Slashdot Mirror
China Going Up and Coming Down
SoCalChris writes "The BBC writes that China has just completed the world's highest railroad, climbing to 16,640 feet (5,072 meters) above sea level. The cars will be sealed to help passengers cope with the pressure changes from the altitude. The line is expected to begin carrying passengers next year." This news comes at the same time that their Chinese taikonauts return from their spaceflight after just 115 hours in orbit.
SoCalChris writes "The BBC writes that China has just completed the world's highest railroad, climbing to 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*5*13 feet (2*2*2*2*317 meters) above sea level. The cars will be sealed to help passengers cope with the pressure changes from the altitude. The line is expected to begin carrying passengers next year." This news comes at the same time that their Chinese taikonauts return from their spaceflight after just 5*23 hours in orbit.
This just seems unsafe to me. Imagine something goes wrong and the train is stuck up at that altitude. Then what?
I remember riding a train that had colided with a truck a few years back. This wouldn't likely happen at that altitude, but what could happen would be wildlife and environmental blockage.
It seems like a challenge to me.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Well that seals the cultural genocide of the Tibetan people.
:wq
Ok, goody for them. Having a third player in space is probably a good thing even if they are the communist Chinese since they probably won't remain communist a lot longer. On the other hand it is just another doomed government 'prestige' program that won't actually acomplish much before being abandoned the second the cost exceeds the publicity value and that always happens long before anything longterm good can happen.
Nope, the only hope of our species getting off this rock is private enterprise.
Democrat delenda est
World biggest roller coaster?
-- Por mais que eu ande no vale das trevas e da morte, meu PowerMac G4 Não Travará!!!
I'm glad China's having good progress (in many respects). I do hope their government loosens up (maybe money'll soften them like it did ours) so they allow freedom (since it means more money) to speech and internet and whatnot. Just tell them that!
Now, I really really do hope China doesn't make giant killer robot, and I'll be fine with them for good.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
In case if someone doesn't realize, the lower four pictures are simulated artwork, which is what the blue heading indicates in Chinese. Please don't shout "they're fake."
I once had a signature.
It also comes at the same time that the number of Chinese people living in extreme poverty rose by 800,000 last year.
While we [the /. crowd] bitch and moan about Microsoft and while the great herd worry more about Britney's spawn than credible science, more about the latest American Idol than engineering and while China and India graduate more scientists and engineers than the US...you can expect many, many more reports like this. The 21st century just may be when the Sino-Communist brand of capitalism eclipses lAmerican power and influence.
You missed the link to the chicks http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/15/conte nt_3618725.htm at the bottom of the page.
I actually rode on the Central Rail Line in Peru which was the former highest. Now I am going to have to go to China to ride this thing.
DAMN.
I will say the Peruvian one seems still a bit more challenging - no wussy sealed cars. You get to experience altitude sickness in all its glory.
Are they talking about funicular trolleys or actual heavy rail? Because heavy rail generally sees a 4% grade as a maximum due to, well, physics. Since I'm not aware of any fantastic engineering innovations, this must be some sort of light rail--or at least lighter than standard heavy rail.
Asparagus has many and excellent powers.
with expanded access to new goods and services, educational opportunities, and contact with the outside world
All of the above could have been accomplished without destroying a millenium of scholastic and artistic works. Not to speak of the execution and incarceration of its living representatives.
Real shame that the standard of living in Tibet has risen steadily from the subsistence level ever since the CCP took control, huh?
For the Chinese immigrants. The native population are treated as second class citizens. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation when collectivism was first introduced, and most survivors suffer from various disabilities caused by malnutrition.
:wq
Ooops, the last 4 pictures are really fakes, but the Chineses are too lazy to remove the word 'mo2ni3', which meanings "simulated photoes", from these pictures' titles. otherwise, some stupid slashdot readers may think these pictures are for real.
**grin**
but what advantage does the railroad have over trucks/busses or planes? I was under the impression that they're rather dangerous and costly in comparison. I mean, here in the US Amtrak is struggling because of the derailings and the fact that it just isn't cost efficent... am I missing something?
