Tower.

I peddle into the night, crickets chirping and warm wind on my face. Neon jewels — the Flamingo’s pink, feathered lotus, the Stardust’s retro diamonds — sparkle against black velvet sky. It’s a new night, a fresh chance to win big. For a moment, I’m not smiling at them, I’m smiling with them.

By April Thompson.

View images for this story as a slideshow.

When the US government needed a place to keep suspected al Qaeda members and Taliban fighters, they chose an airbase in Cuba to do so. It seemed an odd place, an American airbase in what the American government considers an enemy country. The very existence of a place those who prefer to use military slang call “Gitmo” seems unlikely.

Guantanamo Bay first came into the American consciousness when the first US casualties of the Spanish-Cuban American War were suffered there in 1898. In 1903 Theodore Roosevelt, using the Platt amendment, forced the Cuban government to lease Guantanamo Bay to the United States for 2,000 gold coins per year. Cuba was, at that time, under a puppet regime controlled by the US and the Cuban president was an American citizen named T. Estrada Palma. In 1906 the lease was renegotiated and the 2000 gold coins became $2000 USD.

In 1934 Cuba rid itself of the Platt amendment and negotiated a new lease on Guantanamo Bay with the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Cuban government at the time was again US-friendly and one of the three Cuban signatories on the new lease was Fulgencio Batista, who would later become the sole dictatorial leader of Cuba. The new lease stated that both the US and Cuban governments had to agree to cancel the lease.

Batista’s reign was one of such oppression that Fidel Castro still looks good by comparison. Under Batista there were few freedoms and both the CIA and the Mafia were influential in the Cuban government. US corporations set up shop, treating the Cuban people almost as slave labour. The oppression inflicted on the Cuban people by the Batista regime led to the revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959.

When Castro came to power the lease on Guantanamo Bay should have been cancelled. That the US chose to remain there was, and remains, a breach of international law according to some. That it is an ongoing sore spot not just with the Cuban government, but with other nations in the area and has been a detriment to US negotiations several times over the years. Cuba does not recognise the American claim on the bay, but lacks the power to do anything about it. The result is that the US government writes a cheque for the lease every year and the Cuban government refuses to cash that cheque.

In 1961 when Eisenhower cut off all diplomatic ties with Cuba, the base at Guantanamo Bay was flooded with refugees. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, US military personnel had to be evacuated. In 1964 the Guantanamo base was forced to become self-sufficient when Castro cut off power and water to the base.

The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War have done little to end the controversy over Guantanamo Bay. In a 1991 coup in Haiti that saw the duly elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide thrown out of power, over 40,000 boat people fleeing Haiti were picked up by the US Coast Guard. Due to the political uncertainty of accepting so many refugees at once, and the high rate of HIV/AIDS in Haiti, many of these refugees were sent to what became de facto prison camps in Guantanamo Bay until they could be processed.

In 1994 Castro granted a temporary amnesty that allowed many to leave Cuba. While many of these people were legitimate refugees, Castro also released Cuban criminals and extremely mentally ill patients from psychiatric care. Those refugees that did not find their way directly to the US base at Guantanamo were also picked up by the US Coast Guard and sent to the camps for processing.

The conditions the refugees were held in were harsh and, in many cases dangerous. The conditions at Guantanamo, the methods used to process the refugees, and the forced return to Haiti of some of those fleeing drew harsh criticisms from human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Guantanamo Bay was beginning to garner a reputation as a place where the United States infringed on human rights and played fast and loose with international law.

Even with the history of Guantanamo and the controversy that has surrounded it over the years, most people outside of Cuba were unaware of the presence of a US naval base there. Perhaps it is because the American people don’t know much about Guantanamo Bay that the US government seems encouraged to use it as a place where international and even US domestic laws do not apply.

Perhaps it is because the Guantanamo Bay facility should not, logically, even exist that the Bush White House feels that they can break the Geneva Conventions there with impunity.

There is no doubt that the government of the United States is breaking those conventions. It is doubtful that the Geneva Conventions would have been so comprehensive and respected had the United States not taken a leading role in the creation and updating of the conventions after World War Two, yet it is the United States that now puts the Geneva Conventions and other aspects of international law at risk by ignoring them.

We are told that the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay are “unlawful combatants” and not deserving of the same rights as others captured during times of war. There is no such thing as an unlawful combatant. It is a term made up by the Bush administration in an attempt to skirt laws written to protect people from abuse and torture. The men held at Guantanamo must be categorized either as prisoners of war, or charged with crimes and afforded the same rights and protections that a US citizen would be afforded in the US court system.

The history of US involvement in Guantanamo Bay has been questionable since 1903. It is as if the bay is haunted by the ghosts of transgressions past, and that haunting encourages the worst instincts of American leaders to come to the forefront, leading to the commitment of ever more serious transgressions.

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Now this same land is being taken away by developers with the cooperation of local and state governments.

