SkyTran - High Capacity, Non-polluting, National Park Access
By 2030, the ever more congested National Parks started installing SkyTran SST systems, and removing the automobile roads. Many more visitors per year could now be allowed in to enjoy the natural beauty of the parks with no pollution whatsoever. Everyone loved Yosemite National Park's scenic backcountry SkyTran ride to the spectacular view at the top of Half Dome (8,842 feet elevation). Some promoter types were even tempting us with great offers to add a fun optional descent "for the kids" straight down the face of Half Dome to the Valley floor.Missed another trick there gramps. Shoulda built that descent down Half Dome’s face. Can you imagine MagLev power driving you straight down for 4,800 feet and then slowing you down with a 4-g pullout into two giant loops at the end? What a rush that would have been!
Well, Rory, it's not that bad. After all we do own the rights to the virtual reality simulator version of that potential ride. Frankly we thought all you screamin’ kids would be a bit more than the local fauna could stand. No son, some things are better left as they are. In fact, the beauty and challenge of all our National Park projects were to see just how unobtrusive we could be. When we were done, not only was the SkyTran system all but invisible, but it helped us head off major PR obstacles as well. Once we proved we could install our high capacity transportation systems and still maintain the integrity of these national treasures, people finally understood that SkyTran systems in their own cities meant true improvement and not just expensive, wasteful degradation. Anyway, it worked. But you know Rory’s right. That would have made a great ride, and we weren’t the only ones to think so.
SkyTran - Amusement Park Access and Rides
That Half Dome descent idea was just a fun thought that the media debated. However, it didn't take long until Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement parks in California contacted us. They had a continual need for faster, higher, more spectacular rides to stay ahead of the competition. The Six Flags engineers and management wanted to find out if it might be possible to apply our patented technologies to create rides in the flatland that would duplicate the much discussed Yosemite Half Dome idea.They were already quite familiar with our 100 mph personal/mass transportation 3-D grid systems. Years ago, they bought a basic SkyTran system to carry people from spread out points in their parking lot to anywhere in the park. Later on they had us extend the SkyTran monorail track to bring people back and forth between each of the big nearby hotels and the park. Eventually their track was interlinked with the growing countywide system. Later on, as more and more California cities and counties linked their SkyTran systems together, people quickly figured out that taking SkyTran from their home directly to the park at a steady 100 mph sure beat driving. Six Flags management soon became aware that while attendance continued to grow, that the formerly jammed parking lot steadily became ever more empty. It didn't take much longer to realize this vast excess of now mostly unused valuable real estate could easily be converted into amusement park expansion and exotic new thrill rides.
Our team put together seven alternative ride concepts for the Six Flags people. Kevin Pracon, our fulfillment manager for strange requests, pointed out that the same computer control principals used in our little two passenger SkyTran vehicles could be directly applied to amusement park rides. Kevin started by exploring all the technical aspects of Six Flags’ latest Superman III ride. It reached a peak speed of 150 mph and took passengers straight up 750 feet for 13 seconds of unpowered rise and fall (fake zero g). The Superman III ride carried 1,200 people per hour, 16 at a time in 6-ton vehicles.
By changing vehicle size from carrying sixteen riders each to two riders, we could cut gross weight to 700 pounds, meaning 1/20th of the acceleration power would be required. Furthermore, accelerating 16 people, two at a time instead of all at once, would consume just 40% of the total power of doing the same for the single group of 16 people! Now, instead of needing one giant 2.2 second long 1,500 kW (2,000 horsepower) power hit every 45 seconds to obtain that 3-g acceleration up to 150 mph, we would have a 2.2-second long 75 kW hit every 6 seconds. Pracon's newest college recruit, Hank Wysock, suggested we could use an LRL flywheel stabilizer to do it all with one 35 kW generator. Alternatively, using a larger 75 kW (100 horsepower) generator would provide enough power to launch one vehicle every 2.2 seconds. This would mean a capacity boost to 3,272 riders per hour if needed!
Pracon pointed out that besides a significant per passenger kW-hr saving that there were two other major benefits in common with the SkyTran philosophy. First, the track to safely support a continuous stream of 700-pound vehicles was considerably lighter and less expensive than the track structure needed to support an intermittent flow of 15,000-pound vehicles. Second, using MagLev instead of steel wheels on steel rails meant no part of the levitated vehicle ever got within 2 centimeters of the fixed track regardless of the centrifugal g's. Thus, the high speed pounding of the wheels against the track and supporting structures due to small misalignments and bumps between all the assembled/welded segments would not exist. Instead of having to reduce material working stresses to a mere 8,000 psi to 10,000 psi to account for that severe metal fatigue environment, we would be able to design our structure using over double those stress levels and have a safe 50 year fatigue life.
As always, a more efficient use of materials meant less capital. Also, avoiding mechanical contact and wear points through the use of MagLev also greatly reduced maintenance, downtime, NDT inspection requirements and expenses.
The next problem to be solved was handling the rider flow. It would be impossible to have two riders exit, then two new riders board and be secured in the vehicle all within 6 seconds to maintain the 1,200 passengers per hour rate. The solution was obvious. We had to apply our SkyTran offline station principals again.