The images on Xinhua are meant to demonstrate the capsule landing. They're not pretending to be actual photos. You should know better than to trust headlines with a question mark at the end of them.
Haha maybe this'll cheer you up:
2 7/content_446335.htm
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-05/
"The name may not roll off the tongue quite like American Idol does, but that hasn't kept the Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl contest from sweeping China. Zhao Jingyi, 17, the "schoolgirl" candidate won the Changsha competition.
Like Idol, which named its winner Wednesday night, China's Super Girl gives aspiring singing stars a shot at televised fame and fortune."
Looks like American culture has spread far and wide...
...join the mile high club without ever leaving the ground!
-EL
This type of thing goes on all the time in western media, and there was no attempt to pass off the images as actual photographs. It's just a misconception put forth by xenophobic conspiracy nuts.
The sheer arrogance emitted from some posts are really not worthy of slashdot, and/or its readers/posters.
What China has done, - in terms of the Qinhai-Tibet rail-line, or its spacecraft, - is not better, nor worse, than those from other countries.
Do we see any comments like the
" Some of the images of the spacecraft look fake"
and
"and the ones that don't look fake show damage on the spacecraft"
and
"This just seems unsafe to me. Imagine something goes wrong and the train is stuck up at that altitude?"
and
"Well that seals the cultural genocide of the Tibetan people"
and
"Wow, you are finally almost to the point where the USA's space program was over 40 years ago. That is impressive"
and
"It also comes at the same time that the number of Chinese people living in extreme poverty rose by 800,000 last year"
ad nauseum
if the spacecraft or railway is from the United States of America or Russia ?
This development of sheer arrogance, is not checked, might even venture into the territory of racism.
I'm an /. old-timer, and I'm really sad to see /. goes to the dog because of these type of postings.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Real shame that the standard of living in Tibet has risen steadily from the subsistence level ever since the CCP took control, huh?
If I could trust a totalitarian government to do anything other than lie, maybe so. As it is they may as well be claiming that Tibetans are made of cheese for all the validity it has.
Anyway the song that "we're doing it all to raise the natives" has been the standard line of the conqueror all through history, and the natives always get the shaft in the end.
You had me until the 'capitalist' part. Chinese have so few freedoms, and businesses are no exception. I researched them for a human right project last year and, while there are many successful businesses in China, it happens falsely most of the time with heavy government interference. Without it much of their economy would crumble. Most of the big names in Chinese business are at least partially government owned or run. While they are not entirely 1984, i wouldn't go so far as to call them capitalism either, I'd rather not soil that name.
I am Spartacus
I am really starting to hate the China apologists on /. Way to go! you mention the railroad but you dont mention WHERE the railroad was made. If you read up on it you see that it was made to link China to TIBET where the local population is being wiped out by the chinese communists. Of course they are going to invest in somthing that provides more places for an over crowded china to move people to.
No, I am not a stoned "free tibet hippie", i happen to come from that part of the world.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Never forget Egyptians built the first Great Pyramids 5000 years ago, and now they have tumbled to the point of technological weaklings. And this tells me that even tough US is the technology leader now, but things can change over time. I'll just sit back and see how China will take over the world (in terms of technological advancement). With over 1 billion smart people, this will only happen sooner or later.
If there is any payoff to the destruction of US industrial might by moving it to China, their greater space activity is it. They are to be congratulated for a positive application of their growth and I hope they put the US to shame for the failure of its pioneer heritage. But the railroad, for all of its engineering prowess, is just another nail in the coffin of Tibetan self-determination. There are things more important than economic development.
Seastead this.
Wow.
>You've said that it looks like an "aluminium motor home from..."
Do you know if it works ok for the job it was designed for? How do the looks matter here?
>It looks like it can barely support its own weight. Granted, gravity is very weak in orbit, blah blah blah, but doesn't this thing get strapped to the top of a rocket?
