04/08/03

L. A. SECTION ENTERPRISE CHAPTER

Doug Malewicki was the guest speaker at the March 18, 2003 meeting of the Los Angeles Section Enterprise Chapter. Doug is President/Chief Scientist of AeroVisions, Inc., a company he founded in 1974 and incorporated in 1980 for the purpose of developing, promoting and commercializing his numerous inventions. These range in size from his ROBOSAURUS 40ft tall, 29 ton fire breathing, junk car eating monster that entertains audiences at fairs and stadiums, to a several-ounce cylindrically shaped flying toy CANOSAURUS that doubles as a soda pop can cooler for picnics and tail-gate parties.

Doug has several favorite sayings he thinks inventors need to remember:

1. Ideas don't work - unless you do!
2. There is no such thing as a "good idea" unless five years later you are still making money and having fun with it!
3. Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans!

He stresses that no one can tell in advance whether an idea is really great. It takes lots of hard work, money, and perseverance to find out.

Doug has been hard at work in recent years, persevering in promoting his SkyTran™ personal mass transportation concept, the subject of his presentation.

How would you like to board a vehicle, punch in a destination, and proceed non-stop to that location at a speed of 100 miles per hour? That is the paradigm in which SkyTran operates. It is a three-dimensional "personal" commuter system utilizing small streamlined two-passenger vehicles suspended from aerial guideways utilizing passive magnetic levitation propulsion and computerized traffic control systems. The guideways would be supported by standard utility poles above the ground to prevent interference with existing surface transportation traffic. The guideways running east and west, say, would be at a different level from those running north and south, so there would be no stops for intersections as we know them. The vehicle would be an individual pod, unlike a passenger car in a train, so that there would be no stops at intermediate stations en route. There would be only one stop - the one at the selected destination.

The system would blend state-of-the-art systems like Lawrence Livermore national laboratories Inductrack passive magnetic levitation, automation, electronics , and robotics to propel, control traffic, and monitor system health and safety.

Malewicki's studies indicate that speeds of 50 - 100mph will be practical within cities and 100mph - 150 mph between cities. His concept envisages small stations within an eighth of a mile average distance from any commuter, and trip of 20-miles would typically take only 12 minutes. It will be environmentally friendly. A single guideway would move the same number of people in an hour as three freeway lanes of automobiles. The energy required to move a given number of people would be reduced to an amount comparable to automobiles that got 200 miles to the gallon! Malewicki also arrives at capital costs that are an order of magnitude lower than light rail for the same mileage.

Efforts to develop SkyTran are now focused on the fast growing area of metropolitan Phoenix. Some community leaders are providing encouragement, but political considerations make introduction of new systems inherently difficult. Surely Doug's perseverance will be tested.

For more about SkyTran, including pictures to help you visualize the system more completely, click on the Archives of Speaker Presentations etc. button on our web site www.aiaaeenterprise.org. and then click to see Malewicki's slides and his web site. On our web site you can also view previous presentations by:

By clicking on the word "links" in the lower left-hand corner of our web site you can also access a multitude of links to business organizations, venture capital firms, government agencies professional societies, publications, etc.

Consultants and businesses wishing to make potential customers aware of their services are invited to register by clicking on the Input Directory button. It's easy to do and it's free!

The next meeting of the L. A. Section Enterprise Chapter is scheduled for 6 PM May 6 at Microcosm, Inc. The speaker will be Bill Collins, Vice President of Tech Coast Angels (TCA).

His talk will include: