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14 April 2017

 

Industrialization of space: near-term prospects

I am convinced that our civilization does not have and cannot have any other way to survive except for the transfer of industry into space — by separating in space the living biosphere created by God and the dead industrial technosphere created by Homo sapiens. This belief does not leave me for forty years and throughout all that time it remains the main motive of everything I do. I managed to achieve much since the first publication on this subject published in 1982 in the magazine "Inventor and rationalizer". I will have to do even more in the future. I know that I am going the right path, and I was never alone on it. However, if those, with whom I went and continue to go, will not be able to win over the decisive majority of the people on the planet, then this planet will have no future. Therefore, I urge all of you to treat everything that this article outlines with utmost care and seriousness. The stake is very high — the future of our entire human civilization.

Overpass with ground-based forevacuum tubes and geospace General Planetary Vehicle by engineer Anatoly Yunitskiy on it

Overpass with ground-based forevacuum tubes
and geospace General Planetary Vehicle by engineer Anatoly Yunitskiy on it
(illustration to publication in "Inventor and rationalizer", No. 4, 1982)

Current state of affairs

Description of the catastrophic state of the environment, economy, politics and morality would be redundant here. The irregularity of the world order is obvious to everybody without it. An even more characteristic fact is that we almost cannot see a way out of the current situation. We have no place to hide, nowhere to run away and virtually nothing to hope for. In this situation, only the outer space remains a place of expectancy and the horizon where there is still a place for optimism, but even this optimism smacks of despair. Space exploration seems a one-way trip, a requiem to the civilization praising its greatness and disclosing its helplessness. The main chanter of this hopeless optimism Elon Musk has exhaustively expressed his basic mood: "I'd like to die on the Mars. Provided I do not crash down on the surface of the planet".

Representatives of the scientific community and companies working in the space industry offer regularly something for the needs of the public. The greatest interest is aroused by such areas of their work as a transfer of settlements to the Earth's orbit, construction of bases on the lunar surface, as well as the expansive exploration and terraforming of the Mars. The media take up these ideas enthusiastically and industry representatives do not get tired of providing them with some fresher things. One of them, a member of the British interplanetary society Jerry Stone stated in an interview to the "Independent" newspaper that in 20 years residential colonies would appear in the Earth's orbit, where thousands of people would be able to live and work employed for the maintenance of solar batteries. According to Mr. Stone, technologies will advance during that period so far ahead that the humankind will not even need to deliver materials from the Earth. A substantial part of them will be mined on the Moon and nearby asteroids.

Industrialization of space: near-term prospects

On March 14, 2017, RosCosmos began the selection of candidates to the cosmonaut team who should be the members of the expedition to the Moon in a new spaceship "Federation", which is currently under a development stage. A manned mission to the Earth's satellite is tentatively scheduled for 2030.

The plans of the American businessman Elon Musk, founder of Space X — the Company manufacturing space equipment, who previously announced a program of colonizing the Mars, are no less ambitious. Under this program, Mr. Musk hopes to create an autonomous settlement on the red planet that would consist of millions of residents and would be fully self-sufficient.

Such ideas of space exploration do not contain anything fundamentally new and are in their essence the reincarnation of the projects known for quite some time, ever since Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. These ideas were not implemented due to various reasons, the main of which are the lack of necessary technology, primarily geospace transport appropriate for the goals and objectives posed, and the overall high cost of the programs. We can recall as examples the orbital cities by O'Neill, the projects Longshot, Horizon, Lunex, Mars One and others. Today the idea of space exploration and research is taking on the second "breath" and is becoming quite a popular trend not only among the scientific community, but also among futurologists and enthusiasts.

However, we should not forget either that since the end of the massive space race between the USSR and the USA in 1975 no significant developments in the field of space exploration occurred. The world space astronautics was basically adrift and its activity was limited to satellite launching and maintenance of existing ISS. Let us consider what prevents man today to freely surf the cosmic expanse.

Ineffectiveness of rocket use

First, the lack of required engines that can provide the desired speed to the spacecraft. The fastest unmanned spacecraft among all the launched ones to date is the space probe Helios-2, which reached the speed of 252,792 km/h. The probe was launched on January 15, 1976 to study the solar processes. It has completed its mission in the early 1980-ies, but it remains on an elliptical orbit around the Sun. Rushing at such a high speed, it would take us at least 19,000 years to reach the closest neighbor star of the Earth. Therefore, expeditions at such speeds are absolutely futile even to the edges of the Solar system. The only thing that can expect the crew is the death in the old age.

