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 20 years advancing the Skytran concept, an on-demand, personalized MagLev, suspended ultralight transit system, as well as advancing Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) in general, especially suspended PRT^[3]. His ideas have inspired many variations to the PRT concept^[4], including the Schweeb an amusement park ride, to be used as the prototype for a similar PRT concept adopted by Google^[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:

The card games Nuclear War and expansions ("Nuclear Proliferation", "Nuclear Escalation", and "Weapons of Mass Destruction").

An aeronautical engineer by training,^[13][14] 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.^[15]. A copy of the game plans in which he drew the first image of this alien is distributed free.

Criticism

Anti PRT websites often criticize Malewicki for showing a concept as a finished product. He has been criticized by them that he is at a conflict of interest between his advising at Carbon Angel and his work on Skytran as CEO of his company Aerovisions Inc.^[16]

Several attempts at advancing the Skytran concept have failed in the past, including a name and team change. An attempt by business people to take the Skytran name from Douglas failed, but the website was changed from .com to .net. A company run by volunteers advancing the concept has been established called Unimodal.

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

1. ^ www.canosoarus.com — Douglas Malewicki's invention Web site
2. ^ Biography page at CarbonAngel.
3. ^ About Doug Malewicki and the Skytran concept at BigThink.com including a video interview with him
4. ^ See Malewicki's bio on the original Skytran website Skytran.net. Similar information can be found in the RoadKill website criticizing Skytran here: Doug Malewicki's advancing Skytran is a conflict of interest with Carbon Angel
5. ^ Schweeb all the way home on CNET.
6. ^ The California Commuter, canosoarus.com, accessed March 21, 2011.
7. ^ Gross, AC, Kyle CR, and Malewicki DJ. The aerodynamics of human-powered land vehicles. Scientific American 249: 142-152, 1983. This article appears in several patents.
8. ^ Waking up in Reno Trailer [1:49] "So what do you say we sacrifice a new car?"
9. ^ Skycycle page on Caosaurus.com. See Skycycle X-2 for more details.
10. ^ About Malewicki and rocket belts on the AmericanRocketmen website. It includes images. This belt was later on the cause for a murder between the stuntmen using it, with the belt disappearing (see Sunday Herald Oct 13, 2002).
11. ^ Malewicki with Prof. Terry Weisshaar at the DARPA Morphing Aircraft Structures (MAS) conference in San Diego.
12. ^ World record for the kitecycle on the Winged website and the Malewicki patent from 1978 on Google patents.
13. ^ BS Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Illinois, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Sigma Gamma Tau UIUC 1961
14. ^ MS Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Stanford University, 1963
15. ^ Michelle Malewicki on Mike the monster in Doug's Canosaurus website.
16. ^ Skytran criticism on the 'Roadkill' website

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