Douglas Malewicki

Douglas (or Doug) Malewicki is an American aerospace engineer and inventor. Many of his inventions concern flying vehicles, but the range is quite diverse.^[1] He is also the concept creator and inventor of Skytran PRT (Personal Rapid Transit). ^[2]

Green vehicles

Douglas spent the past 25 years advancing the Skytran concept: ultra-light computer-controlled cars hanging below aluminum Maglev (magnetic levitation) tracks that could be supported above roads just by utility poles or the sides of buildings. Skytran basically combines maglev (which allows high speeds) and a hanging design (more stable; smaller tracks) with the 1960s idea of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) -- cars individual commuters take directly to their destination (hence "Personal"), but computer-driven and available to others after they exit (hence "Transit"). Another key PRT idea Skytran follows is exiting the main track for boarding; so the cars behind don't need to wait as they do with mass transit vehicles. ^[3] His ideas have inspired other variations on PRT, and speculation about the social effects of high-speed computer-controlled transport. ^{[4] [5]}

Douglas developed the 157 and 156-miles-per-gallon "California Commuter" cars that hold the Guinness fuel economy records for street-legal vehicles driven at freeway speeds—an example of green vehicles.^[6]

He studied and developed various engineering solutions for Highly-aerodynamic Human-powered vehicles such as Recumbent bicycles.^[7]

Un-green vehicles

Douglas developed the following vehicles and rides:

• Robosaurus, a 40-foot Tyrannosaurus rex-inspired "entertainment robot" that bites cars and airplanes in half at car shows. This thrill ride folds into a truck and can be driven between locations. It is featured in the movie Waking up in Reno where it is intended to be used as a revenge tool, to consume an SUV about to be sold.^[8]

• The X-1 Skycycle, and Skycycle X-2 rocket-powered motorcycle that daredevil Evel Knievel shot over the Snake River Canyon to test the viability of his Skycycle jump. (Malewicki's colleague Robert Truax created the final design.)^[9]

• Engineering and design assistance of the rocketbelt, the RB-2000.^[10]

• The "Droid of Death" wing-morphing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) developed and tested under contract from DARPA.^[11]

• Patented Kitecycle for stuntman/daredevil Bob Correll who reached world record with it.^[12]

Other inventions and innovations

Douglas was also involved in the development and invention of the following:

Doug Malewicki designed the Nuclear War card game, and had been selling it independently starting in 1965.^[13] Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo, for whom the game was a casual influence on his own Nuclear Destruction PBM, found that people were confusing the two games, so after some hard work tracking Malewicki down, he added the game to his own catalogue and started publishing Nuclear War through Flying Buffalo in 1972.^[13] Expansions included "Nuclear Proliferation", "Nuclear Escalation", and "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

An aeronautical engineer by training,^[14][15] Malewicki spent much of his career working for American aeronautics and space companies: the Apollo program moon landing vehicles, the Stealth bomber, and Cessna aircraft including their first private jet airplane. He was a model rocket enthusiast, becoming famous early in his career for the Malewicki Equations that predicted the altitude and coast time of a model rocket flight.

According to Malewicki's daughter, he was the inspiration for the original one eyed monster, called Mike on Peewee's Playhouse TV show, and later to become the inspiration for Mike Wazowski drawn by Ricky Nierva in Monsters, Inc..^[16] A copy of the game plans in which he drew the first image of this alien is distributed free.

Criticism

The anti-PRT page "Skytran: the Smoking Gun of PRT Absurdity" claimed that Malewicki was presenting an "Internet vaporware" concept as a finished product. It cited an early quote on Malewicki's website it claimed showed he had abandoned the concept himself (apparently taken out of context; since he has supported it many times since). It also copied Malewicki's proposal for a track-laying robot as proof the whole idea was insane. (From a controls engineering standpoint, it can be argued that the 40-foot car-chewing mechanical T-rex robot "Robosaurus" Malewicki actually built in 1989, a staple of the auto and airplane show circuits for two decades afterward, exhibited much more sophisticated control than the proposed track laying robot would need.) The "SkytranAbsurd" page also claimed that Malewicki's advancing Skytran was a conflict of interest with his advising at Carbon Angel; since they supported Skytran. ^[17]

Malewicki has failed many times in his attempts to advance the Skytran concept since he first proposed it in 1990. The name and the entire team have been changed. The current company called Unimodal has made many proposals to transit agencies and cities but has collected very little money (although recent joint development efforts with US NASA and Israel Aerospace Industries appear to be continuing).

The Schweeb human-powered PRT concept and not Skytran was funded by Google. ^[18]

An attempt by business people to take the Skytran name from Malewicki failed, but Unimodal uses the skytran.net (probably because it is a transportation network) and skytran.us websites; it doesn't even own skytran.com.

See also

• Skytran and PRT
• Robosaurus
• Malewicki Equations
• Nuclear War (card game)
• Robert Truax and Skycycle X-2
• The RB-2000 rocket belt.
• Bob Correll stuntman

External links

• Aerodynamics of human powered land vehicles Scientific American issue 240 (1978).
• The Skytran website including bio
• Dougs blog and bio website - dedicated mainly to the Robosaurus
• Collapsible cars - Episode of Junkyard Wars TV series
• Personal criticism on Malewicki along with criticism against his Skytran idea.
• image of young Doug Malewicki on the Evel's skycycle website (House of Evel, page 4).

Notes