What’s being lost is not just land or money: It’s community. Five, six, even eight generations of the same families have lived continuously in these coastal communities. The neighborhoods they form are tight-knit, safe, and supportive – a rarity in modern American life.

Generations without wills or the need for them

Every state in the US requires that land deeds be transferred in writing. However this was not an option for the African American property owners during Reconstruction.

It was illegal to teach slaves to read and write, so that first generation couldn’t possibly have written wills. The Jim Crow laws that followed Emancipation then impeded black people’s access to the legal system, according to Willie Heyward of the Center for Heirs Property Preservation. So, the first generations of these land owners were unable to create written wills, and property was handed down verbally.

The tradition of verbal bequeaths continued in the African-American community. Rather than honoring a verbal will, the State considers land left by those without a written will (those who are “intestate”) to be equally owned, by all heirs.

Thus, there are many tracts of “Heirs’ Properties” in the South in which the last recorded deed is from the Reconstruction period. Some of these properties can have over a hundred heirs associated with them.

Turning Bottom-land to Gold

The introduction of air conditioning and mosquito control has turned these properties into the type of gold that makes developers drool. Since the mid-50’s, coastal islands and marsh-front properties have been converted to high-end housing, resort and commercial properties, displacing the long-standing African American communities.

The SC Government has so favored developers that they have changed the laws defining land ownership. For instance, persons who possess a piece of land, pay taxes on it, and were verbally deeded it by an ancestor do not have “clear title” to that land in South Carolina. This lack of clear title leaves the land vulnerable to court-forced sale, if even a single heir chooses to raise the question of ownership.

Once a court orders the sale, the developers are standing in line at the auction with more cash in their hands than the heirs could ever hope to raise.

Techniques of Taking The Property

Unclear Title

So long as there is no clear title to a property, a single heir can force its sale. In all heirs’ property cases a ruling from a court is required to “clear” the deed. Quite often, there are too many heirs, or the plat is too small, for equal and reasonable division. So, the court orders the property to be sold at auction, and profit is split between the heirs.

Build Something Really Nice Next Door

Property taxes in places other than California are assessed based on the value of the house and land. This value is based on subjective factors – how much would people be willing to pay for it? A $10,000 house surrounded by other ten thousand dollar houses will be assessed at ten thousand dollars. However, if someone builds a single $1 million dollar house next door, the property value of the $10,000 will go up – a hundred fold.

So while the property tax on the ten thousand dollar house was just a couple hundred dollars and easily paid, the property tax on the same house next to a mansion is in the tens of thousands and beyond the reach of the average South Carolinian.

Tax ‘em Out

While many States consider land ownership to be a basic and inviolable right, South Carolina acts aggressively to remove land from people who cannot pay property taxes.

South Carolina will sell off a person’s land if they are ten months late in the payment of taxes. Other states give people several years to pay back taxes and some even have laws preventing tax sales. For instance, in Ohio, a lien may be placed on a property for delinquent taxes, but the land cannot be forced into sale.

The taxes on heirs’ properties were quite reasonable for a very long time. However, as the value of the land has gone up, thanks to air conditioning, mosquito control, and mansions placed on neighboring properties, the tax bills have also increased.

It can be difficult to keep track of a single tax bill, which is applied to large tracts where dozens of families live. If the person who has taken responsibility for paying the taxes dies or moves away, the bill is often forgotten.

It is also possible for any person to go to the County offices and change the address on any tax bill.

Would the developers do this and then enjoy the confusion as the land goes into tax sale?

It would explain a few incidents.

South Carolinians are only given nine months to pay their property tax bill. After that, they must pay what is owed, plus the taxes that will be due next year to prevent the sale of their land in the tenth month.

For example, in 2005 taxes are due on January 15 and delinquent properties are sold on October 3. Developers, with loads of cash in hand, will be ready to snatch up the valuable properties at auction, pricing heirs out of the picture but still often buying at well below market value.

Even though the governing agency is only allowed to sell as much land as is necessary to cover the delinquent taxes, they have traditionally sold the entire plat.

Regulate ‘em Out

In other places, the local government has lent the developers a hand by creating regulations that surpass the means of the Heirs’ Property owners. For instance, in Mount Pleasant, sewer hookup is now required for all new houses and renovations. But the City did not run the sewer line close enough to the Heirs’ Property sites to allow for hookup at a reasonable cost; They actually went around one Heirs’ Property site to put sewer lines to a new sub-division.

So now the property owners must pay tens of thousands of dollars to “tap in” to the system. If unable to pay, they can not modify their homes, build new homes, or even repair the existing septic systems when they break. In effect, they are forced to sell the land, to someone who has enough money to pay for the sewer connection.

What Is Being Done

The Center for Heirs Property Preservation is fighting hard to preserving these unique communities in Charleston and surrounding areas. They are providing community education by doing things like leaving pamphlets at government offices and community centers and teaching Heirs Property seminars. There has been a Public Television special about Heirs Property.

