“My team and I are working on creating two transport and infrastructure industries: one that is geocosmic and non-rocket, and the other that is land-based. This is what all of humanity needs, not just one country”
The World Engineer Anatoli Unitsky on how the development of non-rocket space exploration technology led to the creation of aboveground string transport.
Anatoli Unitsky has always been fascinated by space. When he was a child, his family moved from Belarus to a village near the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. There, he would watch rocket launches every night, which were both fascinating and frightening. After each launch, unusual natural disasters would occur in the area. After immersing himself in the subject, the future engineer realized that rockets were harming the planetary ecology. He started thinking about how to explore space without them. This led to the creation of the General Planetary Vehicle (GPV). In an interview, Unitsky talked about his invention and why it is necessary to relocate the technosphere into space. He explained how string transport came about thanks to the GPV and its potential benefits.
— Mr. Anatoli, the topic of space has interested you since childhood. Even then, you started designing rockets from improvised materials. Tell us more about it.
— That's right. I started building rockets when I was eight years old. I didn't have the variety of materials I have today, but I used what I could find - paper, glue, and foil. Gunpowder was used as fuel. This was after the war, and near my village of Kryuki, in Belarus, there was a German ammunition depot that had been blown up by the partisans. I got the gunpowder from there. My first attempts weren't very successful, though. The powder from the shells wasn't good for rockets, and they often exploded. So, I decided to invent my own fuel. It had three ingredients I could get from the village – charcoal, nitrogen fertilizers, and sulfur. Later, it turned out it was a type of gunpowder after all.
When I was 12, my mother, sister, and I moved from Belarus to Kazakhstan and settled in the village of Nikolsky, near Dzhezkazgan. It was the year 1961, the same year when Yuri Gagarin flew into space. It was a great event for the Union, which the whole country was proud of. And boys like me, of course, wanted to be like the great cosmonaut and were fascinated by the subject of space. I was madly in love with the stars in the vast steppes of Kazakhstan. Our house was a couple of hundred kilometers from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and you could watch rocket launches at night. I continued to get interested in designing rockets. I tried to independently obtain the optimal composition of rocket fuel and a homemade solid-fuel engine made of paper soaked in glue. I sought to fully control the flight altitude, time and distance, landing location, capabilities and boundaries.
After a while, my three-stage rockets began to ascend to a height of 2 kilometers. One day, I decided to conduct an experiment and launch a field mouse into the sky. I designed a special device that fired a capsule with a passenger, and the "astronaut" had to land from a height using a parachute made from tissue paper. In the end, the experiment was successful. I had calculated everything so that the mouse would not be injured and would land safely on the ground. It can be said that thanks to my youthful passion, I began to learn how to look for non-standard solutions.
— So, the GPV, or the General Planetary Vehicle, has become a promising solution for space exploration. But why is the rocket not a viable option for this task?
— Technically, it may be suitable, but it has significant environmental costs and adversely affects the planetary ecology. This was something I realized when I was a kid. One day, my sister and I went to watch a movie at the open air cinema. Its screen was pointing towards Baikonur, and during the show I saw a star rising in the sky beyond the screen – it was a launching rocket. An hour later, the movie finished and we headed home. On our way, we encountered a sudden downpour, which was unusual for those parts. It was then that I realized that the rocket might be the cause of this natural phenomenon. Later I learned that during the launch it burns thousands of tons of fuel, and then, going into orbit, destroys millions of tons of ozone, creating a hole the size of France. But it is the ozone layer that protects all terrestrial life from harmful ultraviolet radiation. That’s when I set myself an ambitious goal – to create a geocosmic aircraft that would not harm the planet.
I want the Earth to be a place for life, and space – for industry. But this is impossible without an environmentally friendly, energy efficient and safe geocosmic vehicle.
