Futuristic e-hpv scenarios?

Greetings.

Although my background interests have been focused on human powered vehicles for several decades, which could be deemed off topic at this site, I'm of the opinion that what we've learned from hpv contests ultimately trickle upward and embrace electric vehicles. For instance, the 83+ mph hpv runs at Battle Mountain, using elite athletes riding impractical bikes could be seen in a more practical light...such as the possibility of a 2 hp motor moving people at 100 mph.

I have many thoughts on the subject, and hopefully, this is an appropriate site to engage in speculative conversation.
In the past, I've been frustrated by the parameters of various hpv prizes. A fair example would be the inclusion of specialized roadways...which, afaik, hasn't happened yet.
Imagine how fast Sam might have gone had his 'bike' not been limited by a road designed for trucks?

What if he wasn't concerned about balancing or steering or body position?
What if he didn't even need to see where he was going?
How might being suspended from a monorail system alter the structural demands of the vehicle?
What if the friction was reduced considerably?

I've designed a vehicle (and 'rail' system) that puts the power of 2 people into a single wheel. This was 35 years ago, and perhaps it's time to bring it up again?
I don't see the reasoning behind limiting such hpvs to roads that were designed for 2 ton dinosaurs. As long as no stored energy is employed, we should be allowed to expand the limits of the contests and possibly encourage new sponsors for future prizes.

I'll return assuming I'm in the right place, with some details that might encourage some dialog.

Thanks.

(frankly)

Being as this thread has garnered no action, I figured I should simply let it go and move on.

Or, I could risk tossing some thoughts and stories here, in a semi-random fashion, with the faith that some of it could be amusing or even relevant.
Here's a bit of who I am or was as it relates to things with wheels that you ride on your own power. That realm can always be electrified to qualify at this site, though my experiments have been human powered only.

Old fart now; 67 and less frisky. Was a jock and a geek in high school and college.
Made a 2 wh dr tandem bike in high school, as well as a single bike modified for two strokers. One guy sat on a seat at the handle bars, facing backward; the other in the normal position. Pedal axles were extended to allow two feet each. The backwards seat was in a semi-recumbent posture and allowed a powerful stroke. It was an amazing hill climber. Probably not real safe, but we rode it everywhere, helmut free, of course.

In college, I took up the unicycle and became proficient. The babes were really drawn to it, as you might imagine. I was a pioneer in off-road unicycling. Today's riders are doing what I would have said was impossible. I explored getting 2 gears, and failed...though now it can be had. Schlumph drive type thing.

Overlapping that, I was messing with the horrible skate-boards of that time and gaining knowledge and road rash. Mostly the rash.
I also raced bikes at the time and even won one at my small college. I had a 21 lb Gitane Tour da France with sew-ups and suicide shifters. Awesome bike. Had someone told me that I could buy a 10 lb. bike today, I simply would have rejected the possibility. The Gitane was already 10 lbs lighter than the comparably priced Schwinn.

(In fact, a 6 lb bike exists; with gears and brakes, and has been ridden 1000's of miles. Crazy.)

Part 2 coming, wherein I'll try to get to the point.

In that same time (late 60's) I teamed up with a friend that was good at welding and had a wild, athletic streak. We started trying to make the Mountain Bike that didn't exist.
I recall breaking at least 3 front forks in the painful learning process. being broke, we always began with junk bikes. We failed at launching a product, but saved some other guys a little pain.
Train tracks went through the town and we learned to ride funky 3 speeds along side the train and pull ourselves and the bikes onto the moving train. Great fun; possibly dangerous. Our mutual fascination with the tracks and where they went led to another wonderful vehicle. Using identical 3 speed bikes, we built a simple cross-bracing array and some out-riggers that sprung from the axles. We could ride seperate to the tracks and clamp the struts on. The outriggers merely needed to be lowered onto the track.
That simple rig out-performed all manner of variations I've seen since. It felt so fast and easy. The rail bike was a ticket to another world. Extra great fun. Until we had a very painful derailment. The front outrigger failed and immediately caught the first railroad tie,sending the whole rig up and over a down. My partner quit after that, even though we knew exactly how to fix it. Also, the track was still used by trains, and we had no schedules...so that could get exciting.

In the early 70's, my friend decided to help me again and we built a side-by-side recumbent 3-wheeler. It was made for street theatre, mostly. Front end was motorcycle parts; rear was a small pick-up truck axle that was turned to allow a pulley wheel to be attached to the shaft. The belt went through guides and eventually a long crank axle with a pair of crank shafts. Plywood body; Naugahyde covered bench; absurdly low gears...it weighed 300 lbs, yet we could pop a wheelie at the traffic light.
When that fun wore off, we dismantled the pedaling mechanisms and added a truck starter motor and a heavy battery. It was too simple, though the starter motor had to be used in pulses to not overheat. Surprisingly fast, and the battery took us further than we'd expected. We gave the rig to some local kids and started thinking about a more practical version.

During this time, I didn't drive a car. To fulfil my needs, we built a 2 wheeled buggy that I could pull when I needed to shop and such. This was the precursor to the "Bugger" and similar carts that followed. The universal joint we came up with from trash amounted to a plastic bushing that slid over the seat post; held by a c-clamp welded to a rod that connected to the wagon. The rod was cut in two, with a matching nut an bolt welded to the rod ends. We threaded the bolt a few turns and attached the wagon. Hence, all the motion needed. I used the cart for years. it was designed to pull a passenger in comfort. Could have been lighter, but i didn't mind.