They are additionally providing legal and mediation services to embattled Heirs Property owners, and helping to clear the titles. Also they work to change State laws that disadvantage Heirs Property owners.

In one ingenious approach, according to Willy Heyward, they are helping families create autonomous entities to manage and own land in potentially disputed heirs’ properties. Once this entity is formed — a Partnership, Limited Liability Corporation, or other form of Corporation — each heir is given shares in it equal to their stake in the land. Developers cannot then get a single heir to force a sale; the majority of the share holders must agree to what will be done with the property.

A State-appointed task force that includes members of the Center for Heirs Property Preservation and Charleston School of Law is looking at ways to protect property owners’ rights. One law they are working on would require mediation amongst heirs prior to, or instead of, going to court, in order to avoid a forced sale.

Even the world-famous Spoleto Festival USA is getting involved. Their Evoking History project for the 2006 Festival involves the members of the Phillips Community – one of the Heirs’ Properties that is being threatened by developers.

In the end, it all comes down to how well groups of heirs, some numbering over 100, can cooperate to save their communities. The sad thing is that they have to fight against both developers, and their own government.

Sources

http://ccfgives.org/heirsproperty.htm

http://www.lri.lsc.gov/abstracts/abstract.asp?level1=SPA&level2=Housing&abstractid=030017&ImageId=1

http://www.pfdf.org/innovation/innovation/innovation.asp?innov_id=567

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Much of the news coverage of the horrible devastation of Hurricane Katrina has focused on what many consider the almost irreparable demolition of New Orleans. This city, once a vibrant part of Louisiana’s rich history, now lays in ruins; however, Louisiana’s capital Baton Rouge, which experienced very little damage during the storm, is facing its own set of issues as it attempts to aid fellow Louisianans.

As New Orleans residents leave their homes, many have found their way to Baton Rouge, which has seen a population boom upwards of a quarter million people. This means traffic jams, overcrowding, and an overall increase in tension for native Baton Rouge residents. Grocery stores are running out of food, gas stations are fighting to keep up with long lines of customers, and, most alarmingly to residents, gun sales have increased dramatically.

“Baton Rouge is now the largest city in Louisiana, and I don’t think it will change for another five to 10 years,” said David Guillory, special assistant to the director of the Baton Rouge Department of Public Works.

On Friday, reports out of Baton Rouge rank the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (9430 Jackie Cochran Dr. Suite 300, Baton Rouge, LA 70807-8020) as the second busiest in the nation. Traffic that is already overflowing throughout the city has reached epic proportions in the areas surrounding the airport, leaving drivers and commuters at a loss as to how to get to work, school and home.

“It used to take me 30 minutes to get to work, and it now takes me two hours,” said Courtney Finnan, a resident of a nearby suburb who has always commuted to the city for work.

“My wife relocated her office here, and the other day it took her an hour-and-a-half to go 2 miles,” said New Orleans resident Charles Macalso; he frequently travels back to check on his home.

Shelters in the area have been filling up as soon as they open, with most of Baton Rouge’s Community Centers and High Schools pitching in to take on as many people as they can. With school starting last week for most of the country, Baton Rouge has had to find ways to accommodate the influx of school-aged children from New Orleans, as well as their native children, while still using schools as makeshift shelters.

One of the shelters that was first to take in evacuees was the Volunteers of America Shelter (827 America St, Baton Rouge, LA 70802). Normally a transitional shelter for adults in housing transition, the shelter has transformed into a makeshift triage and home for hundreds. The area around the shelter, as with shelters all around the city, is growing more congested by the day.

This intermingling of displaced New Orleans residents has led to a rise in already-existing tensions among the two areas; while New Orleans has always been a notoriously “fast” city, Baton Rouge dwellers have always considered themselves to lead a much “slower” existence. Never has that been more true.

Dealing with hundreds of thousands of Katrina evacuees has indeed slowed things down – traffic, especially near shelter areas and schools is gridlocked most of the time – however, the immediate need for housing has led not only to a housing boom, but to a building boom as well, with houses being rushed into production wherever possible.

“I’ve been in the business for 30 years, and we’ve never seen anything like this. The only other time I’ve seen something like this was when my daughter moved to Washington D.C.” said Lara Dupree, the owner of Dupree, Terrell, and Company, a family-run real estate firm. “Any space where builders can build is being taken up.”

Judy Burkett, president of the Greater Baton Rouge Assn. of Realtors, said that prior to the storm, Baton Rouge had 3,626 homes listed for sale – over 75% of those have sold already. Prices, however, have risen significantly, with some estimates at 20% or more. Adding to the confusion are downed communications, which have prevented some recording of sales.

“The families go out to them and they’ll just snap them up — they’ll just snap up anything they can,” Burkett said.

As with the Southern California’s current housing market, buyers in bidding wars account for the major price increases. With so many people, both native and evacuee, vying for places to live, houses are springing up everywhere.

“If there’s lots, we’re putting slabs on them as soon as possible,” Burkett said.

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