Douglas (or Doug) Malewicki is an American aerospace engineer and inventor. Many of his inventions concern flying vehicles, but the range is quite diverse. Some examples:
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Green vehicles
- “My most important invention”, SkyTran, a proposed “People Internet” system of light, streamlined vehicles routed automatically at 100 miles per hour on magnetic levitation tracks held 20-30 feet in the air by standard utility poles. This Personal Rapid Transit system is calculated to have over 200 miles-per-gallon equivalent fuel economy and could be powered by renewable energy sources such as solar panels above the tracks, making it sustainable transport.
- 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.
- Highly-aerodynamic Human-powered vehicles such as Recumbent bicycles.
Un-green vehicles
- Robosaurus, a 40-foot Tyrannosaurus rex-inspired “entertainment robot” that bites cars and airplanes in half at car shows.
- The X-1 Skycycle 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.)
- Improved version of the rocketbelt, the RB-2000.
- The “Droid of Death” wing-morphing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) developed and tested under contract from DARPA.
- Patented Kitecycle for stuntman/daredevil Bob Correll.
Other
- The card games Nuclear War and expansions (”Nuclear Proliferation”, “Nuclear Escalation”, and “Weapons of Mass Destruction”).
An aeronautical engineer by training, , 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.
References
- www.canosoarus.com — Douglas Malewicki’s invention Web site
- ^ [http://www.canosoarus.com Invention web site.
- ^ [http://www.carbonangel.org/advisory_duglas_malewicki.php Biography page at CarbonAngel.
- ^ Gross, AC, Kyle CR, and Malewicki DJ. The aerodynamics of human-powered land vehicles. Sci Am 249: 142-152, 1983
- ^ BS Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Illinois, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Sigma Gamma Tau UIUC 1961
- ^ MS Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Stanford University, 1963
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