Posted by
michael
on from the fassssssssssssssssst dept.
Slack writes: "The Orlando Sentinal is reporting that China has signed a deal with a German consortium to build the world's first commercial train to float on magnetic fields."
Not the first commercial Maglev - BHX
by
Avalonia
·
· Score: 3
Birmingham Aiport (BHX) in the UK West Midlands sported a commercial operating Maglev between the terminal and the main-line railway station for eleven years. It has recently been replaced. There's a relevant Scientific American article here.
I just feel sorry for the poor bastards who dress gothic style and wear lots of metal. They're fine until the train starts up... then all of a sudden they're pinned to the floor the train wishing they'd never had those 15 nose-rings put in.
Slow, Old, Unsafe - pick any three
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
The sound of self-interest and hypocrisy is nipping at my eardrums.
Let's start with self-interest.
Transrapid reckon this stuff is
Safe. Yeah, right. Until the power goes off
Energy efficient. Not unless you think squandering MW on keeping the levitation coils going is a good use of energy
Slow (or slower than the alternative) because for every small increase in speed you need a disproportionate increase in magnet current to keep the thing stable
Of course they have to say that because they have such a huge investment in old and essentially useless tech.
In fact, there is a magnetic levitation tech which is safe and energy efficient.
It relies on coils in the track (closed loops, unpowered) and magnets on the train.
The train has small wheels which it rides on until it reaches a critical velocity (around 30 km/h) above which the eddy-currents induced in the track coils generate enough of a repulsive force to lift the train.
Mount coils and magnets horizontally and vertically in sidewalls and you get to go around corners safely too.
The faster it goes, the more induced magnetism it generates, the more it holds itself stable
Propulsion is by some kind of small jet/fan.
Safety is assured because there is no electric current to get interrupted.
Check out Scientific American late last year for an article on this.
The hypocrisy comes from the Chinese (surprise!). How could this possible be a demonstration of China's technical prowess? A demonstration of Germany's perhaps, but not China's.
Who's read Stephen King's Dark Tower books? Anyone thinking Blaine the Mono?
Grab.
The German company was the 2nd choice
by
Glowing+Fish
·
· Score: 3
A group of Slashdotters actually had the first bid for the job, and were going to build it for much cheaper out of legos and potatos, but the deal fell through when they ran out of 2*3 flatsies.
Its a relief to finally see someone built such a thing. After more than twenty years of research and more than 20.000.000.000 DM of taxpayers money put into this, our new Government very nearly cancelled the whole thing.
Mind you not because the Construction of a Transrapid connection between Berlin and Hamburg would be too expensive (Actually it would cost not much more than an ICE connection (Germanies High speed train)) but because the Environmentalist Party in Germany (which governs our Land in Association with the Sozial-Democrates) blocked the Project due to environmental concerns.
But If you do not believe in such High tech yourself, How do you think someone else will buy it. (If we had a working Transrapid connection, we would have sold the Technology long ago to several other countries including the Netherlands, Japan and the U.S.)
But politicians only see the cost of a thing and whether or not it brings the voters favour to them, but not how much money they could make out of such an investment.
Regards
Jeff
I don't think anybody has mentioned this so far, so I will.
There is a group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab that is working on a totally new MagLev system. It is called
Inductrak. What is unique about this system is that it uses totally passive technology.
It works by lining the center of the track with passive copper coils and lining the bottom of the train with Hallbach magnets. These Hallbach magnets have two interesing properties. One, they create a sinusoidally varying magnetic field, and two, the poles are aligned so that the magnetic field above the cabinet (i.e. where the passengers are) completely cancels out. What this means is that as the sinusoidally varying field passes over the passive coils, the coils create a repulsive field, but only so long as the train is moving. When the train slows down to below a few miles an hour, it will settle back down on the normal tracks.
The people who are developing this system are now working on a scale model with NASA for possible use in rocket launches.
But the real upshot to this sort of system, as opposed to the system mentioned in the article (Dynamic EM) or other such systems (Superconducting EM) is that the levitation system does not require precice computer control. With either of the other systems, a contol failure could cause a fatal accident. With Inductrack, the worst case scinario is a propulsion failure, in which case the train would simply continue floating until it slows down enough to land on the rails again.