Ignorance is bliss. For things you have no clue about, its best to remain silent or do your own research.
>It's got burn marks all over it
>And no apparent heat shielding
You are speculating. You obvisously have heard the word "heat shielding" and thats about what you know about it.
"Its got burn marks all over it" - must be the funniest sentence
I've heard.
I could continue to post all your trash but I guess we aren;t contributing in a meaningful way on this.
I understand that in the early 1940's Germany had a pretty good rail system and was making remarkable progress with rocketry. Can't wait for the Slashdot retrospective on that.
Oh! Excuse me, have I triggered Godwin's Law?
[Insert pithy quote here]
When the conductor opened the pressurized train car door for the first time in Tibet, the pasengers were heard to exclaim, "This place really sucks!" as they blew out the door.
They look fake because the little caption on top, in Chinese, says "Simulated Rendering".
The rest of the images, they must have filmed in the same sound stage that faked the Apollo moon landings.
-=- Terence
I've been to nearly 5900 meters while climbing Kilimanjaro, and I can tell you the air is pretty thin up there. We obviously spent a fair amount of time adjusting, but not the timeframe on Kili is rushed and you definitely feel it. On the final day we climb at a rate of several seconds per step breathing like we were running a marathon. Very exhilarating :)
The article makes it sound like oxygen/pressurized cabin is neccessary at this altitude. It isn't. We spent our final night higher than this altitude and I never even had a headache. I assume the reason why the workers received oxygen was to assist with the heavy labor they had to do.
The pressurized cabin on the train is merely a matter of comfort for most people, although that altitude is high enough to cause problems for some people susceptible to Acute Mountain Sickness or AMS. Since the purpose of the railroad is to reach those high altitudes, I'd assume most people are somewhat accustomed to it.
Here is a picture from the crater rim of Kilimanjaro's larger peak Kibo at sunrise. The smaller peak you see is Mawenzi, and the view is towards Kenya. I would love to visit Tibet some day.
isomerica.net | Foonetic IRC
A friend of mine returned from China and Tibet two years ago and mentioned the train and how many Chinese made no bones about the fact the train would be used to move many Chinese into Tibet to shift the demographics and help dillute/destroy Tibet as an independent culture.
The US rail system is well managed, with one exception: Amtrak. The US railroads have realized that freight does not care too much about how fast it is going, sitting still waiting for another train to pass, and not taking the shortest route point to point.
So the US rails have decided to focus on freight where they hold nearly 2/3rds of all traffic (compare to less than 1/3rd for Europe's rails). That is good management: do what you can do well, and let someone else deal with what you cannot do well. I would argue that Europe's rails are mismanaged, spending all their energy on moving people when it is much easier to move freight.
s/Chinese/Americans/g
s/Tibetan/Native Americans/g
good day sir.
Although not quite innocuous, I fail to get overexcited about people moving in.
When people from Northern California (where I live now) bitch about people moving in from elsewhere, I don't exactly sympathize with them. So I don't automatically sympathize here.
Should I go and bury I-80 at Donner Lake because it just makes it easier for people to come over the (formerly protective) Sierra Nevada mountains and settle here?
Or should I go and pry out the "golden spike" in Promentory Point, Utah, because rails made it easy 100 years ago?
Of course China is investing in infrastructure to move people. We do it too.
Now, that being said, I'm not in favor of ethnic cleansing or killing of any sort. But just people settling? Well, there's a lot of people on this planet now. Everyone has to make a little room for closer neighbors.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
First the average person is just fine at 16,500. Yeah, they will be a bit light headed, but nothing too bad...
I don't know about that. When I climbed Longs Peak in Colorado, about 14,000', I was sick as a dog and couldn't really think straight. And that's after living two months in Boulder (5150'). I recall recently climbing Mt. San Gorgonio in Southern California (11,500') with someone else, and we had to turn back at about 10,000' because she got seriously disoriented and out of breath, the first signs of altitude sickness.
