The projects suggested by the Soviet and American scientists will enable man:
to travel at a speed of six kilometres per second;
to effect split-second delivery of payloads to superlong distances;
to change over to solar power;
to produce incombustible, light metals unsinkable in water…
To what extent are these projects feasible?
To this day, when space flights have become an ordinary thing, weightlessness continues to attract close attention to itself, and not only from medical people. In the conditions of weightlessness, or more exactly, of microgravitation, technological processes run in a different way than those proceeding on Earth. This makes it possible to produce materials, half-finished products and products with unique mechanical, physical and chemical properties and characteristics.
When Archimedean principle does not work
Archimedean principle loses its validity in the conditions of weightlessness. The distribution of substances in weight becomes impossible which is exactly the phenomenon that makes it possible to obtain a homogenious mixture from sub-stances with different densities, such as foam metals and other composite materials.
Weightlessness enables man to produce materials with such melting point that ; no crucible will stand, or super-pure substances free of any impurities.
Weightlessness allows you to diminish the density of defects in a substance’s crystal lattice – so-called dislocations. In the samples obtained on board orbital spacecraft this density diminishes to a thousandth. In principle, the density of dislocations in “space” crystals can be reduced by a factor of 1,000 which will make the materials thousands of times stronger.
Light, refractory, super strong, with a host of other remarkable properties (a bar of foam steel has the density of sponge, j does not sink in water but otherwise possesses the same qualities as an ordinary ; Solid bar of steel), these materials will find a | wide utilization in machine building. They I are also needed in space and aviation I technology, surface transport, power industry and radioelectronic industry… In the estimate of specialists, their large-scale utilization can bring about a new industrial revolution.
Unfortunately, there is no chance of such a revolution, at any rate in the nearest future, for at least two reasons. The first is a high cost of the project. According to the press, to launch into space a payload of one ton by a non-recoverable rocket costs somewhere between 1 and 2 million dollars. Placing in space the same amount of payload by a multiuse spacecraft will cost even more. Yet the application of new materials will not be able to ensure a tangible economic effect worldwide unless their annual output has reached hundreds of thousands of millions of tons. Today this is an impracticable task since the current cargo traffic between Earth and space is confined to 500 tons a year.
The second reason is a low capacity rating of onboard electrical equipment of satellites or stations. Today this rating as a rule adds up to a mere few dozen of kilowatts. Here we must take into account the fact that each kilowatt in space costs thousands times more than in power stations on Earth.
It would be fine if we could create weightlessness on Earth.
The fastest and the cheapest
Scientists both here and in the United States attach great importance to the solution of this problem. The scientists of both countries build their projects around Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s idea about space trains running along the surface of the globe as fast as the satellite. Placed in an evacuated pipeline, moving on the magnetic levitation principle, having no direct contact with the pipe walls, theoretically this train is already capable of travelling at a near space velocity…
In the United States, this project came to be called the Planetran. It is a system only for passenger travels. Its designers suggested that both coasts of the U.S. be connected with this vacuum tunnel. The trains are expected to reach a speed of up to six kilometres per second while the passengers during the trip will experience 9-loads and near weightlessness. The project will cost tentatively 50 billion dollars. But in the estimate of specialists, since the system will be capable of transferring cargo and up to a hundred million passengers per year it will take a fairly short period of time to recoup itself and turn into the cheapest transport facility. As expected, a trip by such a super-fast “express train” will cost a passenger 30 dollars at the most, and the shipment of a kilogramme of cargo will cost less than 40 cents, not to mention the fact that it will take the train just a space of a few minutes to cover a distance of several thousand kilometres from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
“In our country, the scientists came up with a project which differs somehow from its American counterpart,” says Alexander Maiboroda, a co-author of the project, head of the programme in the Microgravitation non-governmental design bureau at Novocherkassk Polytechnical Institute.
“With the assistance of the U.S.S.R. Federation of Cosmonautics, we have prepared in the space of three years a project of the system called Microgravitron. Taking into account the likelihood of the discomfort for the passengers (overloads at start, acceleration and at deceleration) as well as the high cost of the American project, at the very outset we decided to reject the passenger version of the project and focused our attention on the cargo variant. Our system consists of a vacuum viaduct with small containers inside weighing from 250 kg to a ton (in another version containers weigh up to four tons) and about half a metre in diameter, which is much less than with the American project. Due to diminishing the dimensions in the containers and the viaduct and the absence of passengers it becomes possible to cut acceleration time drastically. What is very important is that the Soviet project’s cost will be one-seventh, or even a tenth, that of the U.S. one.