The control issue is one of the major problems that have held back the deployment of large scale MagLev systems for decades. I think that this passive technology is probably going to prove to be the way to go. (IMHO, YMMV, etc.) --
--
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Mega-projects and national pride
by
LarsWestergren
·
· Score: 3
The majority of the Chinese Communist Party stopped being communist almost 20 years ago if you look at the economic perspective (even though some hardline conservatives keep trying to turn back the clock). They have quietly drifted closer and closer to market economy, even though the official media keeps spouting tired old cliches like "The march towards true socialism continues!".
However, some things are harder to let go of. Criticism of the party is still stomped down on HARD, as are all suggestion of a multi-party democracy. Also remaining is a fondness for the old Stalinist type mega-projects. Big is beautiful. Damn the environmental consequences or the fact that smaller projects would make more economic sense. It seems China still suffers somewhat from an inferiority complex and therefore see a need to bolster their national pride with these absurd projects that are an enormous waste of money. The most obvious example is the Three Gorges Project, the world's largest dam.
Corruption, bureaucracy, environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale, *millions* of people homeless, expensive electricity and a dubious safety record. When (if) it is finished, I wouldn't want to live downriver from it for all the whisky in Ireland.
China also announced today that not only are they going to build the worlds first Maglev train, which promises to reduce pollution via mass transit;
They have also announced that they are beginning the development of the automobile, which they say promises to produce much more pollution (with which, of course, future maglev trains will spawn) than their current ECO-threatening device, the bicycle.
krystal_blade
-- It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
Transrapid still WAY too expensive
by
RayChuang
·
· Score: 4
I think while it's nice that finally we'll see a major commercial application of maglev technology, the problem is that the cost of a Transrapid maglev on a per kilometer basis is WAY too expensive for what it does.
Already, a breakthrough announced in late 1999 promises to make Transrapid obselete; a bunch of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) engineers trying to develop a better way to launch rockets into space cheaply came up with maglev system that uses mostly cheap permanent magnets to move the train along without the very precise engineering that the Transrapid needs.
They're now in the process of scaling up the technology to see if it will work on a larger scale; if it does, the US could actually take the lead on maglev research since the US will have by far the least expensive technology necessary to build a maglev train that goes between 400 and 500 km/h (248 to 310 mph).
Maglev's could drastically change transportation as we know it. Imagine going from downtown Chicago to downtown Minneapolis in under two hours, or Atlanta to Miami via Orlando, FL in just under three hours. It could make short-distance air travel obselete on any corridor where the maglev train is running.
-- Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Re:Excluding the one in Germany?
by
pmc
·
· Score: 3
And also excluding the actual first one, which was in the UK connecting Birmingham airport to the city centre. This was in 1984 (and it is now closed).
Slashdot Mirror
Soft boil an egg.
Not to knock the work being done in China, but they are not the first Maglev.
Birmingham (UK, not AL) between the NEC exhibition centre and the train station. I'd guess it has been there for over 10 years. They announced plans in the middle of last year for a version 2.
--
DWR is Ajax for Java
Birmingham Aiport (BHX) in the UK West Midlands sported a commercial operating Maglev between the terminal and the main-line railway station for eleven years. It has recently been replaced. There's a relevant Scientific American article here.
I just feel sorry for the poor bastards who dress gothic style and wear lots of metal. They're fine until the train starts up... then all of a sudden they're pinned to the floor the train wishing they'd never had those 15 nose-rings put in.
- Safe. Yeah, right. Until the power goes off
- Energy efficient. Not unless you think squandering MW on keeping the levitation coils going is a good use of energy
- Slow (or slower than the alternative) because for every small increase in speed you need a disproportionate increase in magnet current to keep the thing stable
Of course they have to say that because they have such a huge investment in old and essentially useless tech.In fact, there is a magnetic levitation tech which is safe and energy efficient.
- It relies on coils in the track (closed loops, unpowered) and magnets on the train.
- The train has small wheels which it rides on until it reaches a critical velocity (around 30 km/h) above which the eddy-currents induced in the track coils generate enough of a repulsive force to lift the train.
- Mount coils and magnets horizontally and vertically in sidewalls and you get to go around corners safely too.
- The faster it goes, the more induced magnetism it generates, the more it holds itself stable
- Propulsion is by some kind of small jet/fan.
Safety is assured because there is no electric current to get interrupted.Check out Scientific American late last year for an article on this.
