On the website of SkyWay General Designer Anatoliy Yunitskiy, there was posted the article, in which the SkyWay author and developer presents SkyWorld, a program of the string transport systems development.
The program SkyWorld is a set of turnkey solutions of Anatoliy Yunitskiy's engineering school. In the programme, there is a number of unique developments in the field of high-speed passenger transportation, agro - and biotechnology, and exploration of the near outer space.
The successful implementation of the complex projects from the SkyWorld program will prevent a global environmental catastrophe that will inevitably happen if the current growth rate of the industrial sector of the world economy is retained. In addition to preserving the ecological environment, the implementation of the SkyWorld is able to open up new opportunities for humanity in the sphere of high technologies, transport, economy, industry and the space industry.
Here is the text of the address in full:
"My name is Anatoliy Yunitskiy. I'm an engineer, author and chief designer of the string transport systems. Today, this breakthrough technology is embodied in the SkyWay transport infrastructure complexes (Heavenly roads) at the EcoTechnoPark (Maryina Gorka, Belarus), with which the group of companies, led by me, is entering the global market. The solutions at the basis of the string systems have a global transformative potential, aimed at the formation of the core of the safe and harmonious development of civilization in the long term. Here, on the site of SkyWay group of companies, I will talk about what my inventions and my SkyWorld program present.
Brief backstory : Setting the problem (from the author's monograph, dated 1995 "String transport systems: On Earth And In Space"
According to modern concepts, life originated on the Earth about four billion years ago. Developing, adapting to then existing on the planet conditions, living organisms began to transform the environment. These changes were not less than those that were happening with living organisms as their development and improvement was progressing. So, on the planet, which was dead and desolate at first, there appeared the atmosphere, which contained oxygen, soil, coral reefs, ozone layer, modern landscape with its swamps, tundra, taiga, and jungles. That is how the biosphere was shaped, in which millions of species of living organisms and the transformed by them planet, have become ideally tailored to each other over billions of years of evolution. There is nothing superfluous here.
But here appeared a man, who through his mind began to strengthen the power of his muscles, senses, intellect; began to create technology to master the technological processes. It happened a long time ago, several million years ago, when primitive people began to make the first primitive tools, and then began to cook on the fire, to process hides and skins of animals. It was then that mankind stood on the technocratic way of development, and we can't change it today. Modern power of the Earth's civilization is only a logical development of industrial technologies.
Factories, power plants, machines, vehicles, airplanes, etc. – these are analogues of living organisms in the biosphere. And they, like living organisms, exchange with the environment their energy and matter; so, like organisms, must inevitably transform Nature. Only from the point of view of biology, there is happening the pollution of the environment. From a technical point of view, factories, power plants, cars, do not pollute anything. At the entrance they have raw materials, at the output – manufactured goods (including, as an example, electrical energy; or service, for example, - transport) and the converted original raw material (finished products), which, naturally gets to where it was taken from: into the environment. It is impossible to avoid that in principle. To create closed technological cycles, so as to solve environmental problems, is also fundamentally impossible. It's like, say, to look for a way of forbidding the cow in production of her converted raw materials – manure, urine, methane and CO2, allowing to produce only her product: milk.
Even the biosphere as a whole is not a closed system. The biosphere transformed the previously dead Earth. The closed system is just "Earth—Biosphere". Similarly, technosphere, and not an individual plant or factory, in terms of one single planet cannot be a closed system. Technosphere will inevitably transform the planet. But in what direction?
Technosphere does not need the oxygen-containing atmosphere. Today, the industry of the USA and China consume more oxygen than green plants produce on the territory of these countries. They live in debt, consuming the oxygen, generated by the Russian taiga and the Amazon jungles. And if all countries achieved a level of industrial development as those two?
