Future Transportation

(Technology that would influence transportation in future)

Basics:

Transportation in simple words is the movement of passengers and goods from one point to another. Primitive modes of transport include roads, railways, airways, waterways, cables, pipelines and space. Transportation is mainly divided into infrastructure, vehicles and operations.

a. Infrastructure: Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations necessary for transport, and may be roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals and pipelines, and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.

b. Vehicles:Vehicles traveling on these networks may include automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, people, helicopters, and aircraft.

c. Operations:Operations deal with the way the vehicles are operated, and the procedures set for this purpose including financing, legalities and policies.

Transportation has been one of the factors boosting industrialization, modernization and globalization. It holds the title for the line “Bring the world closer”. Effective modes of transportation help improve convenience in travel by reducing time and money, also luxury and safe voyaging, supplying cargo requirements, etc. It is one of the crucial factors focusing on development of nation. Thus the developments of more technologically advanced modes of transportation which are a lot safer and also economic, luxurious and save time are needs of mankind.

Here are a few other transportation landmarks that will help pave the way for the more significant innovations.

By 2010 personal transportation devices will be all the rage and electric shoes with built-in roller-skates will be gaining much of the attention. After nine years of heavy media coverage, the Segway Human Transporter will begin to gain serious market share.

By 2015 traditional gas-powered autos will start to decline with electric automobiles and hybrids taking up most of the slack.

By 2020 we will see an industry being built up around self-illuminating highways – highways that glow in the dark. “Glow Roads” will dramatically change the night-time aesthetics of major cities and will be shown to improve driving safety at night and reduce the need for streetlights.

By 2025 a first attempt at launching the space elevator will fail, setting the industry back a decade.

Factors that would be the agenda for Future Transports:

Safer Modes of transport Enhanced Luxury Faster transportation Environmental considerations Economic and Efficiency needs All terrain/conditions adaptability Various different combinations of fuels, powerhouses, etc. Convertibles (Dual Mode Vehicles)

Most transport media in use today are generally fossil fuel powered. The reason for this is the ease of use and the existence of mature technologies harnessing this fuel source. Fossil fuels represent a concentrated, relatively compact source of energy. The drawbacks of such transportation media are that they are heavily polluting, and rely on limited energy sources. Many ideas exist which try to either harness renewable forms of energy, more efficiently use fossil fuel, or use human power, or some hybrid of these, to move people and things. The list below contains some forms of transport not in general use, but considered as possibilities in the future.

List of proposed Future Transport

Air-propelled train (proposed by Ray Bradbury in 1953) Bounce tube pneumatic travel (Proposed by Robert A. Heinlein in 1956) Copter harness (proposed by Robert A. Heinlein in 1954) Flying car Global Intelligent Transportation System (proposed by Vladimir Postnikov in 2010) Launch loop Light sail (proposed by Jack Vance in 1962) Rolling road (proposed by Robert A. Heinlein in 1940) Personal rapid transit Slidewalk (proposed by Robert A. Heinlein in 1948) Spacecraft propulsion or Space transport Space elevator (proposed by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895) Orbital ring Jet pack Dual-mode vehicle Vactrain Frictionless Vehicles: (By Magnetic Levitation or Air Floatation) Binary power

1. Air-Propelled Train:An atmospheric railway uses air pressure to provide power for propulsion. In one plan a pneumatic tube is laid between the rails, with a piston running in it suspended from the train through a sealable slot in the top of the tube. Alternatively, the whole tunnel may be the pneumatic tube with the car being the piston with a seal to the walls. By means of stationary pumping engines along the route, air is exhausted from the tube leaving a partial vacuum in advance of the piston or car, and air is admitted to the tube behind the piston or car so that atmospheric pressure propels the train. In some plans, air pressure is applied behind the piston/car.

Advantages

The supporters of the atmospheric system claimed it had several advantages over traditional motive power by steam locomotive.

Hill climbing ability. On the two longest-lived applications, at Dalkey and Saint-Germain, this seems to have been vindicated: the system was used on uphill journeys and gravity in the other direction. Brunel assumed that the system would work on the very challenging gradients of up to 1 in 38 on the Plymouth main line if the South Devon application had been extended beyond Newton, probably by increasing the diameter of the tube on the gradients (although this would have involved a complex expanding piston arrangement); however here it was tested only on a relatively flat section.

Operating efficiencies . Atmospheric railways could be operated on cheaper and lighter tracks which did not have to carry the weight of a locomotive, and could take advantage of sharper curves.

Fuel efficiency . It was far cheaper to maintain and operate a few large pumping engines than a large number of individual locomotives.

Cleanliness . The smoke and dirt from the steam engines was kept away from the passengers. Safety . The system could achieve higher speeds, but it would be impossible to operate two trains on

the same stretch of track simultaneously and so collisions would be avoided.