The hypocrisy comes from the Chinese (surprise!). How could this possible be a demonstration of China's technical prowess? A demonstration of Germany's perhaps, but not China's.
Who's read Stephen King's Dark Tower books? Anyone thinking Blaine the Mono?
Grab.
A group of Slashdotters actually had the first bid for the job, and were going to build it for much cheaper out of legos and potatos, but the deal fell through when they ran out of 2*3 flatsies.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Its a relief to finally see someone built such a thing. After more than twenty years of research and more than 20.000.000.000 DM of taxpayers money put into this, our new Government very nearly cancelled the whole thing. Mind you not because the Construction of a Transrapid connection between Berlin and Hamburg would be too expensive (Actually it would cost not much more than an ICE connection (Germanies High speed train)) but because the Environmentalist Party in Germany (which governs our Land in Association with the Sozial-Democrates) blocked the Project due to environmental concerns. But If you do not believe in such High tech yourself, How do you think someone else will buy it. (If we had a working Transrapid connection, we would have sold the Technology long ago to several other countries including the Netherlands, Japan and the U.S.) But politicians only see the cost of a thing and whether or not it brings the voters favour to them, but not how much money they could make out of such an investment. Regards Jeff
There is a group at Lawrence Livermore National Lab that is working on a totally new MagLev system. It is called Inductrak. What is unique about this system is that it uses totally passive technology.
It works by lining the center of the track with passive copper coils and lining the bottom of the train with Hallbach magnets. These Hallbach magnets have two interesing properties. One, they create a sinusoidally varying magnetic field, and two, the poles are aligned so that the magnetic field above the cabinet (i.e. where the passengers are) completely cancels out. What this means is that as the sinusoidally varying field passes over the passive coils, the coils create a repulsive field, but only so long as the train is moving. When the train slows down to below a few miles an hour, it will settle back down on the normal tracks.
The people who are developing this system are now working on a scale model with NASA for possible use in rocket launches.
But the real upshot to this sort of system, as opposed to the system mentioned in the article (Dynamic EM) or other such systems (Superconducting EM) is that the levitation system does not require precice computer control. With either of the other systems, a contol failure could cause a fatal accident. With Inductrack, the worst case scinario is a propulsion failure, in which case the train would simply continue floating until it slows down enough to land on the rails again.
The control issue is one of the major problems that have held back the deployment of large scale MagLev systems for decades. I think that this passive technology is probably going to prove to be the way to go. (IMHO, YMMV, etc.)
--
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
However, some things are harder to let go of. Criticism of the party is still stomped down on HARD, as are all suggestion of a multi-party democracy. Also remaining is a fondness for the old Stalinist type mega-projects. Big is beautiful. Damn the environmental consequences or the fact that smaller projects would make more economic sense. It seems China still suffers somewhat from an inferiority complex and therefore see a need to bolster their national pride with these absurd projects that are an enormous waste of money. The most obvious example is the Three Gorges Project, the world's largest dam.
Corruption, bureaucracy, environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale, *millions* of people homeless, expensive electricity and a dubious safety record. When (if) it is finished, I wouldn't want to live downriver from it for all the whisky in Ireland.
************************************************ ** *
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
They have also announced that they are beginning the development of the automobile, which they say promises to produce much more pollution (with which, of course, future maglev trains will spawn) than their current ECO-threatening device, the bicycle.
krystal_blade
It will be easy to motivate our fellow man; there is hardly anything people treasure more than not being annihilated.
I think while it's nice that finally we'll see a major commercial application of maglev technology, the problem is that the cost of a Transrapid maglev on a per kilometer basis is WAY too expensive for what it does.
Already, a breakthrough announced in late 1999 promises to make Transrapid obselete; a bunch of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) engineers trying to develop a better way to launch rockets into space cheaply came up with maglev system that uses mostly cheap permanent magnets to move the train along without the very precise engineering that the Transrapid needs.
They're now in the process of scaling up the technology to see if it will work on a larger scale; if it does, the US could actually take the lead on maglev research since the US will have by far the least expensive technology necessary to build a maglev train that goes between 400 and 500 km/h (248 to 310 mph).
Maglev's could drastically change transportation as we know it. Imagine going from downtown Chicago to downtown Minneapolis in under two hours, or Atlanta to Miami via Orlando, FL in just under three hours. It could make short-distance air travel obselete on any corridor where the maglev train is running.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Ho hum, another non-story.