Second, space navigation systems are at an extremely low level of development. The basic network used for communication aboard the absolute majority of the spacecraft is the Deep Space Network. It is able to operate efficiently only at relatively small distances from the Earth and cannot be used for long-range flights. Though radio waves move at the speed of light, transmission of signals to the deep space still takes hours. Of course, navigating by the stars, it is possible to define and adjust the route of a flight, but they are too far to tell at what particular point you are staying.

Third, most importantly, the carrier rockets vital to fly up from the Earth have extremely low efficiency and they are environmentally extremely dangerous. For example, if we take into account all the flight and pre-flight costs and energy losses (including those to receive and cool the fuel, to create disposable structures, equipment and materials, etc.), the efficiency factor of the rocket is less than one percent, which is much worse than in the archaic locomotive. In addition, it has long been estimated that a total of 80 launches of heavy rockets of "Space Shuttle" type a year can destroy the ozone layer of the planet completely. It sounds like a paradox, but the maximum possible performance of the world rocket-space complex is currently less than a thousand tons of cargo per year, which is at the level of performance of one earthly cart with a pair of sturdy horses. It is with incredibly high cost of transportation — the delivery of each ton of cargo into the orbit costs about USD 10 million.

Industrialization of space: near-term prospects

The only way that space travel could be realized in the foreseeable future is the creation of a colony-spaceship, which can remain on the move for dozens, hundreds and even thousands of years. Such a spaceship must be built in space using space materials. During the journey, the first inhabitants of the expedition will grow old and die, and their descendants will continue the journey. However, even with this logic of arranging space flights, there are some hard-to-solve technological problems: primarily, creation of artificial gravity onboard a spaceship, lack of closed-cycle life support systems and protection from cosmic radiation and meteorites. Even if these problems are solved in the near future, the space colonizers will face one more, equally important problem: it is impossible to launch a spaceship of this scale from the Earth's surface, therefore, the only option left is its assembly at the near-Earth orbit. However, the humanity still has no other way to deliver a payload into space, except for a rocket. Even the Space X project, making visible success towards cheaper space transportation, is based on modernized Intercontinental ballistic missiles that delivered astronauts into space as far back as in the 1960-ies.

In other words, the dreams of space travels will remain just dreams as long as the humankind does not solve the fundamental problem of aeronautics, specifically — discovering a new way to explore the near-Earth space. Otherwise, the use of jet engines in the space industry can lead to environmental disaster and irreversible changes in the biosphere, particularly, in the ozone layer of the planet. In such a situation there will be simply no one left to fly to distant planets.

Additionally, plans for space expansion bring about a moral challenge, which an American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has described in the following way: "People think that if we have messed up the Earth, we can always go to the Mars or to the stars. It is detrimental".

General Planetary Vehicle

Oddly enough, the solution to major problems in modern cosmonautics existed for a long time now: in the 70-ies, I proposed a project of the non-rocket geospace transport system — the General Planetary Vehicle (GPV) capable to bring out a huge amount of payload, including passengers, into the near-Earth orbit promptly and with the highest safety, efficiency and environmental friendliness.
 

Industrial cosmic ring of the planet (the thin thread is the GPV during ascent/descent)
 

 

 

Industrial cosmic ring of the planet
(the thin thread is the GPV during ascent/descent)

The first publication about this project with the heading "Interchange, outer space, circular" appeared in the magazine "Inventor and rationalizer" in 1982. The idea aroused a great interest at the international level. I became a member of the USSR Federation of cosmonautics in 1986. Then in 1987 I made a report "The planet's Ring buoy" at the International Soviet-American seminar, held in the Soviet Peace Committee in Moscow. A year later I organized the First International scientific and technical conference "Non-rocket industrialization of space: problems, ideas, projects" that has brought together about 500 participants from all over the world in my homeland, the city of Gomel. The main event at the conference was my report "Principles to create an optimal transport system for industrial exploration of near-Earth space". The report substantiated the conditions that define the industrialization of space as an inevitable stage of our civilization's development. Based on physical conservation laws (of energy, momentum, moment of momentum, etc.), the criteria were given and a systematic search for the optimal geospace transport that meets these criteria was conducted.

