Sharjah sky pods designer looks to low-cost space travel
Space travel could one day be as cheap as $100 – but it will not be in the form of rockets launched from Earth, the designer of a new transport system has said.
Unitsky String Technologies has designed high-speed passenger sky pods suspended on a cable track above the desert in Sharjah as a working model to show the potential of stringrail transport.
Anatoli Unitsky, the system’s general designer, spoke about the technology at the Future Mobility Forum at the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition, or Gitex, in Dubai.
He said his system had much greater potential than just passenger transport on Earth.
Mr Unitsky was born in a village in Belarus, seven kilometres from the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in present-day Ukraine that left much of that area uninhabitable due to radiation.
The incident motivated him to find a way to tackle manmade pollutants.
He believes moving highly polluting manufacturing processes and power production into space would allow the planet to recover from the impact of industrial emissions.
“Losing my village was a sign that we risked losing everything on Earth unless we changed the way we live and travel,” said Mr Unitsky, a member of the Federation of Cosmonautics of Russia.
“We need to go into space, but not for just any reason.
“All our problems on Earth have been created by industry. Power production and the chemical industry need to be moved out of our biosphere.
“The only space where we can do this is 300 kilometres above Earth,” Mr Unitsky said.
The string-rail suspended passenger pods is one of several projects under test for a potential network in Dubai to be operated by the Roads and Transport Authority.
It is on show at the Belarus pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai.
Mr Unitsky’s system uses super-strong string technology that he believes could be used to carry passenger and cargo pods at speeds ranging from 150 to 500 kilometres an hour between stations and hubs across the city.
Pods would be carried independently along steel cables, with ground anchors every 50 metres.
The system is considerably cheaper than laying conventional railway track or asphalt roads, Mr Unitsky said.
While the future of mass transport is likely to feature multiple modes – including high-speed rail, hydrogen-powered trains and the Hyperloop tube system – Mr Unitsky said string-rail technology also had enormous potential.
Taking the technology vertical may sound like science fiction, but it could one day become reality, making space travel accessible to the masses, and taking industrialisation into orbit, Mr Unitsky said.
A space-rail project – which Mr Unitsky calls a unitary planet system – is likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars and require global co-operation.
“Production and manufacturing will always be needed, so we have to have a system where we can travel easily between space and Earth,” he said.
Mr Unitsky said rockets would be unable to meet demand.
“As a railway engineer by trade, it is clear there is a simple solution to move items between Earth and space,” he said.
“To make [manufacturing in space] happen, we have to be able to transport a million tonnes of material into space.”
“[The unitary planet system] works on electrical energy and is ecologically sound,” Mr Unitsky said.
“It costs $30 million to send a cosmonaut into space. If we build this system, it will cost $100 for a ticket into space.”