A rocket powered by solid and liquid fuels has an energy efficiency of less than 1%, considering all launch and pre-launch costs and losses, as a significant amount of energy is spent on obtaining fuel and manufacturing the lost stages. Even an archaic steam locomotive has an efficiency that is several times higher. In addition, rocket geocosmic logistics has an insanely high cost – about $10 million USD per ton of cargo. For example, to transport a 500-gram cup of tea into space, you would need to pay $5,000. This is very expensive. Accordingly, in order to achieve industrial scale, which amounts to millions of tons of cargo annually in both directions, it is necessary to reduce the cost of transportation by at least a thousand times.
— And what is the cost of transportation by the GPV? And how does this aircraft differ from a rocket?
— The cost of transportation using the GPV will be less than $1,000 per ton, or less than $1 per kilogram. And if the return cargo flow from space exceeds the direct cargo flow from Earth, the GPV will start to generate electricity like a large equatorial power plant with a capacity of over 100 million kilowatts. Then geocosmic transportation could become completely free. Excess cargo delivered to Earth, specifically industrial products manufactured in orbit from space materials, can be likened to water in a hydroelectric power plant, which will transfer its kinetic and potential energy to the GPV flywheels, and the latter – to the Earth's energy system, respectively. In fact, the GPV can then become a super-powerful kinetic power plant that will accumulate and then deliver billions of kilowatt-hours of energy to the planet's energy system. Due to this, the cost of geocosmic transportation will become negative. You won't need to spend money on them. On the contrary, they will start generating income.
— Tell us more about the GPV design. How does it work?
— When creating the GPV, I considered four fundamental laws of physics: the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, angular momentum and the motion of the center of mass of the system. The design and operating principles of the GPV are well integrated with the environment and do not have a negative impact on the biosphere. The GPV is equipped with two longitudinal belt flywheels located inside the case in vacuum channels on a magnetic suspension. Once overclocked by linear electric motors, flywheels can rotate for years inside vacuum channels, that is, around the planet, without experiencing resistance when moving at cosmic speeds. The cost of electric energy for a round trip with a full load will be only 2%, and the energy efficiency will be 98%, that is, it will be 100 times higher than that of a rocket.
The GPV is made in the form of a torus with a cross-section of about 2 m, covering the planet. Its 40,075 km long runway will encircle the Earth along or parallel to the equator. To exit the gravitational pit and ascend to the equatorial orbit, the spacecraft must eventually orbit the planet, along with passengers and cargo, at the first cosmic speed (which is almost 8 km/s) and become a ring satellite in zero gravity.
Approximately 10 minutes after the start, the vehicle will rise to a height of 100 km (stretching by 1.57% for every 100 km of ascent) with an acceleration comfortable for humans – up to 0.5 m/s2. The speed of vertical ascent, i.e. the increase in the ring diameter, will reach 500 km/h. At this height, one of the belt flywheels is switched to braking mode, and the resulting electrical energy is then used to accelerate the other flywheel in the opposite direction. Receiving a double impulse and rising upward, the GPV body will begin to spin around the planet in the equatorial plane before reaching the first cosmic velocity. The estimated orbital (circular) velocity will be reached approximately 2 hours after launch.
The GPV will be able to go into orbit up to 100 times a year and deliver up to 10 million tons of cargo and up to 10 million passengers there in just a couple of hours with each flight, providing them with the comfort of a modern railway. The GPV is a reversible electrical system, which means it can also return to Earth.
Creating such a device can be perceived as a challenge, but nothing is impossible for a real engineer if the laws of physics are not violated.
— How did the idea of creating the GPV come about?
— Once I came across the book "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen". In it, I was drawn to the story of how the main character on a horse almost drowned in a swamp, but escaped by pulling himself ashore by his pigtail. I thought at the time that it would be a great idea to use the internal forces of a system to move oneself in space. I wanted to bring this concept to life and help save Earth's technocratic civilization, which was sinking into a swamp of industrial waste and environmental problems. But I knew physics well and immediately realized that the baron had violated the law of conservation of center-of-mass motion. This law states that if the sum of the external forces acting on the system is zero, then the center of mass of such a system moves at a constant speed – uniformly and rectilinearly. That is, if the center of mass was at rest initially, then under the specified conditions it will continue to rest.