Disadvantages

The failure of the system was due to technical problems with the stationary engines and the leather seals on the vacuum pipes. The former were suffered by the London and Croydon Railway but would have been overcome with more experience by the manufacturers and operators. The difficulty of maintaining an air-tight seal in the vacuum pipes was a serious problem, particularly for the South Devon Railway Company, which was never satisfactorily solved using the materials and technology of the 1840s.

The atmospheric system also suffered from a number of operating problems.

Shunting the trains into atmospheric formation was difficult or cumbersome (although this would have seemed less of a problem in an era when much shunting was carried out by horse- or man-power).

A change in traction, with consequent delays, would be necessary if an atmospheric line became part of a through route.

There had to be gaps in the atmospheric tubes at points, with flyovers or similar arrangements at junctions; and special arrangements would have been needed at level crossings

2. Launch Loop:A launch loop or Lofstrom loop is a published design for an active structure maglev cable transport system intended for orbital launch that would be around 2,000 km (1,240 mi) long and maintained at an altitude of up to 80 km (50 mi). A launch loop would be held up at this altitude by momentum of the belt as it circulates around the structure. This circulation, in effect, transfers the weight of the structure onto a pair of magnetic bearings, one at each end, which support it.Launch loops are intended to achieve non-rocket spacelaunch of vehicles weighing 5 metric tons by electromagnetically accelerating them so that they are projected into Earth orbit or even beyond. This would be achieved by the flat part of the cable which forms an acceleration track above the atmosphere.The system is designed to be suitable for launching humans for space tourism, space exploration and space colonization, and provides a relatively low 3 g acceleration

Description

Launch loop accelerator section (return cable not shown)

A launch loop is proposed to be a structure around 2,000 km long and 80 km high. The loop runs along at 80 km above the earth for 2000 km then descends to earth before looping back on itself rising back to 80 km above the earth to follow the reverse path then looping back to the starting point. The loop would be in the form of a tube, known as the sheath. Floating within the sheath is another continuous tube, known as the rotor which is a sort of belt or chain. The rotor is an iron tube approximately 5 cm (2 inches) in diameter, moving around the loop at 14 km/s (31,000 miles per hour).

Although the overall loop is very long, at around 4,000 km circumference, the rotor itself would be thin, around 5 cm diameter and the sheath is not much bigger.

3. Personal Rapid Transit:Personal rapid transit (PRT), also called podcar, is a public transportation mode featuring small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built guide ways. PRT is a type of automated guideway transit (AGT), a class of system which also includes larger vehicles all the way to small subway systems.

In PRT designs, vehicles are sized for individual or small group travel, typically carrying no more than 3 to 6 passengers per vehicle. Guide ways are arranged in a network topology, with all stations located on sidings, and with frequent merge/diverge points. This approach allows for nonstop, point-to-point travel, bypassing all intermediate stations. The point-to-point service has been compared to a taxi or a horizontal lift (elevator).

PRT was a major area of study in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1975, Morgantown PRT, an experimental automated system which exhibits some (but not all) features of PRT, was opened to the public after significant construction cost overruns. Morgantown PRT remains in use today, and there have been discussions on expanding it.

A PRT system (by 2getthere) went into operation in Masdar City in the UAE in November 2010. The system has 10 passenger and 3 freight vehicles serving 2 passenger and 3 freight stations connected by 1.2 kilometers of one-way track. The system is in operation 18 hours a day, seven days a week serving the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. Trips take about 2 and a half minutes (i.e., an average speed of roughly 12mph / 20km/h) and are presently free of charge. Average wait times are expected to be about 30 seconds.

In addition, several test tracks are operational and undergoing active testing. A pilot system at London Heathrow Airport, United Kingdom, was constructed using the ULTra design. Originally scheduled to be operational in 2009, it recently underwent 4 weeks of public trials where it achieved a 99.6% availability Heathrow Results. Note that 97.5% is considered transit level of service A. Several cities have recently expressed interest in PRT, and two small city-based systems are currently in development, in Suncheon, South Korea and Amristar, India.

4. Sidewalk:

A slidewalk is a fictional moving sidewalk structurally sound enough to support buildings and large populations of travelers. Adjacent slidewalks moving at different rates could let travelers accelerate to great speeds.

They were imagined by science fiction writer H. G. Wells in When the Sleeper Wakes. Robert A. Heinlein made them the instruments of social upheaval in the 1940 short story The Roads Must Roll. Isaac Asimov, in his Robot Series, imagined slidewalks as the potential method of transportation of practically the entire urban population on Earth, with expressways moving at up to 60 km/h (37 mph) equipped with seating accommodations for long distance travel, and with slower subsidiary tracks branching off from the main lines. Arthur C. Clarke also used them in The City and the Stars. Larry Niven used them in Flatlander. Slidewalks figure prominently in the animated series "The Jetsons."