According to the results of the conference and on commission of the USSR Federation of cosmonautics and State Cinema Committee, the film studio "Belarusfilm" has produced a 30-minute documentary "To the sky by wheel" about me and the GPV. In 1989 the film was shown in cinemas of the USSR, as well as abroad — in English.

Then the results of 18 years of research were summarized and, after the collapse of the USSR, when the interest to space declined worldwide, I published a scientific monograph "String transport systems: on Earth and in space" in 1995.

Anatoly Yunitskiy's monograph — String transport systems: on Earth and in space

The basis of the program of wide-scale industrial near-Earth space exploration proposed by me is the most spectacular engineering structure on the planet for the entire history of civilization — a toroidal design with the length of 40 thousand kilometers and the diameter of more than 12 thousand kilometers with the cross-section size of only 2—3 meters — the General Planetary Vehicle.

GPV at the time of rise to near-space

GPV at the time of rise to near-space

The General Planetary Vehicle (GPV) or SpaceWay (the project is being developed currently under this name) is a ring arranged at the equator of the Earth (or parallel to the equator) consisting of separate segments, connected with two longitudinal channels isolated from the outside, in which vacuum is maintained. Inside the channels there are two linear (belt-type) rotor-flywheels, covering the planet and held by the system of electric magnets, assembled on the principle of magnetic levitation, which are the rotors of the gigantic electric motor, capable to operate in generator mode.

The SpaceWay ring is located on a specially equipped overpass encircling the planet and passing by land and water (on special underwater pontoons). By using an external energy source, one of the linear rotors located inside the ring accelerates along the channel and, respectively, spins around the planet up to the speed exceeding the first cosmic velocity at the sea level. Due to the centrifugal force, every meter of the rotor (when reaching the first cosmic velocity) balances its weight at first, and then tends to rise upwards, providing lift force.

In the initial condition, the ring is fixed on the overpass along its entire length. After releasing the clamps, every running meter of the GPV begins to rise up relatively to the center of the planet, that is to increase its radius and, respectively, its length. The design of linear parts of the ring (casing of vacuum channels, linear motors, belt rotors) allows them to increase their length by 1.57% at every 100 km of elevation above the Earth's surface. After the exit from the dense layers of the atmosphere, the rotor is transformed to the generator mode and the generated electric power is used to accelerate the second rotor in the opposite direction. As a result, the SpaceWay body with the payload placed in it (or on it) starts not only to rise (extend) upwards into space, escaping the Earth's gravitational pit, but to rotate around the planet until it reaches the first cosmic velocity at the specified height. The height, which this gigantic geospace vehicle will reach and at which its ring stabilizes, is determined by the excess of initial kinetic energy of the rotor and the possibilities of lengthening (extension) of the ring.

Unloading of SpaceWay is done into a fixed orbital infrastructure located in the plane of the equator at an altitude of several hundred kilometers. All heavy industries of the Earth will be located in this orbit — plants, factories, workshops, power plants, chemical plants, metallurgy, etc., as well as the orbital settlements of humans servicing these industries — scientists, engineers, technologists, mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers, etc. Landing of SpaceWay is performed in the same logic as the takeoff, but in reverse order.

GPV docking with the element of stationary orbital industrial and residential infrastructure

GPV docking with the element of stationary orbital
industrial and residential infrastructure

For one flight (!), the GPV is able to deliver about 10 million tons of various cargo(1) and 10 million passengers(2) into orbit. The system will be able to go out into space up to 100 times during a year.

SpaceWay will reduce the cost of geospace transportation by more than a thousand times — to several thousand dollars per ton of cargo.

This ecologically clean self-supporting geospatial vehicle running solely on electric power will allow to actually implement the industrialization of near-space and provide the transfer of all industries harmful to the terrestrial biosphere beyond the planet creating them again in the near-Earth orbit. This will immediately open access to fundamentally new technologies through the use of unique space possibilities unavailable on Earth: weightlessness, high vacuum, ultra-low and ultra-high temperatures, inexhaustible sources of energy and resources including mineral and spatial ones. Great opportunities also open in the field of information and energy communications.

