In order to obtain all of the economic, pollution, speed and safety benefits that a Personal/Mass transportation system like the SkyTran System concept offers, certain specifications absolutely have to be met.
1. It has to be MagLev.
Anything other than a pure solid state
transportation system will be an expensive maintenance nightmare forever.
This is all about long term costs and NOT burdening all taxpayers just to
benefit a few.
One example would be maintenance costs for
an alternative wheeled vehicle. If an individual SkyTran vehicle
is in full use 10 hours each day, the vehicle would accumulate 100,000 miles
in just 100 days (roughly 3 months). Think about the cost of replacing
60,000 mile rated full size automobile tires every 2 months and you'll
understand why a non-contact pure SOLID STATE transportation system is
absolutely essential!
2. It has to be small and light. A heavier SkyTran vehicle (to say carry more people) means the track has to be beefier. If you do that, the all important minimum track costs will go up accordingly. For a given budget, this means LESS track can be built and LESS people will have conveniently close access to low cost, high speed commuting. Our goal is to provide super low cost high speed commuting for the majority. This probably means only 98% benefit. I cannot carry 500 pound people and not severely penalize the majority. It is essential to hit the $1 million per mile target (or better). The robot trackformer and intended use of existing semi-automated light pole placing equipment technology requires the kinds of gross weights we are talking about.
3. It has to be streamlined.
A low aerodynamic drag shape factor
combined with minimum reasonable frontal area means less energy wasted
disturbing the air. At 100 MPH we can greatly reduce power costs and
directly daily costs to the users by paying strong attention to the
drag of the Vehicle. This means comfortable sports car like reclined seating
rather than full upright seating. Also, the MagLev power system inside the
roll formed track must be very small relative to the available cross section
area and also be streamlined. We absolutely do not want to consume excess
power trying to push a near sealed "piston" through the tube.
For the above aerodynamic reasons, the optimum design for the majority,
will not comfortably fit 7' 6" basketball players. It will be far
cheaper overall to just provide absolutely free door-to-door
chauffeured limousine service to these rare exceptions (and the above 500
pound people), than to design and build a degraded, less efficient, more
expensive system to try to accommodate all variants in humanity.
(We, also, have great ideas for handling wheelchair bound, handicapped
people - It's different and surely won't comply with ADA laws, but they will
love it! And laws made by humans can always be changed! The
handicapped will be the ones spearheading this change! It will take a couple
of future pages to fully describe it. Those pages should be added in about
1.5 months. Come back to the Web Site then.)
4. It has to be above ground. This is the only way to totally eliminate the possibility of collisions with cars, trucks, pedestrians and animals. To be safe, just make it impossible to crash with those items. Tunnels, as an alternative, cost way too much to build per mile and are visually depressing to drive in for long distances. Besides, underground you will probably still find great big, disease carrying, ugly rats to smash into and splatter - which nowadays means big trouble with the government rat lovers.
5. Exiting or merging onto the main track has to be passive. Exit lanes and merging lanes absolutely cannot be mechanical devices like the switches used since the 1800's on railways. A mechanical switch that could: extend; allow one vehicle to switch; and fully retract in 1/2 second before the next vehicle is passing that point would be a horrible expensive maintenance nightmare - forever. Exiting and merging has to be like a freeway road. The exit and its off-ramp are simple permanent structures. You just issue commands (steer) whenever you are ready to exit. (Magnetic vehicle exit lanes and merging lanes were tested and proven by the Aerospace Company in the 70's and should do fine.)
6. The SkyTran vehicles have to be mechanically trapped into the hollow track. Trains riding on top of two tracks occasionally derail and kill people. The answer is to make derailment impossible. Enhance human safety by technically eliminating an entire group of accident possibilities.
7. The SkyTran
vehicles have to hang below the hollow
track. Structural
reinforcement (and associated extra costs) needed to support twisting
loads into the track from going around a corner (centrifugal
accelerations) and/or from side wind loads can all but be eliminated by
changing the vehicles from riding on top of the roll formed track
to hanging from below (see earlier color photos).
A good analogy is the hanging Batman roller coaster ride at Magic Mountain
with a left/right freely swinging pivot hinge at the top. The weight and
side load vectors naturally bank the vehicle so no bending goes into the
support structure above. Also, this makes for a more comfortable ride
because the passenger is automatically banked and is never thrown against
the outside walls during high speed turns
From the beginning (back when Larry Wood create the following concept
drawings) we knew that supporting the SkyTran vehicles
from above would be superior from a structural standpoint. It took finally
figuring out how to cleverly get older, frail people in and out of a hanging
SkyTran vehicle very simply and
easily to make that tradeoff wonderfully acceptable. No pictures of that
until we get a new patent complete. Figure out a good way yourself!