Ten sets of parallel station pair systems with 100 feet of dwell between the exit station and the boarding station would give people leaving 30 seconds to exit their vehicle. People getting on the ride would also have 30 seconds to board an empty vehicle and have the automatic restraint system engage. A 40-foot by 110-foot piece of land was all it took. The computer control system to sequence the vehicles onto the single main track that shot up to the 750-foot elevation and up and over on a zero-g parabolic arc was a no-brainer.
Fig. 10. 750 foot tall, 150 mph, SkyTran based MagLev amusement park ride designed to provide 13 seconds of zero-g (patent applied for).
The Six Flags/Premier Parks CEO, James Carbonie, was impressed with the low capital costs, low operational costs, low power costs and safety features of the SkyTran-based Superman III ride. Within 10 minutes, Jim was ready to order a dozen to be installed in the most important of his 67 worldwide theme parks.
Didn’t he want to see your designs for the improved version they originally called about?
Well, that’s what we asked. I said, "Jim, duplicating the Superman III experience was merely our basic technical exercise to verify that applying SkyTran principals could save material, erection labor time, power, etc., but we were thinking you might like doubling the speed to 329 mph and having the riders experience a true, not fake, weightless experience for say 30 seconds."
Our proposal provided continually varying power on the way up and the way down to exactly cancel aerodynamic and magnetic drag. This meant that after the initial launch to 329 mph, the entire experience was true zero-g, not just the couple of seconds at the apex of the trajectory.
Well, that’s how the Proton Accelerator ride was born in 2032. Every 3 seconds a completely enclosed SkyTran MagLev vehicle with two people on board (2,400 per hour) was accelerated at 6-g's up to 329 mph. The vehicle then "coasted" in a zero-g parabolic arc up to 4,000 plus feet above ground and back down again while trapped to and floating along on the MagLev track system.
Grandpa, how did you ever build something that tall on earth with all that wind, earthquakes and gravity?
Well, John, the track was light and the vehicles were light so we grew it from the ground up. First we erected 3 spindly towers. One was 4,120-foot tall (1,255 meters) and the others on each side were 2,300 feet tall (700 meters). The towers themselves were strong enough to carry all the static and stabilizing tension cable compression loads. These cables, which were essential to prevent column buckling, reached up to the sky from all four corners of the park. Decorative lighting attached all along those cables and aircraft warning lights on the towers made quite a nighttime advertising sight for the park! Las Vegas was jealous!
The towers themselves only took three days each to erect and secure. The tallest 4,120 foot tower was made of 206 precision 20 foot truss-work segments that were identical in outer dimensions, but continually thicker in component wall section the closer a section was to the ground. One 20’ section was added at a time from ground level. Every 15 minutes, the next truss member would be transferred into the hydraulic lift/retention system at the bottom of the growing tower. That section was bolted securely to the truss base above, and then the entire stack was slowly lifted hydraulically another 20 feet in order to have clearance to bring in the next truss segment. Four equally spaced restraining cables were attached to every fifth section along with a differential GPS sensor. These sensors were used to provide the correction data that kept alignment accurate to the nearest half centimeter. Each time the tower was slowly raised 20 feet, all the restraining cables had to simultaneously be slowly unrolled from anchored master reels under precisely computer controlled tension conditions. The computed optimum tension and foot per minute of cable pay out at each ground anchor station tension was a trigonometric function of current tower height and the GPS alignment correction signals.
Once the three towers were erected and permanently secured, multi-cable hoists were helicoptered to the tops. Then the very top of the prefab parabolic MagLev track was assembled on the ground. This 60 foot long completed segment of track was then hoisted up slightly so workers still on the ground could attach the next adjacent 60-foot sections of MagLev track to both ends. This allowed the assembly crews to always work close to the ground. Numerous vertical and side stability cables were then attached to each section, and all lifts were computer coordinated. The only time consuming aspect of growing the MagLev track from the ground up was that every 100 feet or so, some of the redundant intermediate tower cables had to be temporarily disconnected, then reconnected and retensioned after the track was lifted past. Two more weeks passed from tower completion to track completion. The Proton Accelerator was first introduced in 2034. The park sold tens of thousands of T-shirts emblazoned with "Virtual Reality Sucks! Feel the g's! Only at Six Flags".
We quickly found out that we had to pressurize the vehicles because the rapid pressure changes from 14.7 psi at sea level to 12.7 psi at 4,023 feet elevation in 15 seconds was discomforting to people's ears. In 2035 we added an electronic window opaquing option to all the vehicles. Some people seemed to get more out of the zero-g experience when not distracted by the spectacular outside scenery rushing by. We even included various Nerf™ toys in the lighted cabins to play with during their 30 seconds of weightlessness. In 2036 we also decided to include advanced noise cancellation to eliminate the distracting 329 mph to zero to 329 mph acoustic noise changes. For some unknown reasons, the hot selling T-shirts to the younger crowd now said "30 second kisses in zero-g, WOW!, Only at Six Flags".
