On 21 June, Belarus hosted the II International Scientific and Technical Conference «Non-Rocket industrialization of Space: Problems, Ideas, Projects». It took place near the capital, and was attended by inventors, representatives of academic and scientific circles, public organizations of Belarus and foreign countries, including the UK, Germany, Peru, India, United Arab Emirates, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Slovakia and Estonia. The first conference devoted to the issues of non-rocket space industrialization was held in 1988 and gathered about 500 guests from the USSR and abroad. 30 years later, this topic has become even more topical.
To save biosphere
The need for large-scale industrialization of space is due to global environmental problems faced by mankind. The participants of the conference stated: there are negative changes in the biosphere of the Earth, caused by the activities of modern technocratic civilization. Unless we act decisively, we are all doomed to die within two or three generations.
The solution was suggested by the keynote speaker – the Belorussian engineer and inventor Anatoliy Yunitskiy, Member of the of the USSR Cosmonautics Federation, the creator of the SkyWay transport technology, in which dozens of the countries of the world got interested, including the UAE, where the project is included in the infrastructure development strategy. He spoke about his space program SpaceWay, the essence of which is to bring all harmful production into orbit of the Earth and begin the industrialization of space. Then, the biosphere will be freed from the negative influence of the technosphere, and man will have unlimited resources of space at his disposal. However, traditional methods of space exploration are not suitable for this task.
«The existing rocket transportation causes enormous damage to the environment and is economically inefficient. A decisive role in the industrialization of space should be played by a new generation of geocosmic transport», – highlighted Anatoliy Yunitskiy.
He presented the GPV (General Planetary vehicle) project: the geocosmic transport of the future, which will favorably differ from modern rocket solutions by high speed, environmental friendliness (it works on electricity) and efficiency. In the future, the GPV will be able to provide an annual cargo flow of millions and billions of tons between the Earth and the orbit.
How the transport of the future works
The basic principles of the GPV are quite simple. Anatoliy Yunitskiy formulated them back in 1982 in his article «Interchange, Space, Ring», published in the journal «Inventor and Innovator». The ideal transport will be the one that uses only internal forces, says the inventor. To do this, it must have the shape of a ring. So, the GPV is a geocosmic aircraft covering a planet in the plane of the equator. The peculiarity of its functioning is that entering space is carried out by increasing the diameter of its ring and achieving the circumferential velocity of the body, equal to the first space, at the calculated height (with passengers and cargo). In this case, the position of the centre of mass of the GPV does not change during space entering: it always coincides with the centre of mass of the planet. The optimal driving internal force for the GPV is the excess centrifugal force from the belt flywheel, accelerated around the planet in a vacuum channel using a linear motor and a magnetic cushion to the speeds, exceeding the first space &ndash up to 10&ndash12 km/s, depending on the ratio of the linear masses of the body and flywheel. This is not a very high speed: it is thousands of times lower, for example, than the speed approaching 300,000 km/s, obtained on the same principles in modern charged particle accelerators. To transfer the pulse and the moment of the pulse to the body of the GPV when entering orbit in order to obtain an orbital speed equal to the first space, the second belt flywheel is required, also covering the planet.
Infinite resources
It is also worth saying about the economic effect of the GPV use, as the cost of delivering each ton of cargo into orbit will be reduced compared to the rocket by thousands of times and will be less than a thousand dollars per ton. It will take more than a hundred thousand years for the modern global rocket and space industry to achieve what the GPV can do in one year. But the main thing for civilization is to get the access to almost ideal conditions for technological processes: zero gravity, vacuum, unlimited raw materials, energy and spatial resources. Thus, the infinite needs of mankind will be satisfied.
The construction and commissioning of the GPV is a super-ambitious task that will require cooperation between the world's countries, international organizations, leading global companies, research organizations and universities.
The project budget is $ 2.5 trillion (three annual military budgets of the United States); the power of the GPV in the network is 100 million kilowatt (such, for example, is the capacity of a single heavy launcher); the need for steel is about 100 million tons (the same amount as, for example, is smelted on the planet for 3 weeks); the need for concrete is about 10 million cubic meters (the same amount was laid, for example, in the dam of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP).
Anatoliy Yunitskiy called the creation of the international public organization to consolidate the efforts of the world community to ensure the sustainable development of the biosphere and harmonious co-evolution of man and nature, as one of the priority intermediate tasks on the way to the industrialization of the near space. This will be done within the next 2 years. The headquarters will be located in the United States. It is planned that over time, the organization will join the UN as an expert on global ecology.
Scientific approach
The participants presented the results of their research and practical work in the following areas: the solution of global problems of modernity by space means, the prospects of industrial development of near space, the creation of the planetary non-rocket space vehicle, specifics on the organization of large-scale cargo and passenger flows along the route «Earth – Orbit – Earth», space settlements for 5 thousand people in the orbit.
The participants and guests were carried away by the reports «Features of the Design of the Residential Space Cluster «EcoCosmoDom», «Features of International Business Cooperation in the Framework of the Program SpaceWay», «Description of the Structural Elements of the Astroengineering Transport System SpaceWay» and others.
A collection of scientific papers will be published based on the results of the conference. The next, third conference on the problems of non-rocket space exploration will be held in 2020 in the Republic of Belarus.
According to the participants of the conference, the future of our civilization actually depends on the success of the SpaceWay program, as in a few decades, the consequences of human invasion into the biosphere will be irreversible.