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| This is the earliest concepts for the SkyTran vehicles. They rode on top of a "T-shaped" track and were trapped to the track so they could never derail. (Look at the dinky track. You can easy visualize a large side wind on the Vehicle twisting the heck out of it. |
 |
This is another of Larry
Wood's super drawings of the early concept. To exit, the
passenger would have to stand up out of his reclined seat,
then step over an 8" tall structural stiffener (just
like exiting most automobiles). WE love working with Larry (who is the "Mr. Hot Wheels" designer at Mattel for a couple of decades now). He freely admits he doesn't know anything about structural engineering and says such technical details are entirely my problems - He's just "stylin" cool looking ideas. (Take another look at Larry's Track Forming Robot drawing and ask whether or not it would tear down the the cross braces as it passes underneath? It would! Easy fix - think about it!) Larry is a welcome relief from a lot of other former LA Art Center of Design students - who have had one course in structures and one in aerodynamics and somehow have been brainwashed that they are now "official" experts in both fields. Drives me nuts! |
8. The Vehicles have to be
computer controlled. However,
there does NOT have to be a monster, master computer controlling each and
every SkyTran vehicle
simultaneously at all times. Each SkyTran vehicle
has its own individual small computer and intelligence. When it is ready to
leave the station and merge into traffic, it checks for upcoming openings,
then accelerates under precise controlled conditions to merge in with
1/4" accuracy. If the computer senses that the "velocity buildup
profile" is somewhat slower than desired (say two 200 pound passengers
are on board), the Vehicle computer instantly delivers more current from the
track to speed it up. If accelerating slightly fast (say one light teenage
passenger or it's empty), the Vehicle computer compensates by feeding
slightly less propulsion current. Such adjustments will happen 1,000 times
per second. Such precision merging with today's modern computers is simple,
cheap and enhances the total safety concept.
9. The SkyTran system should not have to pay for any Rights-of-Way. First of all, even though a simple SkyTran track pair can carry as many people per hour as a six lane freeway, it is NOT a toll road/freeway that requires cutting miles long 300 to 400 foot wide swaths through neighborhoods. All a SkyTran line needs is a series of two foot diameter buried foundations to support exposed 10" diameter vertical steel tubes. These can be placed anywhere, without having to mow down any homes or grossly deface the existing landscape.
BUT aren't SkyTran vehicles disgusting visual pollution? It is all relative. We all grew up with the sight of paved roads all around us and so accept that as "Normal". (Think about it - Roads and parking lots are yucky visual pollution. We simply deem them necessary for functional living and accept them as is. I'd rather see trees and green grass, how about you?) If you had to make a choice between a new six lane freeway built next to your house/neighborhood OR a two track SkyTran system suspended from one row of poles (a system which handles just as many commuters per hour as the freeway) which would you choose? We think most people would take the option that is not much different visually than old fashioned telephone poles with wires strung between them. Something like the SkyTran system proposed here may simply become the normal sight of futuristic cities?
10. The system has to be three-dimensional. Intersections in two-dimensional space means traffic lights, continual stopping and starting, and the inevitable crashes. The extra costs to totally eliminate this kind of potential accident by having North-South Vehicles traveling at one height and East-West Vehicles crossing over at a different height is minimal. Also, continuous steady speed is very important to trip time AND for minimum energy usage.
11. The departure/arrival stations can not be "stations". Think low cost or no cost bus stops, instead. No buildings. No ticket takers. No attendants. People do not need to have nice (read expensive) buildings to be protected from the weather while waiting for a scheduled bus or train to depart - IF there is never any waiting! Get in one and GO!
12. There has to be an extra
power source onboard for emergencies. In
the event a total electrical grid power failure occurs, I do not want all
the people to be stuck sitting for hours 15 or 20 feet in the air! What can
we do that makes sense?
The cost of a continuous emergency walkway with hand rails would totally
kill the concept of low cost per mile. Perhaps we could include something
like a built-in emergency cable lowering system to get the Vehicles down to
the ground? Don't care for that, either! What if the main power came back on
when you were half way down? OW!
How about simply providing an onboard emergency power source that could keep
the machine going for at least three more miles at 100 MPH. When,
the computer senses main power total dropout, it kicks in automatically in a
couple of milliseconds and takes over (just like a computer UPS). The only
thing you notice is a blinking red light which tells you - whether you like
it or not - that your machine will be exiting and stopping at the next
station. It takes about 14 pounds of old fashioned lead acid type battery to
do that job (less weight if we use the high power for 3 minute NiCads as
used on WRPA's White Lightning ).