The first object to be created in the orbit will be a high-capacity solar power industry — efficient, safe, eco-friendly and with inexhaustible energy reserves without the need to produce them. After all, the natural thermonuclear reactor called the Sun has been already "working" without any accidents for billions of years and it will go on working for the same period. It will be possible to obtain more than a million kilowatts of electric and thermal energy from every square kilometer of the surface lighted in space. A light-reflective film could be used for such surface.

A deeply echeloned system of anti-meteorite protection of the Earth will be created simultaneously with space industrialization. It will be able to intercept and divert large asteroids with a diameter of even dozens of kilometers from a collision with the planet. If this is not done, our civilization may suffer the fate of dinosaurs.

The removal of the industry alien to the planet beyond its limits will dramatically improve our common environment, our common home — the Earth's biosphere, especially in the industrial regions, without any limitation of output growth.

Actually all engineering solutions applied in the project are widely known, tested in practice and implemented at present in the industry. For the past 40 years, the project has been repeatedly examined and proven by design methods. It is fully justified technically and economically and can be implemented with possibilities and resources available today for the economy of even one country, such as the USA, China, Russia or India.

SpañeWay overpass combined with SkyWay overpass

SpañeWay overpass combined with SkyWay overpass

Today the humanity has everything needed to implement this project:

  1. Finance: about 1.5 trillion dollars are needed, that is 2—3 annual military budgets of the United States.
  2. Metal: we need about 100 million tons, the same amount of steel as it is melted in the world for a couple of weeks or as much as it is spent for several months to produce cars.
  3. Concrete: about 10 million cubic meters is sufficient, that is about the same volume as it was used for the construction of a single dam at Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP in Russia.
  4. Electrical power: power consumption of the GPV (for the above volume of geospace transportation) will be about 100 million kilowatts, which is comparable with the power of a single heavy carrier rocket of the "Space Shuttle" type, or is less than 5% of the total capacity of power plants in the world(3).

The project implementation period will be about 15 years taking into account socio-political, scientific-research, experimental-design, project-survey and construction-installation works.

Such global geospace program will allow to unite all the developed countries of the world with common goals and objectives, as well as to involve them in financing of this ambitious project meant to save humanity.

The fourth and fifth transport and infrastructure revolution

Relocation of production facilities into space will inevitably entail fundamental changes in the way of economy management on the planet. In particular, it involves the transformation of the surface transport infrastructure that already has a solution in the framework of the engineering school, which I lead. During the time since the announcement of the GPV idea, we have done much work on the study of the operation of transport systems on Earth. The result was the creation of the concept for a new type of such systems, called String transport. Currently, this type of transport that meets the requirements of the world order of the near future is already being introduced on the market under the brandname SkyWay.
 

SkyWay overpass — cargo, high-speed and urban versions of rolling stock
 

 

 

SkyWay overpass — cargo, high-speed
and urban versions of rolling stock

In the most general terms, the SkyWay transport system looks like a network of visually lightweight routes in the elevated design comparatively affordable due to their low material intensity. The traffic of wheeled vehicles is carried out on string rails of special design. They are fixed at anchor supports and carried by lightweight intermediate supports at the height from several to hundreds of meters above the ground. Electric vehicles equipped with steel wheels perform transportation of passengers and cargo. They work in a fully-automated mode and their speed can reach 500 km/h under regular conditions and up to 1,250 km/h on sections of the Skyway rail track laid in special tunnels with the rarefied atmosphere — forevacuum.

Tests of rolling stock at SkyWay test site (town of Maryina Gorka, Belarus, winter 2016)

Tests of rolling stock at SkyWay test site
(town of Maryina Gorka, Belarus, winter 2016)

The location of transport infrastructure elements above the ground surface (the "second level") ensures an unprecedented safety both for passengers and for other road users and significantly reduces capital construction costs in comparison with the existing and promising modes of transport.
 

