The Wright Stuff? One Man's Quest for a Clean Technology.

The United States is full of technological nooks and crannies, bright new ideas and old ones that have never been fully utilized, oodles of potential innovation.  An idea is useless, however, unless it is widely employed, which takes both business capital as well as social and political changes.

One such nook is linear  motors, or LM, a technology that has been around for over 150 years, but is employed only in a few eccentric ways, such as the People Mover at Disney World and in prototype magnetic levitation (maglev) trains.

Michael Wright, an integration and test manager at NASA, thinks far more can be done with this technology to help clean up the environment and stimulate energy independence.  Specifically, he believes that major highways and commuter routes could be equipped with LM lanes for personal vehicles, greatly reducing energy use and allowing for stress-free driving.

Linear motors technology, explains Wright, “is essentially traditional motor windings laid out flat.  This imparts translational force rather than rotational, with half of the  motor on the car and the other half buried in the ground.”  As a NASA engineer, Wright  has led a nationwide team of engineers and scientists with the goal of designing a system to boost a space vehicle skyward and save on  rocket fuel.

While such a version of LM  technology has yet to be implemented, Wright sees perhaps greater benefits in making LM  part of the U.S. transportation network.  “The power would be fed through a grid,” he says.  “In theory just a metal plate on a vehicle would make any vehicle compatible with the grid-fed infrastructure.  A ground system would propel each vehicle and control its speed and braking.”  All cars on the system would thus move at the same speed and would not be controlled by their operators while on an LM lane.  Drivers would, however, be free to leave the LM lane whenever they desired.

Only major highways would be fitted with such lanes, which would greatly save on energy; for smaller roads cars would operate on their own.  While on the grid, however, cars would use only a fraction of the energy otherwise expended, and accidents would be virtually impossible.  And, Wright adds, LM would allow “renewable energy generation, away from coal and oil.”  Once the initial investment is made, the LM grid could be powered largely by local, clean, and inexpensive electricity.

Today’s cars could easily be fitted for such a system.  Wright sees even more potential for LM in conjunction with electric cars.  Currently a limited driving range hampers such cars, but an LM system would allow them to travel vast distances.  Electric cars are environmentally friendly and free from dependence on precarious Middle Eastern oil.

LM technology is also used in  maglev trains, which glide on a frictionless surface at speeds up to 400 miles an hour.  Wright believes that deploying this technology for high-speed intercity travel, in the form of a nationwide maglev system, is key to an effective intermodal transportation system.

Wright’s quest, however, is currently a lonely one.  Although he works for NASA, funding for R&D of this technology is extremely limited, and Wright does not represent a larger organization.  Further, LIM technology, unlike such alternatives as biofuels and hydrogen batteries, has received little national attention.

The best technology is not always what gets implemented, but that which has the right combination of business and social capital behind it.  The long delays between the invention and widespread use of such inventions as the FAX and the computer mouse show a failure of vision that is often repeated.  For a project to receive national attention, it needs powerful individuals and groups lobbying on its behalf.  Such an effort, says Wright, “requires time, money, and experience.”

LM technology has none of these behind it.  “For example,” says Wright,
”the U.S. Department of Transportation has thousands of employees working highways, but only one working on Mag Lev.”  Although the initial infrastructure investment to implement LM on a broad basis would be large, the payoff would be far larger.

And now is the time to do it.  “ As a consequence of the Minneapolis bridge disaster, billions of dollars  has been proposed to maintain existing infrastructure,” explains Wright.  While a focus on high-risk structures is important, now is the perfect opportunity to implement new, clean, green technology “as we rebuild and upgrade our existing transportation networks.”

America has long been a country of visionaries, inventors, and entrepreneurs, as well as technology geeks and geniuses, from Edison  and Alexander Graham Bell, to the Wright brothers  and Steve Jobs.  We also used to be a nation not just of vision, but of revolutionary accomplishment, with such achievements as the Apollo program, the National Park System, and even the interstate highway system.

We know that we face unprecedented problems, and are unsure of the way.  In the past this has not stopped us.  But we do not today seem as determined as we once were, as able to mine through ideas and implement solutions.  If we lose our nerve and our imagination, our ability to innovate on a vast scale, we have lost the future.

Ethan Goffman, Politics and Environment Correspondent:

Ethan’s column, Environmental Connections, published on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of every month to Gather Essentials: Politics, is a discussion of environmental matters from local to global, covering transportation, smart growth, environmental justice, green buildings, climate change, energy independence and other topics.

Ethan is a writer and editor based near Washington, DC
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