Technosphere does not need soil. That is why there are less and less fertile soil on the planet and more and more dross, ash, terricones. Acid rain, smog, increased radiation levels, ozone depletion, etc. – all this is inevitable. You can only slow down the process of transformation of the earthly nature, of the biosphere, but cannot stop it. Technosphere occupies the same ecological niche, as the biosphere as a whole: machines, tools, technical devices placed deep in the earth, water, air, and are actively exchanging matter and energy with them. Environmental issues rose sharply in the last quarter of the twentieth century only because the technosphere in its power, in it's ability to transform the environment, has become nearly equal to the biosphere as a whole. For example, now, the biosphere reproducess more than 200 billion tons of dry organic matter in a year, which, in terms of fuel, just an order of magnitude more than the annual energy consumption by all equipment and appliances available to the human civilization. And the volume of soil, ore and other raw materials, transported and processed by the technique, is already very close to the volume of organic matter produced by the whole biosphere.
A radical way out of this situation is only one: technosphere should be provided the ecological niche outside of the biosphere. This will ensure the preservation and development of the biosphere, according to the laws and directions that have been formed over billions of years of evolution, and also will allow harmonious interaction of a community of people as biological objects, with the biosphere. There is no such ecological niches for technosphere on the Earth. But it is in outer space, very close, at a distance from 100 km from the surface of the planet, where there are ideal conditions for most of technological processes: zero gravity, vacuum, high and cryogenic temperatures, unlimited raw materials, energy and spatial resources, etc.
There is not so much time left for mankind's large-scale exploration of space. In aviation, there is a concept of point of no return: the point at which the aircraft will not have enough fuel to go back and a catastrophe will be inevitable. In my estimation, there are only two or three generations – 40-60 years left to the point of no return in the development of our technocratic civilization. After that, nothing can restore the disturbed balance between nature and industry. Due to technocratic pressure on the biosphere, there will start its irreversible destruction and degradation, and with it - the degradation of the human race. After all, our civilization on Earth lives by the principle "Mold in a Petri dish": when having eaten all finite resources, it will die.
What has been made on the Earth: the SkyWay string transport from the point of view of technology and the current stage of the program implementation.
To change the attitude toward ourselves and to nature is the most complex challenge that humanity must accomplish in the very near future. The sorting and recycling of household and industrial waste, renewable energy sources, global programme, aimed at reducing CO2 emissions into the atmosphere – it's all being done today, but it is not enough. Moving industry into outer space is already the subject of talking, for example, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been talking about it recently, but he never mentioned how to implement that. No mentioning means, it is something, which is unknown. But I do know, more than that: I am already implementing it today, now.
In Belarus, under my leadership, there have been built four test tracks of the SkyWay transport, several models of the rolling stock have already been certified. They look from the outside like the monorail or cableway, but in reality, they are fundamentally different from all, that has been created in this sector to date and far surpass analogues in speed (up to 500 km/h), efficiency, comfort, safety. From a technical point of view, the SkyWay string transport is the system of passenger and freight transportation, which are continuous prestressed by stretching string-rail flyovers, for the movement of rail vehicles on steel wheels with high aerodynamic characteristics, equipped with the anti-derailment system, and also with the intelligent systems for security, control, energy supply and communication. The combination of these elements of the system makes it optimal, and no other land transport system can be more effective if we assume that the laws of physics will remain the laws of physics in the future as well. From social, economic and environmental points of view, SkyWay is a new standard of mobility, the initial step in the implementation of the program of fundamental transformation of the technosphere and the technological basis for the formation of a new civilizational order, in which humanity can coexist harmoniously with nature, and all the harmful production will be moved to space. Let us look at everything in order:
The SkyWay flyovers are constructions, prestressed by stretching. That is why, the transport was called the string transport. And again, for this reason, SkyWay is the most cost-efficient option of a flyover because of the four types of stress-strain state of materials: stretching, compression, bending, torsion. And stretching, in terms of the most favourable use of physical and mechanical properties of materials, is the best one. For example, at equal payload, a stretched cable with a diameter of 10 cm and a length of 500 m is thousands of times less material-intensive design than the Ostankino TV tower, which works on a compression principle, or a bridge with a span of 500 m, which is experiencing bending.