5. Space Elevator:

A space elevator is a proposed non-rocket spacelaunch structure (a structure designed to transport material from a celestial body's surface into space). Many elevator variants have been suggested, all of which involve travelling along a fixed structure instead of using rocket-powered space launch, most often a cable that reaches from the surface of the Earth on or near the equator to geostationary orbit (GSO) and a counterweight outside of the geostationary orbit.

6. Orbital Ring:

An Orbital Ring is a concept for a space elevator that consists of a ring in low earth orbit that rotates at above orbital speed, which has fixed tethers hanging down to the ground.

The structure is intended to be used for space launch.

The original orbital ring concept is related to the space fountain and launch loop and was explored in detail by Paul Birch and published in three parts in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society in 1982.

7. Jetpack:

Jet pack, rocket belt, rocket pack, and similar names, are various types of device, usually worn on the back, that are propelled by jets of escaping gases (or in some cases liquid water) so as to allow a single user to fly.

The concept of these devices emerged from science fiction in the 1920s and popularized in the 1960s as the technology became a reality. Currently, the only practical use of the jet pack has been extra-vehicular activity for astronauts. Despite decades of advancement in the technology, the challenges of Earth's atmosphere, Earth's gravity, and the human body (which is not well suited for this type of flight) remain an obstacle to its potential use in the military and as a means of personal transport.

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocketpacks

A hydrogen peroxide-powered motor is based on the decomposition reaction of hydrogen peroxide. Nearly pure (90% in the Bell Rocket Belt) hydrogen peroxide is used. Pure hydrogen peroxide is relatively stable, but in contact with the catalyst (for example, silver) it decomposes into a mixture of superheated steam and oxygen in less than 1/10 millisecond increasing in volume 5000 times: 2 H2O2 → 2 H2O + O2. The reaction is exothermic, i.e. with liberation of much heat (about 2500 kJ/kg), forming in this case a steam-gas mixture at 740 °C. This hot gas is used exclusively as the reaction mass and is directly led to one or more jet nozzles.

The great disadvantage is the limited operating time. The jet of steam and oxygen can provide significant thrust from fairly lightweight rockets, but the jet has a relatively low exhaust velocity and hence a poor specific impulse. Currently, such rocket belts (limited to the amount of fuel the user can carry unassisted) can only fly for about 30 seconds.

The main disadvantages of this type of rocket pack are:

Short duration of flight (a maximum of around 30 seconds). The high expense of the peroxide propellant. The inherent dangers of flying below minimum parachute altitude, and hence without any safety

equipment to protect the operator if there is an accident or malfunction. Safely learning how to fly it, given that there are no dual-control training versions. The sheer difficulty of manually flying such a device.

Turbojet pack

Turbojets

Packs with the turbojet engine work on the traditional kerosene. They have higher efficiency, greater height and a duration of flight of many minutes, but they are complex in construction and very expensive. Only one working model of this pack was made; it underwent flight tests in the 1960s and at present it no longer flies.

8. Dual Mode Vehicles:

A dual-mode vehicle is a vehicle that can run on conventional road surfaces or a dedicated track known as a "guideway". Dual-mode vehicles are commonly electrically powered and run in dual-mode for power too, using batteries for short distance and low speeds, and track-fed power for longer distances and higher speeds. Dual-mode vehicles were originally studied as a way to make electric cars suitable for inter-city travel without the need for a separate engine. More recently, starting in the 1990s, a number of dual-mode mass transit systems have appeared, most notably a number of rubber tyred trams and guided busses.

9. Vactrain:

A vactrain (or vacuum tube train) is a proposed, as-yet-unbuilt design for future high-speed railroad transportation. This would entail building maglev lines through evacuated (air-less) or partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. Though the technology is currently being investigated for development of regional networks, advocates have suggested establishing vactrains for transcontinental routes to form a global network. The lack of air resistance could permit vactrains to use little power and to move at extremely high speeds, up to 4000–5000 mph (6400–8000 km/h), or 5–6 times the speed of sound at sea level and standard conditions, according to the Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering program "Transatlantic Tunnel".

Theoretically, vactrain tunnels could be built deep enough to pass under oceans, thus permitting very rapid intercontinental travel. Vactrains could also use gravity to assist their acceleration. If such trains went as fast as predicted, the trip between London and New York would take less than an hour, effectively supplanting aircraft as the world's fastest mode of public transportation.

Travel through evacuated tubes allows supersonic speed without the penalty of sonic boom found with supersonic aircraft. The trains could operate faster than Mach 1 (at sea level) without noise. Also supersonic travel requires a large increase in propulsive power as one enters the near-sonic region. Again with reduced air pressure the speed of the onset of this effect will also increase, allowing faster speeds with lower energy requirements.