Now, it could be I don't know any average people, but my personal experience says that 16,000' would be pretty serious without acclimatization, especially if, like me, you're no longer that young. I would certainly hesitate to try it without knowing I had oxygen standing by.
For one thing, the *first* thing that goes wrong when you have altitude sickness is your judgment. You start to make dumbass decisions, and lose track of time, and wander in your thoughts. Indeed, this mental dullness is suspected by some people for the climbing disaster on Everest in 1996 described by Jon Krakauer in his absorbing book, Into Thin Air.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The second thing to keep in mind is that because the public transport systems within cities are so much better (New York is a bit of an exception, as the subway on Manhattan is very good), a lot of Europeans simply don't own a car even if they can afford it. Therefore, even if the train is a bit dearer in terms of variable cost, the money saved by not owning, garaging and servicing a car more than makes up for it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Don't forget that Europe uses electricity when we use Diseasel. That also plays a part in speeds and in costs.
-Palal
Maybe U.S. manufacturing workers who have been canned because their factories were outsourced can be a source of cheap labor for building the railroad. They can settle in China and become a vibrant minority, opening up 'american' restaurants on every corner. I can see it now: General Franks' Chicken.
http://www.areadan.com
Errr , sorry , you're going to have to explain that punchline. Don't get it.
Seeing and believing in China
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Which history books have you been reading? For most of recent history (prior to 1950) Tibet was in effect an independent state. It certainly wasn't considered part of China when Britain invaded Tibet in 1903! Britain then gave it to China because all they wanted was a secure trade route through it. The Tibetans then overthrew the Chinese and by 1906 had regained effective independence. China then descended in to civil war and Europe in to WWI and so everybody lost interest in Tibet until China had become communist and invaded in 1949-50.
Most of China's historical claim to Tibet is based on the fact that from the 1300s Tibet was ruled by Beijing, which is technically true - but it was not ruled by the Chinese! The Mongols (Ghengis Khan, et. al) invaded China, Tibet, Korea and most of the rest of South East Asia and ruled the whole area from Beijing. That hardly gives China a legitamate claim, and it gives them no more of a claim to Tibet than it to Korea.
Since the invasion in 1950 vast numbers of Chinese people have been moved in whilst similarly vast numbers of Tibetans have died of starvation or fled to India, Nepal and Bhutan. The Chinese government has systematically sought to destroy the Tibetan culture, religion, and identity, to the point where Tibetans are now outnumbered by Chinese in their own land. This railroad will only accellerate that process.
Metal expands when heated. Here's what can happen: http://www.charmec.chalmers.se/railtech/suncurves. html
It beats the previous holder of the record, a railroad in Peru that passes over 4843m, by only a couple of hundred meters, taking away a record it held since it was completed in 1912, almost a hundred years ago.
The fact is, not many places have much use for a railroad that high. Both the current and the former holders of the record would pass over the highest point in Europe or the lower 48 states.
China's policy over the last few years has been one of population dilution. By trucking in native Chinese, they were diluting native Tibetan population. With this new railroad that process will accelerate dramatically. I spent a month in Lhasa last year and spoke with some of the Tibetans (technically you are supposed to have a Chinese guide present at all times, but since there were no other tourists there .. none .. the guide just took off to a bar), and they were very depressed about the finish of the railroad. Their culture is being coopted by China and western influence.
So very sad.
-coherentlight
They've done a fine job too: Bhopal, US tobacco industry, Pinkertons, South Africa, Love Canal...
It's most ironic that you were researching for a human rights project.
Do read some Upton Sinclair and Dickens. Without other moderating
cultural influences, capitalism have run rough shod over human rights for centuries. The benefit of capitalism is economical, not the promotion of a more humane society.
Historically, corporate interests attempt to use governmental influences to gain benefits for themselves as often as they want to be left alone. Look at trade tariffs, agricultural subsidies, the East India Company (Is that a company or an arm of the government?) !
There has never been pure lassiz faire capitalism and there probably never will be. If it comes to be, it's not obvious that you would want to live there.