Flyovers consist of anchor supports, which take a horizontal load from stretching, and are installed with a 5 - km span; the intermediate supports, placed with the span of 50-2000 m or more, and thin composite string rails. Thus, the track on which the electric vehicle on steel wheels moves, can be quite light, durable and smooth, which provides high speed and comfort of transportation. And if you make a track structure uncut, without expansion joints, then it is possible to increase the carrying capacity of the flyover by twice. Small diameter of a composite string rail and its location above the ground at a height of 5 m, allows to eliminate the so-called screen effect at least by twice, as it impairs the aerodynamic properties of the transport when driving at high speeds and, as a consequence, proportionally increases the power consumption. The essence of this screen effect consists in a sharp increase in aerodynamic resistance near the screening surface (land, water, roadway) due to the dynamic forcing of air under the underbody of the vehicle. In the SkyWay systems, nothing like that happens because the screening surface is missing, as the rail is actually stretched through the air.
At speeds over 350 km/h (and the SkyWay string transport is designed for speeds up to 600 km/h), eliminating the screen effect is one of the decisive factors, since in these speed modes, more than 90% drive power is consumed on air resistance. The remaining 10% of power goes to overcome the road resistance. SkyWay uses a system of bearing "steel wheel – steel rail", the efficiency of which is equal to 99.8%, as by using 2-kilo force, you can move a one-ton cart on the horizontal rail track. At high speeds, the loss here is two orders of magnitude less than in the system "pneumatic tyre – asphalt road bed" and by times less in comparison with other systems: air and magnetic cushion.
The string-truss flyover with a double-rail unibus. The EcoTechnoPark, the town of Maryina Gorka, 2018.
The SkyWay unmanned rolling stock moves on the rail-string flyover above the ground, outside the area of possible collision with other vehicles, people, animals, and other objects, which further increases the level of safety and opens up the possibility of all-weather operation by eliminating the so-called human factor. The same circumstance: the movement of rail vehicles above the ground, combined with unprecedented low power consumption (up to 1 litre of fuel equivalent per 100 km at a speed of 100 km/h), makes the SkyWay transport complexes maximally friendly to the environment. The land under the roads can be used for establishing parks, farming; on large areas of track routes, natural ecosystems and migration routes of animals can be preserved; hydrology of soil, as it happens in the construction of roads and railways today, will not be disturbed.
Maximum effect at minimum cost is the basic principle of the string transport operation, which must be so for any other transport system. In reality, however, modern transport operates in a completely opposite logic. The lifetime is specially reduced in the interests of the corporations-manufacturers and dealers of components; energy consumption remains stable at a high level, as producers and processors of hydrocarbons benefit from that; road infrastructure requires constant expansion due to continuing growth in the number of vehicles, most of which occupy urban space without performing any useful work while simply standing at the parking lot. This model demonstrates its futility. SkyWay on this background looks absolutely preferable. Now, when its affordability, effectiveness, efficiency, safety and speed are confirmed in practice, you can be sure that the future is in favour of this mode of transport.
The string-truss flyover with a double-rail unibus. The EcoTechnoPark, the town of Maryina Gorka, 2018.
Having confirmed the viability of the SkyWay technology in Belarus, we begin its commercial sales in one of the richest and prepared for the transformation regions of the world: in the Middle East. With the support of the government of the most innovative countries in the world, the United Arab Emirates, we are creating the world center of development and promotion of our breakthrough transport-infrastructure technology – "String valley," the analogue of "Silicon valley" in the USA,-- where not only all the string transport technology will be tested, but also the associated infrastructure technologies, such as linear cities, new “green” power industry, relic fertile soil, vacuum glass and much more, the work on which is being conducted in parallel. As soon as we start the first construction in the UAE, the targeted contracts in many countries will be opened, on which funding will be streaming. Today, we have dozens of such projects for a total length of several thousand kilometers, totaling to the amount above $ 10 billion. These are freight, urban and long-distance tracks in the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and even in Brazil, which is far away from the Emirates. Thus, in the Emirates, not just some test sites will be built, but the innovative technological platforms, on which there will be created all the accompanying infrastructure, required and sufficient for us to become the world leaders in the SkyWay transport and infrastructure technology, namely: scientific research, educational, operational, designing and production platforms for batch production, and not only for the pilot production, as in Minsk. There will be also the own solar power generation: the linear one, stretched along the track, and much more. And all this is the golden key to orders and financing of large number of projects on all continents and to the transformation of the world in accordance with the objectives and potential of the SkyWorld project.
