Discussion on:

China developing 600 mph airless maglev high-speed train

Daryl420:
There are a lot more typos than that in your posting, misspelled words, misused words all make it hard to read. It would take a lot of time to point them all out. It should have been proofread before you posted it.
We should quit worring about the politics and get moving on building a high speed train, above or below ground. I don't like the idea of being in a tube underground for long distances--anyone ever heard of claustrophobia? I enjoy the scenery from an airplane's window, or a train's window. If we were to go this route, we would be hurtling at high speed in something with no windows to guess where we are or see the mountains, rivers, lakes of our magnificent country. In my case at aq height of 6' 7" to many transports are made for shorter people. There are may of us out here that are over six and a half feet tall, where do they travel or what do they drive? I drive a full sized pickup and one of the reasons is LEG room, which is nonexistant on many airlines, and in many cars, we bought our Ford Five-Hundred three years ago, specifically for its leg room, I am hoping someone will still have a vehicle with rear seat leg room, when we have to replace it. I am not sure it exists today in the 2011 season of vehicles.

The problem I see with getting from New York to Los Angeles in
45 minutes is that the maximum safe acceleration for a bus or
train is 0.1g, At that rate of acceleration, the minimum time in
which a bus or train can cover 2462 miles is a shade under 68
minutes. To achieve that timing the vehicle needs to achieve a
maximum speed of 4400 mph.

Even over medium distances, though, the train is already faster
than the plane. You can travel 400 miles centre to centre from
Edinburgh to London in 4 hours 0 min by train. Doing the same
journey by plane takes about the same length of time, thanks to
the time spent at the airport of departure.

@dhays

i only really care about mistake that change thwe context of the arguement.

as for claustrophia... thats purely a psychological condition... general cause via truama and the avoidance of the cause of of similar things to thats which caused the trauma... the fact of the matter is the tube is required for increasingly high speed trains (because it removed air resistance, thusly greatly reducing the required energy input), this method has been talked about being used over long distance at several thousand km/h. if people can't get over that they can use another method of travel.

as for the view, the tube can be made of some kind of glass or clear plastic, and there you go very high speed trains IN A TUBE with a view, not exxactly much of a problem... though at that speed there not much point to a view unless your atleast few hundred or thousand feet of the ground (or 32,000ft; cruise altitude for most commecial airliners), at that speed at ground level a view would likely be disorienting to many people.

Hmmm...that's a funny video! I love how there are absolutely *NO* lines anywhere!
Look..the problem with super fast trains is that they are only good for point-to-point operation! We have an Accella train in the united states that's capable of about 200mph on regular train tracks..but it can never reach that speed because on the way to New York from Washington DC, it has to stop half a dozen times and because of that, it never goes above 90-mph!

New York to Los Angeles in "x" minutes? What if I want to go to Boise, Idaho instead? How about Seattle? Does anyone have the faintest idea how to build a network of such tube trains and not spend the treasuries of every nation on Earth?

Real-world trains on rails use a gadget called a "switch" to change from one rail line to another to go to different destinations. It's relatively easy to do in the air when one doesn't have to also deal with maintaining a vacuum.

These responses are sick, Maglev is the best thing ever.

It is entertaining reading what nay-sayers imagine ET3 to be! It is easy to "prove" there are problems that ET3 cannot surmount if one redesigns ET3 to be what they imagine instead of what it is! The article has one reference, et3.com, and mentions the the technology is patented. One can find the patent and download it for free at:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5950543.html
A little more study (actually reading the ET3 patent) should let the nay-sayers know that ET3 is not the expensive train they imagine it to be!

For instance ET3 does not use train switching imagined by DamienY. ET3 uses car/freeway type of independent switching controlled by the vehicle -- not the outmoded train type of switch.

Those who dig deeper will find et3.net and that the ET3 consortium is over 95 strong, and includes SWJTU in China, and is several years into the development phase!

The designers of transport system have to now settle down to a practical level and have to be present to the ground reality. They got to give the people what the people want. People do not want fancy transport systems. The people want an efficient, convenient and cost effective system. With mobility becoming a fundamental right the new technology needs to fit into the budget of the common man. The transport system is no longer important, what is important is affordable mobility which is fast, clean, cheap, comfortable, safe & green. What people are looking for is doorstep delivery. People are looking for a uni-modal system which saves time & effort. High Speed Trains have very few stations and these stations are far away from the places where the people live & work. It is time for a technology which will replace cars and save energy and will give the people the mobility they desire.

When the world stop spending trillions of $ a year on useless weapons, those billions of $ spent on a superfast maglev will be obvously a good investment for conserving planetary resource.