0/0/2012
A second application needed to support the growth of economy: transportation networks.
by C. Vitali
Man has always been compelled to correct the geographical non homogeneity of the availability of the commodities needed or simply desired by his community. The compensation took at first solution through trading on connecting networks by sea and land and later, by air or space, by adoption of transportation vehicles driven by animal energy(mules, horses, camels, elephants or human beings) or by natural energy supplied spontaneously by the natural environment at variable rate of delivery linked to the Meteorological cycles supplied by solar energy by means ofradiant energy (wind, rivers, solar panels). With the improved scientific know how later have been born technologies fit to produce traction engines ensuring better delivery of continuity and flexibility in the generation of traction energy tailored to both quantity, time and location of its demand at growing performance levels; granting thereby the extension of consumers’ accessibility thanks to the constantly lower costs.
Initially si the transportation of commodities needed to feed the internal combustion engines was the main goal (wood, coke, liquefied gas, gas, kerosene, nuclear combustion bars), later types of engine design was searched that could be fed to networks distributing energy from central plants to peripheral consumers (electric energy) bypassing the need to carry aside of the engines the commodity needed to feed them and
ensuring, thanks the diffusion of the electric engines, further performance improvements as compared to the conversion from thermal energy to mechanic energy.
All this in the light of the traditional scientific know how of ’800 and their related propulsive technologies. Later improvements lead to build the present electric energy production and transportation networks that have censure the diffused delivery of energy to the large cities and the transportation networks of goods and persons (trains and subways), while have excluded from the electric energy delivery and the adoption of electric-traction the most peripheral communities and the vehicles characterized by bigger personal freedom of movement (cars, boats and airplanes) that couldn’t be constrained to rigidly follow the physical patterns of the electric energy delivery. This in the light of the ’800 scientific and technologic know how.
The network of sea connections is requiring the minimal costs of outfitting the carrying and supporting infrastructural logistic services (beacons, seaports, shipyards).
The road network is the second transportation network in terms of costs for its outfitting and supporting infrastructural logistics (roads, overpasses, tunnels, service stations, road assistance). The air network is the most expensive for its outfitting and infrastructural logistics (airports, flight assistance, airplane logistics, air traffic control). The skills requested to build on board personnel and airplane land assistance has also been a limitation to ensure a diffused implementation of the different transportation networks mentioned. Sea and road transportation networks have allowed to extend gradually goods and people connections to the most peripheral communities. Air transportationhas instead been dramatically limited by the level of complexity of both the vehicles and the associated professional skills needed by pilots and maintenance engineers.
This within the most industrial and technological advanced countrie and even more within the less developed ones, that are generally also the most populated and less equipped of the required technical and organizational education.
Thanks the quanto-electro-dynamical and relativistic know how matured during the ‘900 we reached now the dawn of a very transportation revolution. To grant manhood the availability of easy infrastructures of logistical and technical support (the pre-requisite to diffuse new types of transportation everywhere with limited times and low investment costs as requested today by road, rail and sea transportation. The road network requires namely to create particolar infrastructures (tunnels, bridges, overpasses, service stations) to overcome the obstacles opposed by topography along the patterns of minimal distance between residential areas diffused on the territory with higly disperse density of population. The rail network too requires comparable infrastructures as a pre-requisite to implement fast and diffused connections (railway, train yards, stations, bridges, shunting nodes, logistical nodes). Those preliminary infrastructures require additionally very often huge implementation times and costs as compared to the growth expectation of the local economies or they impose to build architectural works of a great environmental impact resulting non acceptable to the local sensitiveness of the involved communities.
The present transportation revolution can be achieved combining a mature technology disused for pure hystorical-military reasons to an emergent technology supplied by the new scientific know how in electro-magnetism and the development of related new electro-technical technologies. The possibilità exists to implement immediately aninnovative network of air transportation requiring very fast and cheap preliminary logistical structures, avoiding the preliminary lay of collecting lines, allows to minimize times and connection distances, allows to reduce of several orders of magnitude the fuel costs required to move the vehicles as compared to the today’s air transportation.
Namely the Zeppelin airship doesn’t require Energy consumption for its floating, allows costless times of parking in taxying waiting docking, allows to employ pilots of tecnica skills much less sophisticated than the air pilots, allows to employ traditional high performance and low maintenance diesel-electric engines for traction of heavy transported loads minimizing thereby the unitary payload costs.
A further step could be imminent and possible consisting in replacing engines of internal combustion with new electric engines capable to collect free of charge electro-magnetic energy, flowing since ever in the space around us. This brings back the theme of transportation to the new step forward in quality related to the mentioned revolution in theme of diffused, local availability of new energy sources, a possible event both in theory and imminent as a technological solution.