Quote:
Originally Posted by mwadswor
I never said they couldn't, and I would certainly support certain conventional HSR lines of that distance. I was just pointing out that maglev is not "faster than all other forms of transportation," an airplane is. A space plane would be even faster (but ludicrously expensive again). And an airplaine and airport cost a fraction of what 400+ miles of maglev would cost.
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Well, maglev could, in theory at least, be much faster than planes. If you're willing to invest in serious R&D, installation, and operating costs of vacuum tubes for the train to run in that is.
The train would be essentially frictionless and could in theory accelerate in the entire first half of the route and decelerate in the entire second half, but of course maintaining the vacuum would be prohibitively expensive using current technology, and finding the ROW for the huge curve radii required (unless you want to crush the passengers with insane lateral g-forces) for such high speeds could be tough.