At the same time, I realized that what the baron had done in his fantasies could still be practically implemented by an engineer – all that was needed was for the center of mass of the geocosmic system to coincide with the center of mass of the planet. At the same time, going into space, the center of mass of the system should not move in space. Thus, physics allows only one solution that allows using exclusively the internal forces of the geocosmic transport system (that is, without any environmental impact), which is a ring encircling the planet along the equator. In this case, their centers of mass will coincide. At the same time, if we start increasing the diameter of the ring due to the internal forces of the system (physics does not prohibit this), then the overall center of mass will remain in place.
— For sure, to create such an aircraft, huge funds are needed, as well as global cooperation. What do you think about this?
— Yes, according to my calculations, the implementation of such a large-scale project would cost approximately 2 trillion USD - this is two military budgets for a country like the United States. Alternatively, for every inhabitant on the planet, the cost would amount to approximately 250 USD – the price of a smartphone, electric scooter, or fashionable pair of shoes.
The biosphere is the near space of the planet, and humans are a part of it. That's why they were creating the industry inside their home. But who says that the planet is the best place for industrial technology? No, this is the worst place. From a physical point of view, factories, industrial enterprises, transport, and power plants will always pollute the environment with their production waste, including thermal energy. For example, today the industry of the USA and China consumes more oxygen than plants in these countries produce. It turns out that they are borrowing from Russia and Brazil, whose forests are mainly restoring oxygen withdrawn by industry from the Earth's biosphere.
Due to the development of the technosphere, there is also less fertile soil on the planet and more slag, ash and terranes. It is already difficult to prevent acid rain and rising radiation levels. It is possible to slow down the process of polluting the planet. But to save it, we need to move the technosphere into space, and for this, all of humanity and all countries must unite, because our habitat, the terrestrial biosphere, is one for all and the other does not exist and will not exist anywhere in our vast universe.
Today, with my team of scientists, engineers, and production experts, we are actually creating two transportation and infrastructure industries. One of them is non-rocket and geocosmic, and the other is string terrestrial, located on a second level above the earth's surface. This is what all of humanity needs, not just one country. This is what will save the biosphere without destructive "growth limits" – deindustrialization, decarbonization, desocialization, depopulation, without demonizing the engineering vector of development of our earthly technological human civilization. After all, all this can lead to the exact opposite result, namely the death of our technological civilization, created by thousands of generations of engineers, starting with the invention of the first human-made bonfire.
There is enough space and resources on Earth to support everyone, not just one dozen billion people, if the Earth's industry moved to a more comfortable technological environment – into space, where there is weightlessness, deep vacuum, and inexhaustible resources, both spatial and mineral, as well as energy.
— Recently, the Japanese announced plans to build an elevator into space. For this, they intend to use carbon nanotubes. What are your thoughts on this project?
— A space elevator can only be constructed from space, which means transporting millions of tons of high-strength, self-supporting structures over 50,000 km long into orbit. This would take years and require trillions of dollars. And for what? To transport 10,000 tons of cargo per year (the maximum capacity of the elevator – about 1 gram of cargo per year per person on Earth) at a cost of geospace logistics still amounting to $10 million per ton, just like a rocket? Even if the elevator is built, space industrialization would still be impossible. Thousands of such elevators would be needed for that. For comparison, China alone transports over 3 billion tons of cargo annually by rail. It takes that much just to sustain one country’s industry, while here we’re talking about the entire planet. Space trams, bridges, electromagnetic guns, and other alternative options either fall short of the elevator or only slightly surpass it in capacity. The only viable solution for relocating Earth’s harmful industries into space is the GPV.
