Technology Advances Regarding Fast and Economical Driverless Vehicles

  CHICAGO, IL - 09/22/2017 (PRESS RELEASE JET)

Self-Driving Cars

200.0 mile per hour High-Speed Transportation

No gasoline, no Diesel, no Avgas, no Jet Fuel

Absolutely Safe Driverless Vehicles

I invented, Designed, Engineered and refined this TRANS System in 1989, but now hear that Elon Musk is having trouble attempting to invent a version of my same system today (2014). Look at his HYPERLOOP web-page, which nearly looks like it might have been written by me!

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf

TRANS uses NO fossil fuels, just Solar or Wind Power.

TRANS is personal transportation for an individual or family, and not dependent on scheduling 28 people to share a trip.

TRANS replaces cars, trucks, trains, buses and airplanes.

TRANS is based on nearly indestructible and economical standard reinforced concrete tubes, and not a welded steel tube that might corrode over time or be structurally damaged.

The TRANS System is a giant version of the pneumatic tubes that banks use to transfer money and papers for drive-through banking. Standard conventional, economical five-foot-diameter concrete culverts are used as the tubes. SUV-sized Pods move through the tubes for an individual or a family or a thousand pounds of freight or produce, which all travel at exactly the same speed, 200.0 mph, so no accidents are possible.

You would schedule a specific pickup time and location and the destination, and arrange for the Fare, which would likely be less than one dollar. Urban commuting might cost a Quarter, and only take a few minutes to get to work or back home.

Go door-to-door from a Chicago suburban home to a New York City restaurant in less than 5 hours for $5 total cost.

Fresh California produce to a Boston grocery in 15 hours for a penny a pound.

Freight and Passenger handling can cost less than 1/10 of current freight and passenger rates. That would still only be 1/5 of current rates even with a substantial tax added (to pay off the National Debt).

Freight will be delivered far faster than any current truck or train could accomplish. An entire passenger trip, door-to-door, will generally be as fast as by current expensive airliners, but without all the unpleasant Security adventures.

When you drive down an expressway, your engine has to constantly produce enough power to overcome both Aerodynamic Frontal Drag and Tire Drag. For most cars, this requires burning enough fossil fuel to continually produce about 40 horsepower, just to keep at a constant 65-mph speed. Since Internal Combustion Engines are only around 23% efficient, this requires us to use a spectacular amount of gasoline for our hundreds of millions of vehicles.

However, imagine that you had an 80-mph tailwind behind you as you drive down that highway. You could put your car in Neutral and shut off the engine! (except that would be illegal!) The Aerodynamic Drag would no longer exist and only Tire Drag then had to be overcome. Now imagine that it was a 230-mph tailwind behind your vehicle. Also assume that you could FLY a fraction of an inch above the highway pavement (or the bottom of the tube), so even Tire Drag would not exist.

The TRANS system vaguely resembles the Pneumatic Tubes that your Bank uses for their Drive-Up Windows. The bulk of the TRANS system is simply many thousands of conventional 5-foot-diameter Concrete Culverts, with air-sealing gaskets between them to reduce any air loss. Teflon coating is applied to all the interior surfaces to reduce air friction and turbulence losses. There are many automated hydraulic lifting cylinders which can correct for any land subsidence or other needed adjustments to keep the tubes all precisely laser-beam aligned. Air is constantly blown through these culverts at 230 mph.

A relatively cylindrical "Pod" "flies" inside this culvert, using a scientific process of Bernoulli Lift. This results in the Pod flying at about ¼" above the bottom of the inside of the culvert, due to the specific shape of the Pod’s outer surfaces. It always flies at exactly 200.0 mph.

The Pod therefore rarely touches any of the walls of the culvert, and it "hovers" inside the culvert. Each Pod DOES contain some retractable "bicycle wheels" for brief slow-speed travel when Bernoulli Lift is not sufficient.

This has eliminated all Aerodynamic Drag and Tire Drag, and so the Pod does not need any engine in it. There IS a computer in the Pod, which opens and closes several different "bleed through" passageways. The largest such passageway ensures that the Pod ALWAYS moves at exactly 200.0 mph inside the culvert, where the computer lets about 30 mph of bleed-through air to pass through the Pod in the culvert. There are also some small passageways along the top, left, right and bottom of the Pod. The Top passageway allows the correct amount of bleed-through air such that Bernoulli Lift always raises the body of the Pod ¼" up off the bottom of the culvert. Whatever total gross weight exists in the Pod (up to 1,000 pounds), this Bernoulli Lift process and the computer-adjusted pass-through air always ensures the ¼" space from the culvert floor. Some of the bleed through air drives some accessories including a small alternator to ensure reliable electricity supply for any occupants and their toys inside the pod.

There are actually three different Pod speeds in the TRANS system. Between cities, it is 200.0 mph. Within cities along arteries, it is 60.0 mph. Along what is commonly called residential streets, it is 30.0 mph. All the concrete culverts are identical, standard five-foot diameter. Each Pod has an interior which resembles a full-sized SUV. NO driver is ever needed. There is no steering wheel or brake pedal! Each Pod has a unique BAR CODE where TRANS scanners every mile along every tube monitor the location and speed of each Pod (every 18 seconds along inter-city travel). Each trip begins with an alerting of the TRANS system of the location of the origin and the destination, where the TRANS system then schedules where "air switches" need to be actuated to most efficiently get each Pod to its destination. Each pod has many other features, such as a gyroscope that slightly rotates a (passenger) pod within the tube during curved sections of the tubes so that a full glass of wine on a table in the pod could never spill.

Pods could be privately owned, and customized, but we suspect that most would be system-owned, somewhat resembling taxicab usage.

The occupants of a pod could sleep or read or play Parcheesi. It is relatively quiet so music or meditation or karate practice are equally available. No real sensation of motion is obvious. As a (passenger) Pod approaches a (200-mph) gentle curve in the tube, it slightly rotates in the tube to ensure that no sideways acceleration would be felt. A Poker Game could entertain men in one Pod while a Knitting Bee could entertain their wives in a separate Pod and the children could be playing in a third Pod. Everyone would arrive ready to enjoy Disney World!

The TRANS system is very economical to build and fairly simple and quick as well. Pods could be privately owned but it is expected that most will be owned and rented from the TRANS system, and possibly many millions of Pods might be manufactured by General Motors or Ford or Chrysler.

A convenient location to install most of the long-distance sections of the Culverts could be in Interstate Highway Medians. Three tubes would be installed, one for each direction and the third (normally unused) tube for when any culvert sections need any repair or replacement.

NO ACCIDENTS ever seem possible, since everything moving in any tube is always moving at exactly the same speed and in the same direction. NO drunk drivers can occur! NO carjackings! A pretty environment. Essentially no pollution can occur. No traffic violations. Large interior flat screen TVs could show the local sites or the Taj Mahal or a view of the planet Saturn or the latest movies!

More complete information, including suggestion of a proposed ten-mile test track on an abandoned railway right-of-way (possibly in Kansas or Oklahoma) is at http://mb-soft.com/trans/index.html

Carl W. Johnson, Theoretical Physicist