However, without major advances in tunnelling and other technology, vactrains would be prohibitively expensive. Alternatives such as elevated concrete tubes with partial vacuums have been proposed to reduce costs.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering are currently working on a vacuum tube train project which is set to reach speeds up to 1,000 km/h (620 mph) and "technology could be in daily use in the next 10 years.

10. Frictionless Vehicles:

Around 2030 we will see commercialization of the first friction-free no-moving-parts flying vehicles which will be considered by many to be the ultimate freedom machine. Much like the transition from analog to digital in the world of information technology, the study of traditional mechanics and traditional aerodynamics will be replaced with a new physics governing vehicular movement.

Even today, flying cars are very much on the radar screen to become a next generation automotive technology. They will begin with a more convenient version of today’s airplanes and eventually converting over to the frictionless cars.

11. The Flying Car Era: Personal Air Vehicle

A personal air vehicle or PAV, also personal aerial vehicle, is a class of light general aviation aircraft which meets design and performance goals intended to make flying as commonplace as driving. NASA, in 2005, refined the definition of a PAV in the fifth Centennial Challenge initiative, which it funds in conjunction with the CAFE Foundation.

The flying car era will really begin around 2015 with flying drones. Flying drones will be used by FedEx and UPS to deliver packages, Pizza Hut to deliver pizzas, and Kroger and Safeway to deliver groceries. But beyond that, drones will enable homes to be taken off the grid with delivery of water and electricity (changing out batteries for the home), trash and sewage pickup, and much more. These too will begin as air-powered vehicles and later convert to frictionless drones.

Six key technological breakthroughs will be needed for the first generation of flying cars to become viable – the fully automated navigation systems, directional layering of airspace, low-impact vertical take-off, convenient fly-drive capability, silent engines, and specialized safety systems.

1. Fully automated navigation systems – The average person has a difficult time navigating on a two dimensional surface. The flying car industry will not be able to “get off the ground” without an onboard navigator that “handles the driving”. Yes, people will want the freedom of being able to do some creative maneuvering in certain situations, but that will only be allowed in rare instances.

2. Directional layering of airspace – With several hundred thousand vehicles flying over a city, there will need to be an organized system for managing the traffic, and having all vehicles at a particular altitude traveling the same direction would eliminate many problems. For example, all vehicles traveling at 1,000 ft altitude would be traveling due north, at 1,010 ft altitude 1 degree east of due north, 1,020 ft altitude 2 degrees east of due north, etc. Vehicles would spiral up or down to make their turns. While not a perfect solution because the North Pole becomes a crash point for those flying due north, it does represent a good starting point for engineering a solution.

3. Low-impact vertical take-off – For use by the average person, flying cars cannot have a runway requirement. They need to take off and land vertically without blowing the leaves off of trees or shutters off your house.

4. Convenient fly-drive capability – As humanity makes the transition from ground-based autos to flying cars there will be a need for both driving on the ground and flying in the air.

5. Silent engines – Very few cities will want to put up with the noise of several hundred thousand flying vehicles if they all sound like airplanes today.

6. Specialized safety systems – To date both aircraft and airspace have been closely controlled by organizations like the FAA and the NTSB to insure the safety of the flying public. Because of the sheer

volume of vehicles and the lower caliber of individuals allowed flying, additional safety measures will have to be in place. Safety technologies will include collision avoidance systems and drop-out-of-the-sky emergency airbags on the outside of vehicles.

12. Binary Power:

The friction-free no-moving-parts vehicles will run on what we call “binary power”. Binary power is the concept where two otherwise harmless beams of energy will intersect at some point in space creating a source of power.

To better explain binary power, think in terms of two invisible beams intersecting in a room and the point at which they intersect is a glowing point of light. Yes, binary power will eventually replace all light bulbs. And lest you think it can only be used for intense forms of power, it will also be used to create “points” of sound, eliminating the need for speakers and headphones.

2050 and the Transportation Industry

With power being beamed in, the cost, weight, and manufacturing complexity of these vehicles will be greatly reduced. For this reason the industry will go through a very rapid conversion leaving the mechanical masterpieces we know as cars today destined for the scrap heap.

By 2050, because of friction-free technologies and advances in material science, the average passenger vehicle will weigh less than 200 lbs.

By 2050, because of automation, far fewer pieces, and greatly reduced complexity the average manufacturing time for a vehicle will be less than one hour.

By 2050, the cost of the average vehicle will be under $5,000 in today’s dollars. By 2050, because of the use of automated navigation systems, traffic courts will be a distant memory.

Once the flying car industry takes off there will be a gradual decaying of the existing highway system. Eventually highways will go away, starting around 2070.