— Anatoli, your development for space exploration is known to have led you to the idea of another project – string transport.
— Yes. When I presented the GPV project to specialized agencies in the 1970s, they criticized it for its high material consumption and construction costs. To reduce these costs, I decided to optimize the most material-intensive part of the structure – the takeoff and landing overpass. Of the four types of stress and strain states in structural materials – stressing, compression, bending, and torsion – stressing was the most suitable in terms of utilizing physical and mechanical properties. Therefore, I designed the toroid, the GPV, to remain under stress throughout the entire operational cycle: ascending into space, staying there, and descending back to Earth. Otherwise, it would lose stability. The ground-based takeoff and landing overpass must also be prestressed in the same way.
I designed a structure consisting of anchoring structures spaced several kilometers apart and prestressed blocks with high-strength reinforcement cables – strings – at their core. Later, I realized that this resulting load-bearing structure could have another application: serving as a ground-based transport overpass. It would be lightweight, strong, and level, enabling rolling stock to move along it at maximum speed. Moreover, if the overpass is not segmented with expansion joints, its load-bearing capacity doubles. In this way, I simplified the load-bearing structure into prestressed (string) rails, onto which it was only necessary to place a rail electric vehicle (uPod). This is how string transport emerged – as a result of optimizing the GPV overpass.
— What factors had to be considered when developing a new type of transport?
— At high speeds, when the speed exceeds 350 km/h, more than 90% of the energy expenditure is consumed by aerodynamic drag. This was the aspect that needed to be optimized.
Then, I began thinking about designing not just an individual vehicle but an entire system, consisting of three main elements: the track, the vehicle, and the surrounding environment. It was crucial to consider the distance from the Earth's surface at which the movement takes place. I decided to lift the vehicle above the ground to eliminate the airfoil effect and improve aerodynamics by 2.5 times. As the track structure, I used two narrow string rails, which also do not create a screen surface. After numerous wind tunnel tests, which took more than 20 years, I was able to reduce the aerodynamic drag coefficient of the uPod to a value close to the theoretical limit – Сх = 0.05. No existing transport can achieve this. My calculations also prove that the string overpass will be cost-effective to build and will reduce energy costs for transportation. I realized that I had invented the optimal ground transportation system.
— Why is it pointless to improve existing types of transportation?
— Once, I decided to conduct a thought experiment: what would happen from a physics standpoint if I traveled from Tyumen, where I was studying at the Industrial Institute, to Moscow using different types of transportation? At the beginning and end of the journey, I would be at the same height above sea level – about 100 meters. This means my potential energy as a load would not change. In both locations, I would be stationary relative to the Earth's surface, so my kinetic energy would also remain the same. But if the energy state of the load doesn't change, the useful work of the transportation and its overall energy efficiency would be zero. So, where would all the energy, all 100%, go? I will answer: into fighting with the environment and its destruction. In such a scenario, should existing types of transportation be improved? I think not. It's necessary to create new transportation, one that minimizes its impact on the environment. And for high-speed travel, the most important factor, as I’ve already noted, is perfect aerodynamics.
— So, have you managed to come up with a way to free the Earth's surface for the biosphere?
— Yes. Today, roadways covering over 30 million kilometers occupy an area equal to five times the size of a country like the United Kingdom. This land could be used for gardens, fields, and forests, which not only produce food but also generate biospheric oxygen, which, by the way, we breathe. There are currently about 1.5 billion cars in the world. If we get rid of them and switch to string transport, we could save tons of fuel each year, worth trillions of dollars. It wouldn't be burned, and tons of exhaust gases and carcinogens wouldn't be released into the atmosphere, while tons of atmospheric oxygen wouldn't be consumed.
