Sunday, June 17, 2012

New York to London in an Hour?!

Xnewman sends in the really great article from a blog I had never heard of before but they have great articles.  This one in question revisits the bullet train or high speed tube trains.  However this one seems to take it an extra mile.  This tube train would be of the vacuum type, meaning that with no air to push around, speeds can be attained that are unheard of in today's various modes of transport.  

According to the article:    
  • "vactrain technology" could have us traveling from New York City to London hitting speeds up to 4,000 mph, making the journey from NYC to London in just one hour.
The article also seems to state that the core technologies may be available in just a decade.  The overall makeup of the trains and transport are pretty standard to those of us that have been reading of this mode for the better part of a century,  Very little sounds really unique, but exciting none the less.  The tubes would be about five feet across, the "tracks" would be frictionless magnetic style.  Each passenger capsule would be about the size of a small car.  Each capsule would be accelerated up to speed and for the balance of the trip  no additional power would be applied.  At the end of the trip, the energy is recaptured regenerative breaking manner.  The writers of the article state that using this system provided 50 times more transportation per kilowatt/hour than electric cars or trains.    

You can read the complete article HERE

1 comment:

kallamis said...

Kind of reminds me of the visions of Logan's Run and the tubes they used for rapid transit. (Referring to the book, not that movie.) It's been a long time, so I don't remember if the tubes were vacuum, but I do remember the car leaking once. I need to dig out that book, buried at the moment with all others.