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."
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.
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.
Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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