Transfer station between urban and high-speed SkyWay lines
 

 

 

Transfer station between urban and high-speed SkyWay lines

Special attention should be paid to the environmental component of the SkyWay technology. Implementation of the string transport provides the possibility of environmentally sound use of existing territories as an elevated string track does not damage the terrain, does not affect the biogeocenose. It does not destruct the fertile soil, the vegetation, does not prevent the flow of underground and surface water, movement of people, domestic and wild animals, operation of agricultural and other machinery. In addition, it considerably reduces the amount of harmful emissions into the atmosphere due to the use of a traction electric drive.

Its another significant advantage is that SkyWay systems provide the possibility of combining the track structure and supports with overhead and cable power lines and communication lines — wire, fiber-optic, radio relay, cellular ones. As a result, the existing network for transmission of information and energy can be combined with the networks of transport communications with maximum efficiency. Supports of SkyWay transport systems will also serve as the basis for wind and solar generators, whereby the system will be able to generate in the future more energy than it will consume. If we are talking about the use of hydrocarbon fuel for energy supply, in this case the energy system of string routes can join thermal power plants with greenhouses, which will be supplied with carbon dioxide and heat necessary for plant life. Due to this, the system opens up the prospects for development of agriculture in the regions, unfit for it today and much more.
 

General view of integrated SkyWay complex (version) — urban suspended (on the
 

 

 

General view of integrated SkyWay complex (version):
urban suspended (on the "second level") and high-speed mounted (on the "third level") lines

Dozens of millions of kilometers of SkyWay routes in the global transportation and communication network constructed on the planet in the XXI century with the participation of the entire international community will be structured in a single energy, information and transport-infrastructure network Transnet. It will transform the global economy and consolidate the leadership of the country-developer of the technology for decades to come.

Thus, the fourth transport and infrastructure revolution will take place. The previous three were:

  1. A network of roads designed for pedestrians and horse-drawn transport created during many centuries.
  2. The railway network created within two centuries.
  3. The global network of motor-roads that completely superseded horse-drawn vehicles and was created in the XX century.

The new transportation and infrastructure network, to the creation of which my engineering school and the company headed by me are striving, is meant to become the true foundation of the world economy, the analogue of man's healthy blood-vascular system, without which neither the whole body nor separate organs or cells may be healthy.

The type of Earth discharged of heavy industry and traditional transport

Once the efficient, safe and environmentally friendly SkyWay routes are built on the entire planet and the SpaceWay GPV integrated with these routes begins to provide transportation of cargo and people to the near-space, a strong aerospace industry will develop in near-Earth orbit. It will be primarily solar power industry based on simple and low-cost principles. It will happen within the first 10—15 years after the launch of GPV. In the wake of growing geospatial industry, its terrestrial component, primarily environmentally hazardous one, will be decreasing. The new vacant lands, including those occupied today by motor-roads and railways(4), will be restored with ancient landscapes of fertile soil, not contaminated by industrial waste, pesticides, herbicides, mineral fertilizers and other industrial dirt.

The restoration of ancient landscapes and soils will occur around terrestrial power plants of the new generation. The basis of the technologies for natural ecosystems recovery will be the solar energy stored by plants millions of years ago and turned into slate, coal and peat. For example, everything that comes out of coal was once a plant, an organic chemical and elemental composition of which was formed from that ancient soil, from where, in fact, we all came from. This energy and vegetative mass will be returned in full volume (not partially, as it is happening now) to the place, from which they came out, back "home" — into the soil.

SkyWay port on sea shelf

SkyWay port on sea shelf

The new power plants should be created based on existing coal-fired power plants with a ready infrastructure for the delivery and grinding of coal. Solid fuels — brown coal, slate stones, regular coal, — have a dark color, because once they were plants and after millions of years of transformations in the bowels of the earth consist essentially of humus only. It is the humus that attributes that black color and it gives fertility to the soil(5). Humus can be extracted from coal with the help of soil microorganisms and with the addition of another balanced organic material, ash and all other waste including the one that flies out of the chimney(6) of a thermal power plant. Thus, "environmentally hazardous waste" from power industry will be transformed into natural (not artificial) humus.

A part of the produced humus should be used to enrich the soil(7), and the other part can be sold to almost every country in the world in billions of tons per year for a thousand dollars per ton. It will be more expensive than oil, more demanded than oil, safer than oil, and it will not destroy the Nature, it will restore its ancient natural landscape. In addition, this can bring even more billions of dollars than oil. That is to say — a socially oriented business. Let us make money on the know-how to preserve the nature, improve the planet, fauna and flora, and, at the same time, us, the beloved. And with a "side product" — that we shall get at no cost — we will provide a decent future for our children and grandchildren.
 