Let us examine a 2,700-km-long system located on the equator (because the force of gravity there is the least) travelling in the direction of the Earth’s movement. It takes the container one minute in time and 225 kilometres in distance to reach a speed of 7.5 kilometres per second. Overpasses and tunnels for this line on the territory of the U.S.S.R. could provide about 15 minutes of weightlessness plus a few more minutes by a run over the territory of friendly socialist countries and more over Western Europe. The line could be continued farther into the ocean where it should be maintained at the depth of approximately 50 metres where it would be safe from storms and tsunamis. After all, the system could embrace the whole of the globe.
“And that brings us to a hitherto unknown technological level – obtaining long-time weightlessness in the conditions of the Earth.
“The system becomes closed,” Alexander Maiboroda goes on to say. “We need no more to halt the facility enabling the container ‘to orbit’ permanently. Its recharging can be performed right on the go, as it is mated with special-purpose transport facilities which bring in raw materials and take away finished products. Thus the efficiency of the system grows manifold.
“How can we benefit from the implementation of the Microgravitron project, especially from its global version? It gives us the opportunity to produce superstrong and semiconductive materials on an industrial scale. The range of their application in the economy due to their uncommon cheapness and availability will be come much wider. Having reduced the weight of aircraft, motor vehicles, we shall have the consumption of fuel, the cost of transporting passengers and cargo greatly cut down. As is known, cutting the weight of an aircraft by 30 per cent results in a 30 per cent increase of its payload. An extensive use of ‘tube’-generated semiconductors as a converter of solar energy into electric power will enable us to abandon the building of thermal electric power stations which means economizing on coal, oil, nuclear materials, tremendous economic and ecological effect.”
Is it worth the effort?
Is such a system feasible? Aren’t the processes going on in a capsule flying at a space velocity too complex to produce the desired effect? Won’t the system operate at a loss?
Well, let’s try to sort things out. The implementation of the Microgravitron programme is not going to involve any insurmountable physical, mechanical or technical problems. Nor will it violate the law of energy conservation.
The processes going on in the flying containers are rather simple too. In most cases it is only necessary to melt the material and give it time for recrystallization or pour it out in moulds which is no problem even for today’s technology. Of course the system will take a great amount of energy. Almost all of it, however (up to 90 per cent) spent on the acceleration of the capsule and maintaining technological processes in it, will be back at the phase of a slowdown (the recuperation process).
Tentative economic analysis has shown that the costs are to have been recouped within a year after it begins to operate to capacity.
The implementation of the Microgravitron programme holds out the prospect for carrying out more than just an economic revolution on our planet. The possibility of using on a practical plane high-speed surface transport facilities had not been seriously considered until recently, and not for the reasons of technological feasibility. The lack of interest to this idea proceeded from a supranational and global character of the microgravitation system. A largescale development and realization of the project calls for quite certain political conditions that for a long time have been absent in the relations between capitalist and socialist states due to confrontation. Today we witness the making of a new stage of relations between different socio-economic systems, the elimination of ideological and political obstacles that stood in the way of research and development of programmes having a universal human value.
Moreover, due to a gradual changeover of military production on to a civilian plane we need this sort of projects for social reasons.
“The joint participation in the Microgravitron project would make it possible to do more than recoup the money spent, it would also give a new incentive for the development of other global projects, fund them and finally make cosmonautics, now a drain on the budget, pay its way,” Alexander Maiboroda says. “Having developed solar power industry and having closed down thermal electric power stations, hazardous ecologically, and atomic power stations, man (given the future complete destruction of nuclear weapons) will eliminate the last nuclear danger. These are only two out of multiple directions.
“Enlisting many other countries, particularly developing nations, in the development, funding and building of the Microgravitron project will be salubrious not only for their economies (for instance, payment for the lease of the land in the products obtained) but also international climate as a whole.”
The design of the Microgravitron system has been discussed at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, the authors also have available detailed blueprints. At Novocherkassk Polytechnical Institute this poroject is recognized as top-priority and classified as a fundamental research project. The state has begun to fund its further development.
Major points of the programme sparked off tremendous interest among the participants of the worldwide movement Ecoforum for Peace that has been held recently in Bulgaria. Its secretariat offered to help in the promulgation of the programme abroad and in enlisting the assistance of foreign scientists.
Science fiction? For today – yes. However, so many times in the recent years we have been witnesses of the implementation of even the most improbable projects…
Vladimir Galin