After college, i did a bunch of bike touring and camping. That led to new experiments with carrying loads and minimizing gear.
I got serious about recumbent designs and dabbled therein, though always short on money and attention span, never launched a product.
Other viable experiments included a geared wheel chair and an arms-only recumbent trike. Also, a unicycle coupling device for the ultimate tandem simplicity; fun in a city. I've modified the "Ultimate Wheel", which is a perverse unicycle made of a plywood disk with pedals and axles set in the wood. No seat; very difficult...even though fools race them. i made a seat with castors that sat on the plywood disk, allowing a conventional unicycle operation with a much bigger wheel and higher speed.

All this tinkering and finagling begins to morph into new thinking, as I'm sure many of you similar sorts can attest to.
In short, I'm a brother of the bush, so to speak.

If anyone is still awake, I'll discuss some controversial ideas, such as challenging the domination of rotary motion for taping human power, as well as by-passing some mechanical aspects for electrical generation.

Thank for the patience and indulgence. I'm almost done.

Hopefully, some of you guys have followed the various hpv engineering contests over the years. Some of the famous ones were won by exceeding 55 mph via human power; no hills or wind, natch. Human powered flight was another area, culminating in a fight across the English channel in a remarkably large and light plane.
I'm drawn to the extremes of engineering these prizes encourage. The most recent example that I'm aware of is the coveted Sikorsky prize. This human powered helicopter evaded the best of engineering students for 30 years. It was often deemed 'untenable'; finally accomplished...however 'just barely' it was. Of course, the device is completely impractical, but it did expand the science of trusses and strong-light materials.

One of the hpv contests was for a human powered boat that could break 20 knots. i got involved in that one with a design that re-thought the propulsion and power transfer system. The evolution of these boats went like this:

Initially, sleek kayak like hulls were out-fitted with a bike-like power set-up, to a propellor behind the hull. These early efforts quickly exceeded the fastest paddled boats, but got no where near the coveted prize. The big leap in speed came with the addition of hydrofoils below the sleek hulls. When the peddler managed to get to 7 knots or so, the craft woul lift out of the water and ride on the foils, greatly reducing the friction. Almost all the serious contenders had nearly identical designs, powered by athletes chosen for the task. The first radical departure was a 'boat' built by M.I.T. students called "The Decavitator". It had abandoned the propellor for a fan...like an air boat...and managed 19 knots; the fastest entry by a fair amount. The platform; hyrofoils; and bike-like power system were similar to the other boats. Interesting.

Unfortunately, the judges of the event eventually declared that the Decavitator wasn't a boat. It didn't meet the somewhat arbitrary definition of a boat.
Pity, as we were learning stuff that could be of use.

I had an engineering friend that was involved in these events, and he heartily encouraged my odd approach...though it was ultimately rejected for (imho) really silly reasons. The thought was that stored energy would be used...though none was.

I had abandoned the propellor for something more akin to a flagella, or better yet, an oscillating hydrofoil. in other words, the power went to an artificial dolphin flipper. early experiments were very promising, though i switched to a side to side motion, akin to a shark's tail. This allowed less turbulence than the up and down dolphin motion.

I abandoned most of the power system of the typical bike-like rotary motion for something strangely simple...a long fiberglass pole aligned with the length of the hulls. The pole-vaulter-like unit was held still on the front end and guided through a hole in the back of the boat, and beyond, to where the flipper was attached.
Two men with strong legs sit sideways to the hull direction, facing each other. Their legs are linked to the rod in a position that resembles a leg-lift apparatus in a gym.
As the first guy pushes the rod away from himself, the other guy is set to shove it back; alternating that power stroke and sending it to the flipper.

Oddly, withut much thought, the fiberglass power rod was seen as an energy storeage system...which it was, in a way...though at the onset of a run, clearly no energy was stored in that spring-like device.
I lacked the money or gumption to proceed, though I suspect it was a winning approach to the problem.

(I could go into detail for why I think that.)

As mentioned in my first post, I've been analogously frustrated by the hpv land speed record events because they don't embrace specialized roads or monorails for the vehicles. The advantages are considerable, and retain the spirit of human power. in the unit of my design in that game, further gains can be had by coupling of units into trains; reducing the % of air drag per driver. The design parameters are altered to the point of consideration of non-bike-like power generation. Perhaps that basic power take-off is not the end all and be all of efficient caloric expenditure.

In fact, it may be possible to competitively generate electric power without going through the usual bike mechanics.

I love bikes, but i wonder if we're slightly hypnotised by them? What if we could explore new body positions and resistance devices that don't stem from "bike-think"?

I'll leave you in peace now. If this unusual assault doesn't get me banned and if anyone is interested, I'm up for a yak session on futuristic possibilities of the green sort.
I've got some ideas.

I think in a long distant time a space solar powered elevator of sorts could be accomplished then we could clean up space junk and create a solar rail network with no rails, crossing Continent's in minutes then on to the moon and mars etc using all renewables powered from vast solar arrays in space.
A driverless train with multiple air sealed carriages in space that can separate in an accident, remain pressurized and fall back to earth with heat shields and parachutes, when operating they would move in space dock with stations on top of space elevator's that are present in the capitals of most the big country's, So a space elevator transports you 60miles or so straight up then take a train across the world to another station dock and take the elevator back to ground or stay up in a central station and ride to the moon or mars on a larger ship it would be as normal to the folks of the time as taking the subway to you or I.
But moving people 60miles straight up with no sickness and doing it safely time and time again in a manner that gives people no queues would be very challenging, beam me up Scotty.
But one thing we all know is that we don't actual know it all at all so the future is all but what we thought.

I don't know where that came from but I thought its relevant to the thread being a future form of transport. But I defiantly think on the ground humans will want to go fast too just look at Japans new linear motor powered train breaking 600kph and the new camless engines coming into production battery's advancing, one major break through I would like is magnetic field strengthen of magnetic materials so a can of coke size motor could power a small car, the world is truly amazing if you look for it but for some reason the bad in society is being promoted to us more now than ever.