RI... They're taking Elon Musk's idea and running with it
Russian researchers are working on high-speed transportation technologies similar to the Hyperloop system, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said Friday.
"Our scientists are also working on the creation of such projects [as the Hyperloop]. Initial research is ongoing at St. Petersburg State Transport University. Two years ago, I was shown a prototype — the track traveled by a railway container carried by magnetic levitation is not very long yet, but such technological concepts have already been tried and tested by Russian specialists," Sokolov said.
He added that Russia clearly understood that technologies that could provide people with high-speed transport services had significant potential.
The Hyperloop concept was proposed by prominent businessman and engineer Elon Musk and subsequently was made publicly available. The concept envisages the use of capsules transported via reduced-pressure tubes, which would make it possible to reach speeds higher than that of high-speed trains and planes.
On May 12, a Los Angeles-based startup company called Hyperloop One conducted the first test of a high-speed transport propulsion system.
Originally appeared at Sputnik
Poster Comment:
Otto310 • Other than to showcase Russian technology, I don´t quite see the point of Russia putting in place the infrastructure for such a high-speed rail network. It would be hugely expensive, when an aeroplane can do just as good a job, with existing infrastructure. Maybe I´m missing something here.
my2Cents/ Otto310 • You can transport way more by rail than by plane for a fraction of the cost which makes the investment certainly worthwhile........I'm thinking....It supposedly runs on wind and theothermal energy which, if true, would be a good thing. It would be 10 times less expensive than any current mode of cargo transportation.
peterkellow • The world does not need more connectivity. That era is over, Technology now means that most countries can make or grow anything. Mass production has given way to batch production. Forget this and spend the money making local economies and local markets work better. Save the planet as a byproduct
iBOOM • I would like to see Russia to use the Transrapid technology from ThyssenKrupp. Never understood why only China uses it.
Thomas Trautzsch /my2Cents • The maglev technology based on a linear motor was invented in the US and developed further in Germany. The energy flux densities of thermal and Wind energy sources are not quite enough to provide a stable basis for a maglev high speed rail system. The only way to do this is nuclear. First Fission then Fusion.
The linear motor principle rests on the idea that the copper windings and the magnet design of a normal "rotational" motor are opened up and laid out and continued as a linear track system. That is what basically constitutes a maglev track system. The magnets on the Train-Carriages and the copper windings on the track for creating a translating magnetic field pulling the carriage.
Various enhancements in this technology were made over the years including the potential use of super conductor materials instead of the magnets etc. Much of the enhancement of this technology was done by Siemens in Germany, but the stupid German Politicians pretty much abandoned this technology and sold it off to China, which is using it today in the Pilot Track in Shanghai.
The Chinese are also researching Maglev in partial vacuum in order to achieve speeds up to 1 Mach, by reducing or even eliminating the air friction. This technology is actually quite suitable for heavy freight transport, especially because the technology, at least concerning the track system, is frictionless. Yet it requires high energy flux densities to create the strong "wandering" magnetic fields accelerating the train. These can't be produced by so called "Green Energies", which are in terms of energy flux density comparable to energy sources of the middle-ages. Only the use of nuclear fission and/ or fusion would allow the industrial use of this technology.
I understand your concern about nuclear energy, which unfortunately has been demonized as much as Russia in the past decades for all the wrong reasons. Like with any other energy source it is also the case with nuclear, that it is not the source which is inherently dangerous but ill-minded people misusing it. I would be interested in hearing from you the specific reasons of why you are afraid of nuclear.
my2Cents/ Thomas Trautzsch • My issue with nuclear power, as far as I understand it, IS that we have no way of disposing of the nuclear waste.....which every government seems to ignore.
I thank you for giving me more credit than I deserve in understanding all the complicated techno stuff you just wrote.....As far as magnets I am in the process of replacing my electric range with an induction system which uses the magnet principle. That is rather new here in the U.S. In Europe they've used it for years So how should we dispose of Nuclear waste.??
Thomas Trautzsch /my2Cents • I am an engineer by profession, thus I can't help it ... Siemens sold off the technology to China, because they were facing political resistance in Germany, because of the stupid greens being anti progress and the conservatives being solely monetary-cost oriented. The plan existed to build a pilot line from the City Center of Munich to Munich Airport, which is located a few miles outside of Munich. The cost for this project were estimated with about 1.4 Billion D-Mark at the time. Now we know that planning is always wrong so double that Value and you would have landed at about 1.4 Billion Euro. That's a pretty petty sum, considering that the State of Germany bailed out the Banks with about 750 Billion Euro in 2008. Yet it was enough of a reason to cancel the Munich Pilot Line Project at the time. Really stupid, because it turned us to backwardness.
Concerning the fear of nuclear radiation, much of it is actually irrational and it is intentionally being made very hard for people to verify data of cancer patient medical records of areas of nuclear hazard, which many scientists claim, actually do not show any evidence of a connection to the hazard itself. Today, the nuclear waste problem only exists, because politicians turn it into a cost factor. The technology exists to actually re-process the used fuel again and even produce energy along this process by using so-called fast breeder reactors, but the process is considered to cost-intensive by our stupid politicians, who rather prefer to store the waste in old mines, where the nuclear waste indeed represents some kind of a time bomb, which is much more costly to defuse than having had fast breeders applied in the first place.
So, what we call nuclear waste today is actually an asset, but people are so brainwashed and inert today, that when you explain that to them they completely freak out. The same is true, when you try to explain to them that we already have inherently safe nuclear fission technology, where the worst case scenario of a nuclear chain reaction is actually physically impossible, because of the pebble-bed design.
Also, time does not stand still in terms of the development of transmutation technologies, which in a few decades will allow to transform the isotopes of the nuclear "waste" into other isotopes, with a much shorter half-life. People should regard nuclear energy as a kind of a fire, which mankind is able to control at some stage. Just imagine people in the past would have refrained from using fire, because they were saying that it is too dangerous. We'd still be sitting in caves wrapped in fur today. People in this regard should think Promethean and not Zeussian.
my2Cents/ Thomas Trautzsch • About 25 years ago I developed thyroid cancer.....It was the follicular kind....Slides were sent to Sloan Kettering ..THE Cancer experts in the world. They said that my 5 year survival rate was very good and no further therapy was required. I did not agree to the 5 years and took the slides to Mount Sinai in Manhatten....who agreed with me to remove the whole thyroid....Monifiore Hospital expert added something interesting....namely that I had been exposed to radiation....I asked them how? He did not know....I asked him how he was so certain....Follicular thyroid cancer is only caused by a lack of iodine which does not happen in the U.S or exposure.
Since we had a second home in Pennsylvania where we spent weekends, and Three Mile Island is also in Pennsylvania I suspect I was somehow exposed to some form of radiation after they had a leak.....I had radioactive iodine treatment....like from another world....and take thyroid hormones for the rest of my life.
The world has learned nothing from Chernobyl, nor from Fukushima....We have here some very old nuclear plants with a lifespan of tops 40 years who have been re-approved for another 30 years..Some are built by the same folks that build the Fukushima plant...So our elected officials know nothing and the industry doesn't inform them either....So we have major issues here which form a recipe for disaster.
So I agree with you that politicians are by and large an ignorant lot. My husband was an elected official and he was the only one on the council (it turned out) capable of reading a budget - which was fraudulent. This stuff goes on at the State level as well as the Federal level....So I don't trust Washington or the EPA, the FDA.....The whole thing is a racket.
Thanks for the explanations...now what to do to educate our governing body so that they make the right decisions, because that is what it boils down to. Coming from me is meaningless but from a group of engineers now THAT would be altogether a different story.