I thought of the straight line thing shortly after posting. I'm not
even sure I'm capable of doing the math on the trip time. Either way, I
think you might want a bit of extra accel/deaccel at the ends to
increase the average speed, so a flatter U shape might still be good.
Since this was all 40-50 years ago and there is no progress in that
direction I'm not exactly holding my breath.
- Tom
Tom Barry wrote:
The solution my dad always wanted was to put the maglev's in u shaped tunnels and operate them like roller coasters. They would gradually fall down the tunnel and then coast mostly up the other side, slowing as they arrived. Motors would only be used to compensate for friction or differences in altitude.
I recall a school physics puzzle in which we were asked to prove that if you drilled a straight line through the earth between any two points, you could operate a frictionless train using only gravity. The tunnels wouldn't actually be U-shaped, but straight lines bypassing the spherical surface geometry. Cute thought.
My intuition also tells me that the trip time for such a train would be identical between any origin and destination. But I've not done the math.
Mojo
-- Tom Barry trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx Find my resume and video filters at www.trbarry.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.