The crossing of a Strait on high-rise SkyWay supports with 1-km spans
 

 

 

The crossing of a Strait on high-rise SkyWay supports with 1-km spans

By mixing the obtained humus with local soil (including desert sand), we shall get the black soil, which can be used for planting gardens and organizing a fundamentally different agriculture based on natural technologies, but not on currently trendy ones that only resemble natural ones (in fact, they would never replace the original). We will direct the extra heat produced by the power plants to special greenhouses, to which we will also supply the extra electric energy (in the hours of lower consumption, for example, at night) for lighting the greenhouses. In a very hot country, the extra heat energy will be converted into cold, not to warm, but, on the contrary, to cool the greenhouses, or rather not greenhouses, but conservatories. The productivity of these agricultural clusters based on the restored prehistoric soil will be much higher than that of traditional ones. Moreover, they can be created in any climatic zone of the planet.

Such coal-fired power plants will be the most environmentally friendly, since their "waste" of electricity production will be a fertile natural (not artificial) soil, planted gardens, real forests and fertile meadows, as well as agricultural products and healthy food.

These eco-friendly solar power plants of the new generation (using solar energy) will provide the same environmentally friendly electric power to the world's transportation and infrastructure network and the terrestrial part of the functioning geospace GPV complex — the largest consumer of electrical energy(8) on the planet. The needs of the space (orbital) component of the geospace industrial SpaceWay complex will be met with the solar orbital power industry — it will be possible to obtain, very simply and at low cost, more than 10 million kilowatts of electric and thermal power from 10 square kilometers of the surface lighted there. As an example, it significantly exceeds the efficiency of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant infamous to all of us.

The fully-featured natural soil and proper agriculture will produce healthy and clean food products, i.e. food products that have curing properties and contain a large number of biologically active substances, vitamins and minerals. This will eliminate many diseases, feed and heal people; it will increase their life duration.

More and more people will live in the orbit during the creation of the space industry. Industrial and residential orbital complexes will be developed for them — cosmic SpaceHouse homes — with ideal earth-like conditions including Earth's gravity and Earth's fertile soil. These will be Earth-type homes (not cabins), fields, forests and streams with a variety of flora and fauna. There will be even clouds, from which it will rain, if desired. Living here will be not less comfortable than on Earth. Orbital high-tech(9) production facilities will be located near the houses, just behind a special wall that will protect not only from meteorites and vacuum, but also from the harmful cosmic radiation.

In a spaceship like this SpaceHouse, with a population of an Earth's city(10), one can not only live in the Earth orbit, but also, if necessary, go to distant space trips, even for centuries, even for millennia including travelling to neighboring star systems. Realization of this program with the help of GPV, if we translate its results per soul of the space's population, will be by thousands times more efficient, simpler and cheaper than, for example, colonization of the Moon or Mars. In order to build it all in space, it would be necessary to deliver from the Earth to orbit, within a short period of time, millions and millions of tons of various materials, structures and equipment including fertile living soil (not the dead soil-like substrates and chemical fertilizers) and high-quality brackish drinking water (not the chemical substance H2O) from their homeland — the planet Earth.

From this moment, the Earth's civilization will become a space civilization. The bulk of humanity will remain living on Earth. At the same time there will be substantially more place on our blue planet than for 20 billion people, and a healthy, even medicinal food, water and clean air will be sufficient for everyone. People will settle in a new logic. Pedestrian linear cities will replace contemporary concrete jungles with the air poisoned by exhaust gases, endless traffic jams, overcrowding and over-the-top levels of noise pollution. They will be built along SkyWay lines, united in Transnet network and integrated harmoniously with the surrounding nature. By reducing the cost of communications, which the SkyWay transport will ensure, housing in them will be much more affordable than it is today. People will live in a comfortable, safe and eco-clean environment.
 

