I appreciate your comments. Being from Alaska, I realize full well how the oil reserves of the North Slope put a $-gleam in the eyes of many Republicans. There are a couple of things I'd like to clarify, however:
 
1) 'Lazy Americans' was a simple exaggeration for the purpose of making a point. The emigrant working full-time at a fast food chain toward dreams of a better life is any thing but lazy. The genius of America is the spectrum of lifestyles present in its society. Unfortunately, I cannot help but think of the constant flow of traffic on I-5 and the Jersey Turnpike in terms of an anthill gone very wrong.
2) More to the point, you may be right that the MagLevs are left to the theorists in China instead of the engineers. On the other hand, it is exciting that electromagnetic fields are being researched for a variety of uses. For example, NASA has built a rocket that burns liquid plasma at several thousand degrees Celsius, which instantly vaporizes almost all known materials - with the exception of magnetic fields. Who knows how many technological advances are waiting to be discovered with the use of a force that exists throughout the universe?
Finally, though speculative fiction, the book and movie Contact utilize a gyroscopically-induced magnetic field to transport person(s) through the universe in alternate dimensions (of the Trekkie-inspired term 'spacetime continuum'), thereby defying the velocity-time limits of relativity physics. To paraphrase a quote, China (and the world) have taken a first step; in time, it will take another.
~axzaetus
Why are so many of you open-source "believers" knocking China's efforts to modernize? Who cares that it's not the first? The simple fact that lazy Americans haven't invested much in this revolutionary techonology is no surprise, considering their latent dependency on gasoline to fuel their egos. When they realize that the world's (current oil-based) economy does NOT have to inflate the prices of commodities like milk and toilet paper every time the Arabian peninsula decides not to produce as much, it will be a great day.
How does this happen? It needs to be brought into public consciousness that maglevs consume (at 400km/h ~ 250m/h) only.2kN of energy per seat, versus ~.6kN per seat for automobiles and ~1.0kN per seat for aircraft. 1 billion people live in China, and if citizens there owned on average as many as American citizens, the Middle Eastern reserves would dry up quicker than the drool on freeway drivers' faces.
So what if it's expensive? So are 2GHz processors, but that doesn't seem to morally rattle people. Kudos for China for taking the initiative to possibly skip an automobile-dominated phase of societal growth.
~axzaetus
Slashdot Mirror
I appreciate your comments. Being from Alaska, I realize full well how the oil reserves of the North Slope put a $-gleam in the eyes of many Republicans. There are a couple of things I'd like to clarify, however:
  1) 'Lazy Americans' was a simple exaggeration for the purpose of making a point. The emigrant working full-time at a fast food chain toward dreams of a better life is any thing but lazy. The genius of America is the spectrum of lifestyles present in its society. Unfortunately, I cannot help but think of the constant flow of traffic on I-5 and the Jersey Turnpike in terms of an anthill gone very wrong.
2) More to the point, you may be right that the MagLevs are left to the theorists in China instead of the engineers. On the other hand, it is exciting that electromagnetic fields are being researched for a variety of uses. For example, NASA has built a rocket that burns liquid plasma at several thousand degrees Celsius, which instantly vaporizes almost all known materials - with the exception of magnetic fields. Who knows how many technological advances are waiting to be discovered with the use of a force that exists throughout the universe?
Finally, though speculative fiction, the book and movie Contact utilize a gyroscopically-induced magnetic field to transport person(s) through the universe in alternate dimensions (of the Trekkie-inspired term 'spacetime continuum'), thereby defying the velocity-time limits of relativity physics. To paraphrase a quote, China (and the world) have taken a first step; in time, it will take another.
~axzaetus
Who needs the Borg when we have scientists cloning around? ~axzaetus
Why are so many of you open-source "believers" knocking China's efforts to modernize? Who cares that it's not the first? The simple fact that lazy Americans haven't invested much in this revolutionary techonology is no surprise, considering their latent dependency on gasoline to fuel their egos. When they realize that the world's (current oil-based) economy does NOT have to inflate the prices of commodities like milk and toilet paper every time the Arabian peninsula decides not to produce as much, it will be a great day. How does this happen? It needs to be brought into public consciousness that maglevs consume (at 400km/h ~ 250m/h) only .2kN of energy per seat, versus ~.6kN per seat for automobiles and ~1.0kN per seat for aircraft. 1 billion people live in China, and if citizens there owned on average as many as American citizens, the Middle Eastern reserves would dry up quicker than the drool on freeway drivers' faces.
So what if it's expensive? So are 2GHz processors, but that doesn't seem to morally rattle people. Kudos for China for taking the initiative to possibly skip an automobile-dominated phase of societal growth.
~axzaetus