A traditional high-speed car, like a Bugatti, is good when there are 100 such cars, but imagine them a million times more, with one car for every 80 people on the planet. How many people would die if everyone started driving at speeds of 400-500 km/h? Today, at speeds of 80-100 km/h, over a million people die in car accidents every year, and about 20 million become disabled. String transport, with its dedicated track structure, anti-collision system, and second-level location, would eliminate accidents, so trips would become safe. And how much fuel would be saved! A two-seater Bugatti, for example, traveling at 500 km/h, would consume 600 liters of fuel per hour (or 300 liters per passenger per hour), which for a fleet of 100 million cars would require more than 300 billion tons of fuel annually, that is more than all the proven oil reserves on the planet. That’s why uST high-speed transport has no alternative, as its fuel consumption (converted from electrical energy) would be only 2 liters per passenger per hour.
— Anatoli, how will your transport integrate into the existing transportation network?
— I'll recall Henry Ford, who was once asked who needed his cars. He replied, "Close your eyes, go to a world map, and point your finger. Wherever you land, that's where it's needed." But he was being a bit deceptive. Cars aren't needed in the ocean, but a string road can be built there, either above or below water, for example, in a vacuum channel with zero buoyancy placed 50 meters deep. I proposed such a project, the London-New York route across the ocean, with a travel time of 6 hours, more than 40 years ago, long before Elon Musk and his Hyperloop.
New things are always met with caution by people. Remember, first there was horse-drawn transport, and then the railway appeared. It helped cities and industries grow. Later, the car was invented. It did not replace the railway, but it solved two problems that the railway could not. These were door-to-door logistics and the possibility of owning a vehicle privately. However, it was not so much the car that solved these problems, but the corresponding transportation infrastructure.
I am confident that string transport will soon take its leading position in global logistics due to its versatility: it is high-speed, highly cost-effective, safe, eco-friendly, and at the same time affordable. The string rail track structure can be easily laid across any terrain, connecting islands and continents, and crossing seas and oceans in a straight line.
String transport, due to its undeniable advantages, will become dominant in the second half of the 21st century. Key benefits include its eco-friendliness and energy efficiency (cost-effectiveness). uPods operate on electricity and do not emit harmful substances during movement; there are no carcinogenic exhaust gases, wear products from tires and asphalt, anti-icing salts, or other drawbacks of conventional transport, including electric vehicles. The track structure, with its lightweight, airy supports and large spans, does not disrupt the natural landscape, helping to preserve the landscape, fertile soil, and biodiversity of the surrounding areas.
The second advantage is its cost-effectiveness. Due to the movement of steel wheels on steel rails with an efficiency of 99.8% and the high aerodynamic qualities of the rolling stock, high energy efficiency is achieved for transport of the second level, which is unattainable for other types of transport, including maglev trains.
The rolling resistance coefficient of a steel wheel on the steel head of a string rail, according to test results, is within one or two thousandths. Thus, if a rail electric vehicle is fueled at the rate of 1 liter per passenger, it will travel 200 km at a speed of 500 km/h. For comparison, even the best high-speed Bugatti, at 500 km/h, would require an increase in the drive power to 3000 kW. Of that, around 2000 kW would be spent on aerodynamics. And a single liter of fuel would only be enough for 1.7 km of travel.
The third, equally important property of aboveground transport is safety. It is well known that the highest number of accidents occur on roadways. Every year, about 20 million people are injured or maimed in car accidents, with 6–8% of these cases resulting in fatalities. This statistic does not account for the number of people who died from post-accident injuries in hospitals. As for aviation accidents, the mortality rate is around 300-500 people per year.
The elevation of the track structure above the ground will eliminate the possibility of collisions between the rolling stock and other road users. The equipment of uPods with an anti-derailment system and the presence of rail tracks, providing a trajectory with millimeter precision, will help prevent other accidents. By increasing the safety of high-speed transport, over the next 100 years, more than 100 million lives can be saved on the roads, around 2 billion people will avoid injuries, and we will be able to return areas currently rolled up in asphalt to the Earth's biosphere.