SkyWay Linear city on the coast and shelf of the sea
 

 

 

SkyWay Linear city on the coast and shelf of the sea

This will be the fifth transport-infrastructure and scientific-technical revolution of our earthly technocratic civilization called "SpaceWay". The geospace SpaceWay complex will be able not only to move out the heavy industry off-planet, but also to create a certain technical base to make exploration of outer space for mankind a lot easier. In addition, all the necessary resources for GPV construction, regardless of its scale, are already available. There is only a lack of awareness of the obvious fact that without creating a fundamentally new system of cargo delivery into the space, cosmic expansion can become only an unrealizable dream, a Eutopia for man.

If we do not do all the above proposed in the near future, then there is no doubt that the planet will be hit very soon by the pandemic, which will kill not less than 90% of the world population. There will be no one and no reason to fly into space. The pandemic that will spare no one (neither beggars nor millionaires, nor workers, nor Sirs, nor ordinary clerks, nor presidents, no matter whether it is a President of a bank or a country). The soil being killed and violated by us for centuries will generate. After all, the fertile soil and microorganisms(11) living in it are the basis of the terrestrial biosphere's health, its immune system including all of us, people of Earth. In addition, our civilization, in pursuit of its narrow commercial(12) interests, is ploughing the soil, killing microorganisms, pouring out on it chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that kill our immune system, and actually cuts off the branch, on which it is sitting.

Time will tell, which path the humanity will choose in its strife to the outer space: a comfortable journey through the space expanses in a SpaceWay space house created by Homo sapiens, or an escape from the polluted and destroyed planet to nowhere, with a ticket for a million dollars one way only.

Engineer Anatoly Yunitskiy — Author and General Designer of SpaceWay and SkyWay projects

Engineer Anatoly Yunitskiy
Author and General Designer of SpaceWay and SkyWay projects

____________________________

(1) Contemporary cosmonautics will require not less than 20 thousand years for the same volume of traffic

(2) Delivery of the same amount of people into the orbit with the help of modern carrier rockets will require more than 100 thousand years

(3) GPV provides a stable power load constant during peak hours and low-load hours, which is the best option for power generation and will increase the efficiency of the global power system as a whole. In order to further raise the efficiency, it is possible to somewhat reduce consumption for parts of GPV connected to the existing generating sources during peak hours and bring it to the maximum in low-load hours. This will increase the rise time to the orbit for GPV, but will raise the efficiency of the process

(4) It is equal to about five territories of Great Britain by the total area. Soils are polluted and degraded on the territory 10 times greater. These soils should be restored and returned to land users in the XXI century

(5) The most fertile of the world's soils — black soils — contain about 10% of humus

(6) Flue gases contain oxides of carbon, sulfur, nitrogen and other compounds — almost half of the chemical elements in Mendeleev's periodic table. For example, sulfur in flue gases causes acid rains killing all living things. At the same time, we need sulfur, but in food products since the adult human body contains about 140 grams of sulfur. We need not only the macroelements "flying out of the tailpipe" — calcium, potassium, magnesium, sodium, sulfur, phosphorus, but also microelements — iron, zinc, iodine, selenium, copper, molybdenum, chromium, manganese, silicon, cobalt, fluorine, vanadium, silver, boron, and others. They are involved in all vital processes and are the catalysts of biochemical reactions

(7) For example, 5% of the United States' territory are deserts. At the same time, the United States have the largest deposits of coal, about 1/4 of the world reserves. The Appalachian coal basin alone with reserves of more than 1.6 trillion tons will be sufficient to green all the deserts of this country. If this problem is not acute for the United States, creation of fertile land becomes a priority for such countries as Saudi Arabia, UAE or Egypt, where the desert areas occupy above 90% of the country's territory

(8) It is a pity that we do not have Nikola Tesla with us. He would have helped us all

(9) This refers to technologies based, primarily, on the things unavailable on Earth: microgravity, vacuum, cosmic raw materials, energy and space lasting indefinitely

(10) The population is not robots or biorobots, but such as we, earthly people

(11) One liter of a healthy fertile soil is the home for about a trillion microorganisms of several thousands of species. It is them and also various fungi and earthworms, who produce the set of humic acids in the fertile soil, without which life on planet Earth will simply end

(12) Profit, profit, profit — this is the main goal in the work of any currently existing organization of a state and the majority of people

© 1977—2017 Anatoly Yunitskiy. All Rights Reserved.