Crowdfunding: everybody who will be on our side, will benefit.
The complex of works on creation of the first models of the SkyWay string transport and the string transport's entering the market, is being funded by modern model of investing: crowdfunding. While the project is at the stage of the startup, everyone can become its investor. Investment amount starts from as low as $ 50, but, due to the large number of project participants, this scheme allows to form sufficient capital for the company's development at the initial stage. All the investors are co-owners of the string transport technology, which is at its basis, and further on, they are shareholders of the company, which, according to expert estimates, is able to conque up to 50% of the world market of transport services in the foreseeable future.
Using crowdfunding scheme, makes the project a unique one. For the first time in the history, the financing of the works on development of the sector-forming technology is being financed by ordinary people. In the ranks of the participants of the project, there are about one million people from more than 200 countries, including more than 200 thousand of them who have already become investors -- this is geography, covering the entire populated part of the planet. More people are joining us every day. This imposes on me and on the staff, led by me, a huge responsibility, but at the same time, it is a great honor – an absolute evidence that the program, which is being implemented by me, is really clear and needed by people. And it is in the interests of ordinary people, humanity, and not bureaucrats and commodity-based monopolies, that the SkyWay string transport is developing.
Crowdfunding has become a powerful impetus for change, which the string transport brings with it, and people in power cannot ignore it anymore. Previously, they were not interested in changes, which can disrupt the established balance of power. I became aware of that from my personal experience, having spent decades to convince them of the necessity of radical reforms, which determine not only the fate of their children and grandchildren, but also humanity as a whole. However, 40 years of fighting have honed my arguments, allowed to work out all the details of the technology, leaving behind three-generations of the string transport and laying the basis for its fourth generation. With the support of the "army" of investors, I have made the first crucial step is the creation of the full-scale working samples of the string transport system. Now, that everyone can see for themselves the effectiveness of the proposed transport infrastructure solutions, both, states and businesses, have to accept the change as a fact and strive to be among the first who they will promote them. Few people want changes, but when changes come, they affect each and everyone who will have to make a simple choice: to change or die. All who will be on our side, will benefit, and those who will become our investors, may already tomorrow become dollar millionaires.
What should be done on the Earth: the next stages of the program
The current challenge, facing the project, is successful entering the market of transport services and gaining at least 50% of its volume. Considering the features of the created technology, its efficiency, safety, affordability, and the ecological potential, inherent to the string transport, such ambitions are achievable in the near future. The experts confirm that.
As noted above, at a starting point, we be conquering the Middle East, the cradle of ancient civilizations, which is ready to become the epicenter of a new passionate push. Next, the string transport must encircle the planet, the water column in the ocean including, which is technically feasible and allows to provide a more affordable, compared to aviation and water transport, and much faster communication between the continents (with speeds of up to 1,250 km/h in the construction of forevacuum tunnels). On the continents, the SkyWay flyover is fastened by the supports; in the ocean, it is anchored to floats that are installed below the water surface. The SkyWay hyperspeed track should be the key route, surrounding the Earth on a line, parallel to the equator, for example, on the Tropic of Cancer, or vicе versa - on the Tropic of Capricorn. Further on, the project could enter a new phase – the construction of the General Planetary Vehicle (GPV) -- and the SkyWay flyover, circling the planet, will be the launch platform for it.
Entering outer space: General Planetary Vehicle
The freight-passenger version of the General Planetary Vehicle (GPV), described by me in the popular science articles back in 1982 (the all-Union magazines "Inventor and Rationalizer", No. 4, and "Technique – To the Youth", No. 6), has the following construction. Imagine a special 2-metre diameter tube, – a carrying case of the GPV – installed on the flyover and extended to both sides beyond the horizon and, thus, covering the planet in a plane, parallel to the plane of the equator. Inside the case of the tube, there are two linear rotors, also covering the planet. The rotors are placed in vacuum channels, and have systems of magnetic suspension and linear electric motors.
In the first phase of entering space, the system of magnetic suspension, which stabilizes the rotors in the centres of the vacuum channels, switches on. Then, one of the rotors is driven by a linear motor in motion along the channel, and, respectively, around the Earth. The rotor mass is significant, millions of tons, that is why it takes many days before it reaches the first cosmic velocity and, due to balance of gravity by centrifugal force, will find zero gravity.
When reaching the speed of 10 kilometers per second, the centrifugal force will exceed the weight of the GPV. Planetary size self-supporting ring under the action of centrifugal forces, which exceed the force of gravity, detaches from the Earth's surface and, uniformly stretching (the stretching will amount to 1,57% per 100 km), in a few tens of minutes leaves the planet's atmosphere and entirely and goes into a circular orbit in the plane of the equator. Braking the first flywheel, accelerated to the first cosmic velocity, the generated electricity to the acceleration is switched in the opposite direction of the second flywheel. Having received the double pulse, the GPV's case, covering the planet, begins to rotate around it until the case develops the first cosmic velocity in a few hours. The space cargo on the external platform: the passengers in comfortable cabins and various cargoes in special containers, will be entered in such a way onto the circular orbit at an altitude of 300 – 400 km.
After the GPV has been in operation, there will begin the industrialization of the outer space. The need for geospace traffic will dramatically increase. This need will be met by increasing the frequency of launches – after all, in one trip, environmentally clean, without any impact on the environment, there will be delivered into the space about 10 million tons of cargo and 10 million passengers, at a price of less than $ 1,000 per ton, that is the decrease by 10 thousand times, which is the cost of cargo delivery into orbit, compared to today's prices.
The resources at the mankind's disposal allow to build the GPV already today: the cost, along with infrastructure – $ 2.2 trillion (three annual military budget of the United States), the power included in the grid – 100 million kWh (2% of the installed capacity of power plants in the world), the mass of metal structures -- 40 million tons (as much steel is smelted on the planet for a couple of weeks).
The Future Of The Earth: SkyWorld
At the stage of mass introduction of the SkyWay transport systems on the Earth, there will open many new opportunities before humanity. Moving the traffic flow to the "second level" above the ground, will free a huge area, today occupied by roads, and will allow to restore the soil with the help of biotechnology, which is being developed by us in parallel with the string transport. These technologies will also allow to enrich the soil in areas that are unsuitable for agriculture, primarily in the deserts, which occupy a large part of the Earth's surface. The speed of passengers' and goods' transportation will increase significantly, and thanks to that, essential stimulus to social and economic development will be provided. Along the SkyWay high-speed tracks, there will be forming linear cities, created in a fundamentally different logic than the present settlements for people: the linear cities will be environmentally friendly, affordable, safe and comfortable to stay, designed for pedestrians.
After the creation of the GPVs, there will begin large-scale industrialization of the near-earth space, where, in the first place, during the first ten years, there will be created a robust energy industry (about billion kilowatts). It will allow to "freeze" the most environmentally dangerous power plants (nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power plants) and fuel industry, which is the most polluting on the Earth. The presence of powerful energy in orbit will allow in a few decades to move into space almost the entire resource-extraction industries (in the asteroid belt or the Moon), steel industry, most chemical and other types of environmentally hazardous industries, and also manufacturing, which needs zero gravity, vacuum, radiation, cryogenic and very high temperatures. At the same time, the environment of the outer space will not be compromised, as in space, the concept of “ecology” is meaningless due to the lack of life there.
The described program may seem an utopian one, as it will require significant intellectual, financial and material costs, while there is a huge number of unsolved problems on the Earth today. But I am sure,- and I am supported in that by hundreds of thousands of SkyWay investors from 200 countries,- that in the future, the funds will be invested in something that will save civilization, our children and grandchildren, and will not be spent on the barbaric devastation of the mineral resources of the planet, on the murder weapon and the arms race, as is happening in the world right now.
The implementation of the SpaceWay program has already begun and is gaining momentum. Today, we have reached the moment when it is practically impossible to stop us. Soon, we will introduce the SkyWay string transport to the market and will receive at our disposal the resources of one of the largest transport infrastructure companies in the world. And I personally, intend to invest all funds, received from the implementation of the SkyWay project, in the General Planetary Vehicle development and creation. I am sure there is simply no other way for the Earth civilization. So, my motto is: Build SkyWay and save the Planet!
With love, engineer Anatoliy Yunitskiy".